This martial arts action movie starts off in Hong Kong, where Inspector Lam (Tony Leung), posing as a bounty hunter, steals black market gold plates only to get conned by a U.S. Embassy official, Owen Lee (Richie Jen). With Lam hot on his tail, Lee takes off with the plates to South Korea to sell them to a counterfeit syndicate. Once there, Lam chases Lee all over Seoul with the help of his crew of femme fatales and a new recruit, the beautiful JJ (Shu Qi), whose involvement is a mystery to everyone involved.

If you like action movies, any kind of action movie, then this might be your cup of tea. There’s plenty of action, but not really exciting action. A lot of the hand-to-hand combat looks fake, and whether it’s the fight choreography or camera choices, the result is the same. Who cares?

Most action movies ratchet up the tension with each set piece. Not this one. All in all, the sequences are not strong enough to carry the movie. (Although I do like a good dish-throwing scene as much as the next guy.) For example, the climactic fight takes place on the wing of an airplane; the only problem is that the plane is scooting on the ground the entire time. Not really much of a dangerous climax. Though the humor is funny at times (Lam: “You can mess with me, but not with my hair”), it misses the mark on most occasions.

But Tony Leung is always fun to watch, and Shu Qi should be someone to look for in future releases both in Asia and the United States. (Go see her in The Transporter.) She has extreme crossover potential.

The DVD extras are also lacking. Three deleted scenes and a ten-minute making-of featurette don’t reveal too much. There’s also a DVD-Rom feature which should’ve allowed me to access a picture gallery and lobby cards, but it wouldn’t run on my computer—each click brought me back to the main menu. Michael Field
October 2, 2008