peplinski

A very interesting blend between the styles and strengths of Corey Yuen and Luc Besson. This movie combines more different types of action than you would expect. A Bond movie will have the great chase scenes, a John Woo film will have great gun work, and a Jackie Chan film will have great fight choreography and physical action. This movie does it all very well. You'd expect the great fighting from Corey Yuen, and you'd expect the stylistic action from Luc Besson, but it really comes together well, an excellent bridge between Hong Kong and Hollywood, emerging from Europe. Thoroughly enjoyable, although the ending seems somewhat flat. Some of the action work was astounding, all of it was good. If you are an action afficionado, see it big screen. I hope the DVD will have plenty of extras to show how the action scenes were done.

-Rick

I watched this on the premier night with some hope, the previews looked excellent. It's too bad the "movie" didn't live up to it. After it was over, I was disappointed with the overall effort. Billy Zane gave a decent performance, but the plot was too big, and some of the exposition was too trite to save the movie. The dialogue itself wasn't bad when it avoided explaining the plot, it was usually lively and modern with some "I know how this sounds, stick with me" flavor. Perfect for the places imbetween the explanations of the plot. Unfortunately, the plot was *so* drippy, existential, and convoluted, there wasn't a lot of time for entertaining dialogue because most of the dialogue (usually Billy Zane monologue) was devoted to trying to make sure people understood the plot. The plot needed a workover to make it more approachable by the typical viewer. The action itself was fine, except it always seemed one step short of being right. It seemed like the action was either being used to explain the plot, or it was just not quite enough to stand on it's own. The majority of the fight scenes were short (or the shots were short) and lacked detail. There were so many cuts and obvious stunt double replacements that it made it hard to suspend disbelief. Which is too bad because I know at least Byron Mann has martial arts experience, you would figure the other actors could have been of similar material, it's not like they were pulling a lot of big names for the "secondary" roles. I don't know, maybe it was too ambitious for a TV movie, it seems like they just needed more time to get the fight scenes right. The problem with the plot reminded me of the fatal flaw of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and the fight scenes reminded me of badly done Matrix, like a superficial Hollywood attempt of the Hong Kong style, most of the look with none of the feel.

This movie is quite simply....awful. There is almost nothing redeeming in it whatsoever. While some people claim it falls in the "so bad, it's good" category, I disagree. For that to happen, I believe a movie must contain a certain amount of "cheesiness". Parts where you laugh out loud because it was so obviously bad that you know the director has striven for that type of bad shot. However, when a movie is total cheese from beginning to end, it's not "so bad, it's good", it then becomes "so bad....period.". Maybe, just maybe, it is a good drunken movie experience, but for me, it wasn't even a good action vehicle for Jackie Chan. As a spoof, it might have been funny, but my cultural reference is so different I missed any humor aspects of it. This movie was chaos exemplified, and had no redeeming qualities. Don't bother asking about characters, plots, settings, direction, or cinematography. Even the action scenes are dull and relatively boring. Except for the fact that I might be missing the point of this film completely due to cultural differences, I believe I can safely say this is the worst movie I've ever seen.