Tweekums Opening in 1994 as Triad leader Wong Po faces trial Inspector Chan Kwok Chung transports a key witness, along with his wife and child to the trial. Their car is ambushed leaving the witness and his wife dead. Wong Po goes free and Chan learns that he has a brain tumour after a medical examination. Chan is still determined to bring Po to Justice and puts a member of his team undercover on Po's organisation.Three years later Chan is due to be replaced by Inspector Ma Kwan when his undercover man is killed. His murder was filmed; the recording shows Po beating the man followed by another man shooting him… the team decide to edit the film so it looks as if Po is the killer. Po is arrested and the actual killer murdered but when the uncensored footage emerges they are in trouble. Po is released again and soon his assassin is targeting members of the team; ultimately it will be up to Chan and Ma to confront Po.If you like Hong Kong action films I expect you'll really enjoy this; there is plenty of action, some of it fairly brutal and plenty of shocking moments. The level of violence was much higher than I'd expected from a UK-15 rated film. The story is exciting and the characters interesting; the bad guys are definitely bad and most of the good guys are far from angels… watching I had to wonder if it was set in the late '90s as it was more acceptable to show the Royal Hong Kong Police behaving in such a way than the present force. The cast does a fine job both while 'acting' and while taking part in the bone crunching fight scenes. Donnie Yen and Simon Yam impress as Ma and Chan and Sammo Hung is great as Wong Po; he may be a big guy but he has got what it takes for the fight scenes. The fight were some of the most intense I've seen for a while. Without going into too much detail I will say the ending is far from upbeat; it certainly wasn't what I was expecting. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of the genre.These comments are based on watching the film in Cantonese with English subtitles; an English dub was also available on the DVD I watched.

TheBigSick The fight scene between Donnie Yen and Jing Wu at a back alley, is arguably the most authentic and intense action scene, in the whole history of cinema. It is just thrilling and brilliant. This scene makes the movie both Donnie Yen's best and Jing Wu's best of their entire careers.

bennyhagen I somehow totally missed this flick in the 90', having seen it now in 2015 I'm pretty damn amazed at some of the stuff that can be witnessed here. The fights are top of the list to this very day, really the kind of stuff that every martial arts junkie has to see before dying a slow motion death from a spinning wheel-kick. Some of cinematography is pretty artsy as well. All the rest is pretty clunky, but easier to swallow if you can manage to concentrate on how bleak and inordinary this movie is rather then the terrible writing and acting. As you might have heard, the ending is pretty f*cking dark too.B-Movie fans will know what to do with this.6/10

Cinematheque_Asia Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung (who looks like an asskicking purple Chinese Santa Claus in this movie) both shine in this action orientated crime thriller. If you are seeking sensible dialog and a cerebral plot you'll have to look elsewhere. This is a brutal HK action movie in every sense of the word. The unfortunate problem with this film is that while there is an interesting backdrop of characters and a plot to speak of the dialog and execution of it is B-grade. There were obvious emotional "tearjerker" attempts shoehorned into the movie's plot but it's hard to take anything seriously when every tragic death comes right after receiving a phone call from their loved one. It's a ridiculous cliché and I was a bit surprised to see it in a film from 2005 that wasn't supposed to be a parody. When you watch a movie like SPL (Kill Zone) sometimes you have to wonder how much better it would have been if they hired a real writer to work on it. With that being said even with these ridiculous elements this movie is still far better than most Hollywood movie attempts at martial arts action and probably cost 1/10th to make as well. Donnie Yen really mixes up his fight choreography with obvious inspiration from Capoeira, Kali/Silat style knife and stick fighting, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and run of the mill greco-roman wrestling moves. Yen proves he's one of the premiere physical action choreographers anywhere in the world.