Jet Lee at his best. A very good martial arts action movie. For fans of the genre and the man.

This is definitely my all time favorite Jet Li movie. I sure wish they could make more movies like this now these days.

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.

>"There is a time for diplomacy and a time for action. Diplomacy is dead." The fight scenes are fun and there is a scene where he fights while the song "Lapdance" by N.E.R.D. is playing in the background, which is a bonus. Reminds me of Romeo Must Die but not as good.

This film feels like it could almost be a prequel to Taken as the story is very similar, but this film is really good and both Jet Li (Liu Jian) & Bridget Fonda (Jessica Kamen) are really good in this film. The action is super great as well, with the same team as a lot of Jet Li's films, but I feel like this is his best outing in a Hollywood film in regards to action. Definitely a really fun action film and I promise you will be truly invested in this film and characters (a bit predictable), perfect late-night action film and be ready for some badassery.