Brief Story Line
A group of thieves led by the Shadow (Tony Leung Ka-Fai - The Legend of Condor Heroes: The Gallants, Double Vision etc) with his god-sons including the briliant hacker Simon (Ci Sha - Creation of the Gods I & II, The Legend of Heroes TV series etc), Hu Feng (singer Jun) and few others had done a highly sophisticated heist in Macau. To capture them, the Judiciary police decided to ask retired inspector Wong (Jackie Chan - Panda Plan, Karate Kid: Legends etc) to help track them.
With his amazing eye for details, Wong managed to spot the Shadow and proposed to form a group of investigators to locate him. One of them was a smart officer He Qiu Guo (Zhang Zi Feng - The Heart of Genius TV series, Detective Chinatown etc) who was always looked down by her other colleagues.
So what would happen to Inspector Wong and his team and their dangerous mission? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Wow I think this was the most entertaining Jackie Chan's movie in the past several years. After his recent works where his films were focusing too much on comedy and not enough well executed fights (except for that controversial The Legend which over utilized the use of AI), this has got to be his best. The fights were very swift, violent and even brutal supported by others in the cast who were awesome as well, especially the thieves team members. And the biggest surprise for me and my wife was how amazing Tony Leung cause I think we never saw him performed like he did in here.
The movie started off with some extraordinary stunts heist that were quite jaw dropping with so many surprises on how the thieves were able to pull it off. Subsequently the story focused on how Inspector Wong showed his capabilities and forming the team. Usually this would be the time where we would be a bit bored as the pace slowed down. However it did not feel that way cause it was quite light and the characters were likable. And it did not take too long either to reach to a more intense moments where my wife even felt her heart stomping hard during the identification of the Shadow.
Pretty soon, the movie became more exciting with more high octane action where everyone seemed to be doing their best to make them entertaining, till the wonderful finale. There was even a bit of subtle dramatic moment. The ending was satisfying for us and somehow did not feel overly long despite its duration of 2 hours 22 minutes. During the closing credits we were shown a bit of bloopers and behind the scene that we have been missing from Jackie Chan's recent movies. Oh and there was a rather surprising post end credit scene which I am not sure whether it was to tease further sequel or just to serve as additional foot note. If there is indeed another sequel, both of us would definitely see it.
This movie was written and directed by Larry Yang who had worked together with Jackie Chan in Ride On and also directed other movies like Another Shot, Sorry I Love You etc. I think his work here was just extraordinary cause the plot did not feel complicated even though there was the rather sophisticated part relating to cryptocurrency and AI, the story telling was nicely done and most amazing was definitely the action part. If anything, the only part that probably a bit lacking was the limited time for support characters to develop which was still understandable. But since the main focus was on the 4 lead characters above (five if you count Ci Sha who we did not realize played another role), it was not such a big deal. Other than those mentioned, the quite important persons were the head of division Madam Wang (Lang Yue Ting - The Untold Story, Year After Year TV series etc), Captain Wu (Wang Zi Yi - Love Death and Cat etc), Qiu Guo's closest colleague Jin Xiao (Zhou Zheng Jie - A Long Shot etc) and few others.
Overall this was a really enjoyable action movie for me and my wife. It really reminded us of how good & dedicated Jackie Chan in performing stunts (he even got hurt filming this as could be seen during those credit scenes). The action looked realistic and the use of CGI was very minimum but still providing us maximum entertainment value. During its first week of release, it made into number 3 in Box Office performanc in China. It's unclear though if it would be a huge success to warrant for the sequel. Regardless of its future, this is worth seeing in the cinema especially if you long for Jackie Chan showing his wonderful moves. Highly recommended!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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