This was an early Chow Yun-Fat movie when he was becoming a big action star in China. Takes place in Bangkok, Thailand. Director is Simon Yam. From what I could tell, this was supposed to be a popular movie.
The plot is based on Chow Yun fat helping a friend who owes money to a loan shark named Judge. The solution. Join up with Judge and his crew for a heist.
The violence in the movie is beyond gratuitous. It’s beyond any action movie that I’ve seen in the US. If you want to talk about how women are degraded in the movie, I think the best thing to say is that there were times that I felt like this was nothing more than a cheap porno movie. I haven't seen many of those.
The heist is grabbing an armored car and the distraction is stopping traffic so one of the crooks throws a hand grenade in a passenger car, blowing them up, followed by guys with machine guns shooting everyone in sight. The criminals turn against Chow Yun Fat and want to kill him and his friends.
Speaking of the gun play, there were times when you would see one of the criminals empty the entire gun into someone. What did surprise me was that at other times, the gun play was reminiscent to the movie, Wanted, with Angelina Jolie, which makes me wonder if they got the idea from the gun play from this movie. If they did, the directors of Wanted should be ashamed of themselves for watching this movie and actually using an idea from it.
Much of the movie after that was Chow Yun Fat wanting revenge for the criminals that tried to kill him. During parts of the movie, you see him in martial arts scenes which I think would actually help this movie but even in those scenes, you see knife fights and fingers being cut off or people being stabbed. No comparison to the fights you would see with Jason Statham or Chuck Norris. In any case, most of the time, Chow Yun Fat is shooting everyone with handguns or machine guns, leading to an anti-climatic scene with Judge.
This movie may have been popular in China but I would say it’s worse than any of the movies that Seagal and Van Damme were in that went straight to DVD. As far as the violence and the pornographic sex is concerned, this probably would have been X-rated in the US. I wouldn’t give this movie one star and tell people if you really think that the US puts out extreme violent movies, then wait until you see this one.
Rick Holman
The plot is based on Chow Yun fat helping a friend who owes money to a loan shark named Judge. The solution. Join up with Judge and his crew for a heist.
The violence in the movie is beyond gratuitous. It’s beyond any action movie that I’ve seen in the US. If you want to talk about how women are degraded in the movie, I think the best thing to say is that there were times that I felt like this was nothing more than a cheap porno movie. I haven't seen many of those.
The heist is grabbing an armored car and the distraction is stopping traffic so one of the crooks throws a hand grenade in a passenger car, blowing them up, followed by guys with machine guns shooting everyone in sight. The criminals turn against Chow Yun Fat and want to kill him and his friends.
Speaking of the gun play, there were times when you would see one of the criminals empty the entire gun into someone. What did surprise me was that at other times, the gun play was reminiscent to the movie, Wanted, with Angelina Jolie, which makes me wonder if they got the idea from the gun play from this movie. If they did, the directors of Wanted should be ashamed of themselves for watching this movie and actually using an idea from it.
Much of the movie after that was Chow Yun Fat wanting revenge for the criminals that tried to kill him. During parts of the movie, you see him in martial arts scenes which I think would actually help this movie but even in those scenes, you see knife fights and fingers being cut off or people being stabbed. No comparison to the fights you would see with Jason Statham or Chuck Norris. In any case, most of the time, Chow Yun Fat is shooting everyone with handguns or machine guns, leading to an anti-climatic scene with Judge.
This movie may have been popular in China but I would say it’s worse than any of the movies that Seagal and Van Damme were in that went straight to DVD. As far as the violence and the pornographic sex is concerned, this probably would have been X-rated in the US. I wouldn’t give this movie one star and tell people if you really think that the US puts out extreme violent movies, then wait until you see this one.
Rick Holman