atrocious

Rating: 1/10 (6 September 2002)

a truly dire piece of cinema, the first was a great flick, intricate clever, action filled and well acted. Well as well as the cruiser can, and to be honest all emmanuel beart did was pout prettily, but this did deflect from her personality void rather effectively. anyhoo, i digress, what bugged me about this is john woo mostly. who i rate highly, though of late have become bored with his indelible mark, which does never really veer away from a collection of set pieces; standoffs with unloaded guns; a hero and a paraiah; while this seems a harsh indictment of an action film as i suppose they are kinda essential qualities for a rootin-tootin action piece. john woo seems to have created a cookie cutter shape that he merely presses against whichever franchise he has been handed that month. kudos to the guy for bringing some of the lyricism of chinese action films to hollywood, but this was a distintcly poor comparison to his earlier stuff