a5c7b9f00b With the aid from a New York City policeman, a top immigrant cop tries to stop drug-trafficking and corruption by immigrant Chinese Triads, but things get complicated when the Triads try to bribe the policeman. Nick Chen is one of New York City&#39;s most martial police officers and the first Chinese-born immigrant on the force. Chen&#39;s job is to keep the peace in Chinatown from a turf war that has broken out between the Triads and the ruthless, and dangerous Fukienese Dragons. Chen teams up with Danny Wallace, who is terribly unaware of this situation. When the Tongs boldly attempt to bribe Wallace, Chen is forced to keep his faithfulness. This was a decent action movie, though the gunfights did tend to strain credulity more than usual. Although Mark Walberg and Chow Yun-Fat were both competent, I was never really drawn to the human drama. I think the main problem is that we&#39;ve seen it all before. There was no real originality to the story. I&#39;ve read through quite a few of the reviews and have noticed quite a diversity of opinions. First off I wasn&#39;t very impressed with the way Asian people are portrayed here. If you can&#39;t tell by my name, I am Asian but that is not a justification for my comments. Almost every aspect of the Asian culture that was portrayed was a negative one. Some true, some not but in most cases, the needless violent and senseless depictions are not always necessary. That&#39;s my spiel on the ethnic perspective.<br/><br/>Now, the movie. I thought Walberg stole the picture. His performance was one of his best and will only get better with experience and age. I&#39;ve been watching Chow Yun Fat do movies for almost 15 years now and I have seldom seen a poor performance and he does an admirable job in this film, with what he&#39;s given. His English has improved dramatically but I think the biggest problem with this movie is the direction. Even being Asian, I had a hard time following some of the dialogue. It was either spoken too fast or just poorly worded. Secondly, some of the scenes were shot with hand or mobile cameras resulting in scenes that were very &#39;bumpy&#39;. I almost got car sick watching some of these scenes.<br/><br/>The movie slowed down in quite a few spots and towards the end I couldn&#39;t wait for the movie to end. The story is basically about two cops who grow to trust each other in a world of lies and deceit. What is white is not always white and by the end of the movie, everything becomes clear but the ride is not an easy nor enjoyable one.<br/><br/>Both Walberg and Fat could do much better with scripts that allow them to show a bigger range in acting and character development. Neither are acting rookies (especially Fat) they just need better scripts. Look for bigger and better things for them to come.<br/><br/>Overall… 5/10 (passing grade mainly because of Walberg and Fat&#39;s acting) There's tenderness, humor, a gratuitous body double, and splashy lighting in this ho-hum action drama, which takes itself at times too seriously and at other times not seriously enough.
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364 weeks ago