Melodramatic stuff

Nicholas Tse stars in this adaptation of Chinese comic book 'Oriental Heroes' which had potential to be a solid action adventure movie. Unfortunately the result is a decidedly mixed bag of martial arts, melodrama and triad clichés.

When it's good, it's great fun - there are some entertaining and well filmed fight sequences (just don't expect any realism) and a lot of it looks very good with vivid colour choices, eye popping art direction and comic style camera angles.

It's a shame then that the story falls apart, it's messy and often feels like the source material is necessary to catch up on what's going on in some places or that exposition has been skipped over - it's something about crime syndicates and a gold medallion, and how the different lives of two estranged brothers are brought back together by it. On top of this the melodrama is high and it drags on for quite a while in the middle of the story as the standard plot lines of love, hate, betrayal and destiny play out on cue.

At the end of te day if you want an face paced action packed movie or a gripping storyline, there are better movies in the library of kung fu cinema available - one for Donnie Yen fan's only.