no way !

Rating: 2/10 (20 June 2003)

Wow, what a terrible crash to behold... Honest - I was looking forward to this (shame on me, I know ) on the grounds that anything in the action genre produced by Luc Besson (as witnessed by "Kiss of the Dragon" and not-so-bad "Taxi" ) and featuring John Statham (of "Snatch" fame) could not be all bad.... Big mistake !!! After an admittedly cool introductory chase this is a straight and steep downhill deploying movie (Hint - leave right after it and do something else. It will save the evening !). Most treestumps have more distinguishable and varied facial expression than Mr.Statham flashes at the audience in this movie, the villains are utterly faceless styrofoam cutouts, the "plot" has holes in it the size of parking lots and some of the surprises are so hare-brained ( I mean, what villain has a packaged and primed timed-explosive-device ready for deployment, while frolicking in his gardens, just in case he needs to blow some unlucky courier to pieces if the whim takes him ? Sure.......all of them ! No comment on the Scuba-gear scene... ), I find myself mystified who would ever want screen-credits for writing it ! Even the obligatory "rousing" fight scenes are stupid, uninspired or even cool ( most baffling to me). Not even redeeming wit or self-effacing irony dare pop up... laughs crawl in by accident, only.
One of the movies that give the action-genre in general a bad name - sorry. If it wasn't for for the nice scenery and the beautiful Qi Shu ( as "Lai" - but you can buy a bunch of posters for the price of admittance) this would be a total bomb - this way it gets 1.5/5 flat tires...