Chi yue fung bou

This movie gives Daniel Wu his chance to do a great action movie, but I really find Emil Chow's character really great, gutsy but determined to righting wrongs. Plus the main terrorist, it gets me wondering his revolution, makes me wonder if he is doing this for good or bad.

A movie that tells us about Todd, an amnesiac terrorist being tricked as an undercover until he learns who he really is. The consequences that he makes from his terrorist family, gives him a the choice of redemption.

Purple Storm was one of the best ones that I have seen this year. The movie really stands out when it is filled with tremendous action scenes set-up by Stephen Tung Wai, which won the best action sequences in the Hong Kong Awards. (9/10)

PURPLE STORM has, at its core, a timely and interesting idea. An anarchist, Todd, is injured during a terrorist operation, loses his memory and is captured by the Anti-Terrorist Force. The ATF convince Todd he is actually an undercover agent working for them and hand him back to terrorist leader Soong. But having glimpsed the righteous point of view Todd now harbours doubts about his leader's cause, setting up the protagonists for a climactic showdown.

The problem lies in how inadequately this fascinating idea has been developed. Scenes that could have been so much better - Todd's "reunion" with his (fake) police officer girlfriend and Todd's reunion with his real terrorist girlfriend - are just not explored in the same way that a Hollywood production would have done.

The handicap here is the lazy script by HK schlockmeister Wong Jing. He's a great idea man but just about always fails to put a decent amount of work into the script. And as he's usually the producer too, the poor director and stars have no chance.

The resulting film is very choppy and disjointed. It plays like there are scenes missing from the final cut that would have explained what's going on. Why is that guy trying to decode files on a disc Todd was carrying when he was captured? The ATF already know what's going on. Why are the terrorists hiring a ship, when they simply hijacked one at the beginning of the film? Why does Soong blow up the office building during the hand-over of Todd?

Sloppy film-making with a few good action scenes.

This film is a must for people who like action. The story is very American, especially for Hong Kong type audiences. Eastern audiences like a lot of straight up action in their action films, what they got here was both intelligent and kinetic.

What I thought was cool is that Joan Chen came back in a Hong Kong Chinese speaking role. I don't think I have seen her there for a while.

Here we've got an intelligent mixture of typical hongkongmovieshootouts, worlddestructionthemes and intelligent filmmaking. Not that the script has not its big holes and a few specialeffects are a bit cheaplooking. But the cinematography is a optical treat and the soundtrack is first rate. The blend of fast actionsequences and colorful slow, sometimes nearly poetic parts, has no comparison in its kind of movie, so a classification is rather hard. The closest genre is a disaster or terroristmovie with deeper human and political notes than usual. Well worth to be seen worldwide in cinemas. But i am hoping this for so many other (mostly asian) movies before and nobody seems to believe me. Unfortunately.

I started watching this expecting the worst, i was happy to find that the film turned out to be enjoyable, slightly confusing in parts, like when they all justs started singing. It gave me a chance to see Daniel Wu in action for the first time, he is a better actor than i thought, at times he seemed a bit out of place. I thought purple storm deserves its Hong kong legends release, as it is different to most other HK films, it is about a mans emotional struggles when confronted with memory loss, it may sound corny but when he eventually pieces out what and who he actually is it really makes the film a lot more interesting. Once you get into the film you will find it keeps you gripped to it, as if you miss one bit then a lot of the film wil make sense, for example i missed a bit at the start and i recommend to anyone that watches this that they do not miss any of it. So i can say that this film was worth watching and a grateful surprise for me, that i enjoyed it.