Following several lumpen Hollywood vehicles, elfin powerhouse Jackie Chan flaunts his fabled suppleness in this Hong Kong-made return to form.
After five college-age techno-crooks pull off a daring heist by rappelling down a skyscraper, ace detective Wing (Chan) provokes them with his televised boast that he'll soon have them in custody. Privileged and egotistical, the thieves loath authority figures -- ringleader Joe (Daniel Wu) was raised by a taskmaster cop and subsequently transferred his rage to all law enforcers -– and can afford the finest equipment to sustain their perverted view that life is a video game with interchangeable human targets. Tipped off by a financially strapped insider, the Nietzschean gang ambushes Wing’s squadron in a booby-trapped warehouse. After trussing up the wounded rookies and suspending them from the ceiling, Joe dares Wing to compete for his men’s lives. Unable to save his men, Wing becomes a pariah at the precinct and drinks himself into oblivion. Eventually, a new partner named Fung (Nicholas Tse), who claims to be the brother of a fallen officer, picks up Wing from the gutter. Although Wing and Fung zero in on the culprits at an X-treme Sports event, Joe has taken the precaution of tying a bomb to Wing’s former fiancee. On bikes or skateboards, the police-bashers descend skyscrapers, sail over barricades, and zip along rooftops. Can Wing ever get one step ahead of this gravity-defying quintet?
Benny Chan storyboards action scenes as if modern metropolises were his movie sets; Hong Kong seems to be specifically designed for his stuntmen-actors to carry out astonishing martial-arts set pieces. Instead of leaping over tall buildings like Superman, the athletic stars slide down them and take the audience’s breath away. leave a comment --Robert Pardi
