ScreenWize

There’s action, blood and frantic fighting, with cars and bikes attracted to plate glass like mad moths to the candle. Yet there’s nothing here to hold it all together – certainly no coherent story or style, nor enough charisma from Jason Statham who once again struggles with a leading role. Only Jet Li can walk away from the littered wreck of this film with anything to talk about – the rest is a pastiche of East-West action, with under cover cops, Chinese triads, Japanese yakuza and sexy girls all battling it out in a ridiculous excess of chic.

Statham plays John Crawford, an FBI agent who’s looking for the illusive Rogue (Jet Li), uber-assassin from the Orient. It’s not just an official affair: Crawford is driven by revenge after the mysterious hit man kills his cop buddy. Together with a team of well-armed colleagues, Crawford traces Rogue to the middle of a feud between Shiro, a wealthy Japanese yakuza boss, and Mr. Chang - his mortal enemy from the Chinese triads. Jet Li plays Rogue as a well-dressed, super cool, elegantly mannered killer who slips in and out of the carnage without a sound, leaving only sliced up bodies and a few lines of pseudo-Taoist philosophy. Sadly he rarely gets the chance to show us his martial arts skills. Statham is a yang-like opposite, bellowing and blundering across crime scenes, chewing a toothpick and cursing in frustration as he seeks out the man he is looking for.

Director Philip Atwell shows - in his first feature film - that he can manage the set pieces adequately (car chases, shoot-outs, sword fights and a the occasional martial arts sequence), but leaves the story as much of a mystery as Rogue himself. The dialogue is straight from the dummies guide to underworld-action-thrillers (just add blood and mix) and the editing favours the fast-forward to freeze-frame shot that has now been so over used that it’s beginning to look corny. But the biggest problem is the casting of Statham – who made a name for himself as the wonderfully nasty sidekick in Guy Ritchie’s films Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. His one dimensional cockney bully-boy seems out of place and out of depth in this world of stylish American-Asian action.

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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon