The first twist (the premise of the film) is that the lead investigator Richard is a corrupt cop/crime lord and every other cop in the team (aside from foreign-exchange cop Liu Jian) is not only equally corrupt but also super-loyal to Richard as he starts killing his own henchmen cops out of rage. In order to hunt down Liu Jian, the corrupt cops shoot machine guns and kill people in broad daylight in front of the hotel's kitchen staff and laundry workers, creating so many witnesses that it defies belief. This because Richard decided to frame Liu Jian for the murder of a criminal (it's not clear why Richard needs a fall guy anyway) and Jian had the nerve to run away instead of letting himself get shot. So Richard first deliberately creates a witness then instead of letting said witness escape he creates several dozen witnesses who are presumably silenced off-screen and also presumably needs to explain to his superiors how the hotel ended up riddled with bullet-holes while two of his henchmen blew up in the laundry chute.
The action scenes and the performances are competent, so technically it's fine. It would almost be worth a watch as mindless entertainment, but it keeps reminding you how poorly it's written, and the sidekick Jessica is among the more useless and annoying of action movie sidekicks.
Review by Robert EivaBlockedParent2018-12-09T01:17:13Z
The first twist (the premise of the film) is that the lead investigator Richard is a corrupt cop/crime lord and every other cop in the team (aside from foreign-exchange cop Liu Jian) is not only equally corrupt but also super-loyal to Richard as he starts killing his own henchmen cops out of rage. In order to hunt down Liu Jian, the corrupt cops shoot machine guns and kill people in broad daylight in front of the hotel's kitchen staff and laundry workers, creating so many witnesses that it defies belief. This because Richard decided to frame Liu Jian for the murder of a criminal (it's not clear why Richard needs a fall guy anyway) and Jian had the nerve to run away instead of letting himself get shot. So Richard first deliberately creates a witness then instead of letting said witness escape he creates several dozen witnesses who are presumably silenced off-screen and also presumably needs to explain to his superiors how the hotel ended up riddled with bullet-holes while two of his henchmen blew up in the laundry chute.
The action scenes and the performances are competent, so technically it's fine. It would almost be worth a watch as mindless entertainment, but it keeps reminding you how poorly it's written, and the sidekick Jessica is among the more useless and annoying of action movie sidekicks.