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7/10
Louis Koo- WOW
gorthu26 April 2009
Warning: Spoilers
This is another review where I am not going to go into the plot. It is way too complicated. I'd probably mess it up somewhere, so I'll just go over everything else. And don't worry, the plot isn't hard to follow, it would just take too long (for me) to describe. Alex Fong plays a bigtime gangster, and after some crazy events, Louis Koo joins his gang. Louis Koo is really the only thing I want to talk about. Seeing him in a role like this is something special. The guy is a total badazz. I don't see how he isn't a star in American movies yet. Seeing him in movies like Flash Point, Bullets Over Summer, and now this, it just seems like he has unlimited potential. And I still have a lot of his movies to see, like Throwdown and Election. I have a feeling that I haven't even seen the best of him.

Alex Fong does a good acting job, about as good as he is capable of, and Simon Loui, Frankie Ng and Sam Lee give great performances.

The action is OK. Loius Koo does good, but it's too obvious that he doesn't have the real life skill level of the killing machine that he's made out to be. But dang those big knives are sweet. No complaints there. There is one fight I liked a lot, MIGHT BE A SMALL SPOILER HERE- Loius Koo vs Simon Loui. It's not choreographed very well, but I can't explain it, it's just a great fight with a great ending to the fight. I don't know if Koo won an award for his performance, but he should have. There are few that can show the pain that he shows.

So don't go into this movie thinking it will be great, and you will have to take a chance on it, but you may just like it.

The ending of this movie is really amazing. I love when Alex Fong tells Koo that he didn't have to cause all this bloodshed, he would have just fought Koo, man to man. And then the very end of the movie is incredible. I shouldn't even be saying this. Because if you are expecting something really incredible like a big action scene, you will be very disappointed. So I guess the best way to describe it is to say that I absolutely loved the end of the movie. You just gotta love gangster movies! One more thing, this movie has an AWESOME soundtrack.
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7/10
A decent Triad movie
Leofwine_draca16 February 2021
Warning: Spoilers
A little-known but enjoyable Triad movie from Hong Kong, and one that helped put Louis Koo's name on the map. It's one of those familiar rags-to-riches tales in which a group of young friends become involved with the local Triad big wigs, which spells disaster for them all. There's a nice focus on character work and some good, typically earnest performances from the pretty young thing cast members; Alex Fong in particular has real gravitas as Shing, but it's Koo who impresses the most. There's not a huge amount of action but there are some really hard-hitting moments here and some memorable set-pieces, including the 'fire walk' trial.
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