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For a Hong Kong action movie, then "Double Tap" was a bit on the more lame side, unfortunately.

The story is about Ricky (played by Leslie Cheung), a gunsmith and an ace marksman, who is forced to kill a man at a shooting competition, as the man is threatening Ricky's girlfriend with a gun. The ordeal leaves a lasting impression on Ricky and makes his develop a taste for blood. Three years later, people are found dead, shot through the head with the special 'double tap' technique that only a few men in Hong Kong are capable of doing. Detective Miu (played by Alex Fong) is the high-ranking detective on the case to solve these murders. And it soon becomes a chase of cat and mouse, as time is running out and more dead police officers are showing up.

Like many other Hong Kong action movies, this movie had a great amount of action that was accompanied by a good story. However, there was just something missing from this movie. It moved ahead at a slow pace, and it was fairly anti-climatic all in all. The movie never really peaked, but just kept pacing onward at a dull pace.

Oddly enough, not even Leslie Cheung was able to keep this movie afloat, and it came off as just slightly over average compared to other Hong Kong movies of the same genre. The acting performances in the movie were good, but without that key ingredient that was missing from the movie, good acting performances are only worth so much.

There are other, and far better, Hong Kong action movies available, and "Double Tap" is worth watching mostly if you are a fan of Leslie Cheung, or like myself, just have to watch all Hong Kong movies that you come across.

The DVD cover said that t his movie was in, and I quote, "Matrix style". Yeah, that was somewhat of an over-exaggeration. There was surprisingly little in "Double Tap" that could be even remotely compared to "The Matrix". So don't get suckered in by that false advertising.

(2000) Double Tap (In Chinese with English subtitles) ACTION/ DRAMA

Co-written and directed by Chi-Leung Law which by looking at the title, "Double Tap" it is really part of a gun range game where Hong Kong police play at with a score card, where it involves several different targets wooden targets of criminals and pedestrians and be able to shoot two bullets exactly at the same hole. Interesting beginning about the double tap shooting game resorting to an unnecessary build up to a predictable conclusion. Leslie Chung as Rick slow descend into madness after a convenient interruption of a shooting game for the Hong Kong law enforcement by a suicidal by cop.

Double Tap (Gun King) is plainly not just an action movie, this movie is also filled with suspenseful drama.

Leslie Cheung plays Rick, an expert marksman who shoots a threatening bystander during a match against his CID competitor, played by Alex Fong, who could not attempt to stop the bystander. After that killing accident, Rick does not feel scared or nervous, but HAPPY?! A few years later, the police suspects Rick of killing a witness and 4 cops in a trial court case. The trail turns into a cat-and-mouse game until the final stand-off.

This movie is deeply emotional, for Rick's first kill brings a feeling of an addiction as he becomes a threat to the police. It showed how pitted rivals faced against each other, a cop afraid of shooting to kill pit off against someone who won't stop at nothing to kill. It makes you think whether killing makes you afraid of being addicted? Worth considered to check out.

Rick is a professional marksman, excelling at moving through the competitive target ranges hitting targets twice in very quick succession with extreme accuracy. His main rival is a police officer (Miu Chi-shun) who goads him back into competition. However, a tragedy at the competition sees Rick disappear for several years with blood on his hands. It is only after several years that he comes to mind as Chi-shun is put in charge of an investigation into a federal witness and his four police guards killed in a fast and ruthless manner – most with double hits to the head rather than the easier target of the core body. Rick is called in along with the handful of others known to be capable of such a feat.

The idea behind Double Tap is a good one and it is one that will be familiar to those that watch many Hong Kong action movies. Essentially what the entire plot boils down to is one man versus another with lots of fast gun play and shootouts on the cards; those that have watched more than one John Woo film will recognise not only the dynamic but also the potential that it holds as a core idea in an action movie. At times it comes off in this film but mostly it doesn't. Indeed, at times it seems so desperate to just "have" the idea of these two marksmen going head to head that it forgets to really build a relationship between them, or fully develop the ideas that get us to the action.

It starts out in the range with fast movement and skills shown for the first 20 minutes or so, then heads into an unlikely and sudden event that sparks the rest of the film (well, sparks it – after several years!). The next action again doesn't ring true and it escalates far too fast and lacks sufficient tension and excitement. The shoot-outs are noisy and bloody but they lack the sense of ballet and exhilaration that better films managed to do. In this the action happens but it seems to do so regardless of what else is going on. Occasionally we will have suggested depth in the characters but it is fleeting.

None of this makes the film bad though, it only serves to limit it from what it could have been and instead of being a thrilling character-driven action movie with real tension and set-pieces, it only manages to come in as an OK film that aspires to be that. Leslie Cheung tries to make his character more and, in very brief moments, you can see he is tortured, but they are brief moments and mostly he is just ruthless. He communicates with his opposite number but neither he nor Alex Fong really spark off one another; they have scenes but the script doesn't reproduce that respectful rivalry or "opposite side of same coin" thing that similar better films have done. Fong is OK individually and both do well, but just the script doesn't give them as much as it could have done.