Period action drama starring Donnie Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro. When a village shopkeeper is attacked, bystander Liu comes the rescue and kills the two criminals - one of whom turns out to be a hardened fugitive. But a local detective suspects the hero of the moment might be more than he seems.
This is an ambitious attempt by director Peter Ho-Sun Chan and screenwriters Aubrey Lam and Joyce Chan to cross the martial arts genre with film noir. The tension crackles between papermill worker Donnie Yen and detective Takeshi Kaneshiro after the latter comes to suspect that Yen's dispatch of two thugs robbing the local store was anything but the fluke he claims. However, when nemesis Jimmy Wang Yu arrives seeking vengeance, it soon transpires that Yen was once a member of the lethal 72 Demons gang, who has been lying low since marrying and starting a family. The big showdown with Wang Yu recalls golden age wuxia classics like Chang Cheh's One-Armed Swordsman (1967), with Jake Pollock and Lai Yiu-fai's cinematography being as impeccable as Yee Chung Man's production design. But, while Yen's fight choreography is suitably explosive, the byplay between his humble family man and Kaneshiro's forensic sleuth is much more compelling.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Liu Jin-xi / Tang Long | Donnie Yen |
| Xu Bai-jiu | Takeshi Kaneshiro |
| Ayu | Tang Wei |
| The Master | Wang Yu (1) |
| The Master's wife | Kara Hui |
| Xu Kun | Zhusheng Yin |
| Xu's investigator | Wu Jiang |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Peter Ho-Sun Chan |
