Jet Li: Shoulders so broad you could screen a film on them!
Somewhere in this movie is a decent action film straining to get out, but it is constrained and held back by the cheesy melodrama and tiresome “human” touches that repeatedly arise.
Jet Li is Kung Wei, a cop so undercover even his wife and young son Siu Kiu have no idea what he does.
This doesn’t seem to matter to them though, as long as Kung Wei shows for Siu Kiu’s martial arts demonstrations and puts food on the table no-one seems willing to ask the hard questions.
Unfortunately Kung’s wife is quite ill – the kind of ill that you don’t come back from. Let’s just say she isn’t buying green bananas. The fact that Kung appears the model husband and son makes it odd that he ignores this fact to follow up on a case that will take him even further undercover.
Deep, deep, DEEP undercover.
Kung Wei is “imprisoned” to get alongside a known bad guy with links to high crime – when they both bust out they head to Hong Kong where Kung finds what he is after, only initially he seems a little too enamoured with the fast money and high life that goes with the job description.
Things complicate further when a local Inspector Fong tracks down Kung’s wife and son on the mainland and starts piecing the puzzle together…
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Enough of all that drama – this is a Jet Li action flick right?
Well yes and no. There is action but not enough for an action fan, and when the climax finally arrives it is too reliant on explosives and the kung fu standard is not nearly as good as half a dozen other Jet Li flicks.
The plot is too convoluted and made little sense, the fact that his doting dying wife still believed he was a criminal – and that Kung Wei made no attempt to explain otherwise – made no sense to this little black duck, especially when everyone else seemed to know including his kid.
To recap, drama without any real drama, action without substance and major character decisions without credibility. To top all this off my DVD copy (which shares the same cover as the poster here and the imdb film page so I think it’s real) has some of the cheesiest subtitles in cinematic history. The kind that you can sorta follow, but at the same time can’t help but laugh at.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. A couple of brief fights are worth watching, but unfortunately the other 100 odd minutes are largely to be endured. I’ve seen a great many Jet Li flicks this one doesn’t crack his top 8.
