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The story begins with the introduction of Darren Tong (Kwok) and
Alex Cheung (Wong), two Chinese security officers in a training
scenario. Afterwards, we get the introductions of the other cast
members, Coolio (Coolio) is a gangster in China doing business with
Tony (Dacascos), a Chinese triad member under the powerful Mr Ma.
Norika (Fujiwara) is a Japanese negotiator who is also doing business
with Mr Ma. They all attend a fashion show of which the clothes
are designed by Ruby (Lin), the daughter of the Sheriff of Lung
Chen (Paul Chun). When a person is killed in the show, Darren goes
after the killer in a tense and exciting street chase through Shanghai's
highways. Meanwhile, Norika takes something out of the dead person's
body and leaves the scene, but Alex sees her and follows her to
a hotel. She resists arrest and escapes later.
Darren
and Alex goes to Lung Chen with Sheriff Lin to help with the investigation,
and soon they find out that Mr Ma is exporting a large amount of
used cars. They find a hundred kilos of drugs hidden inside the
cars, but still haven't got enough evidence to nail Ma. Meanwhile,
Ma is furious with Tony for dabbling with drugs, but Tony kills
Ma instead and frames Norika for it. She
is arrested but she later admits that she is actually Japanese Interpol,
and is on the trail of Coolio, who killed her partner three years
ago.
Darren
and Alex suspects the Sheriff may not be as clean as he makes out
to be, and it is later revealed to be true. He was being paid by
Ma to keep his mouth shut. The Sheriff only did this in order to
send his daughter to education overseas. In the end, Darren, Alex
and Norika team up together to destroy Coolio and Tony in an explosive
finale.
I'm
afraid China Strike Force is not what it is made out to be. There
are simply too many problems with it to take seriously. This is
not to say that CSF is seriously bad, in fact, it is quite good
in places, but the whole package is not worth the sum of its parts.
The main problems lies in both the storyline and the action sequences.
The story is nothing special: it is just the usual tried and tested
formula of cops and triad gangs, and I had thought that Stanley
Tony had recruited some decent scriptwriters for this film. There
is nothing here we haven't seen a hundred times before, but the
point is to see how they pull it off. How to make a dud storyline
interesting. But it isn't interesting at all. The characters are
too two-dimensional to really care about them, despite what Tong
had us believe that he had put some very special emotional scenes
in the film. The only one was at the end of the film, but it wasn't
very emotional in any sense. Far from it.
I
thought Coolio was having a grand time, but his performance often
sucked. Mark Dacascos didn't bring anything new to his character,
and even his fight scenes weren't nothing to shout home about. Ruby
Lin played the usual love-interest and was overwhelmingly underused
(she was only in four scenes). Paul Chun was all right as the corrupted
Sheriff, but his attempts at redemption didn't swing. Wong Lee-hom's
performance was marginally better - he had some decent action sequences,
but his presence was lost to Aaron Kwok's. This isn't Kwok's finest
film, but could be his most daring. After all, he did do most of
the stunts himself. His fighting scenes looked good, with Kwok being
in great shape and looks like a good fighter. He may not be a proper
martial artist like Jet Li or Jackie Chan, but he can certainly
fight. With proper direction, Kwok can make it in Hollywood, but
his English needs improving first. Fujiwara probably had a fun time
making this film, in probably her first action-film, and she does
look great (very sexy indeed) in her revealing clothing, but I felt
she was there just to be pretty. Although she had a couple of fight
scenes, it was all too obvious that her presence in the film was
related to beauty and sex appeal.
As
I said, the characterisation is poor, with the acting even more
wooden. If you don't care about the acting and want to know about
the action, then, the action is well on par with Tong's previous
efforts. Definitely well choreographed and staged, but I felt there
was a tad too much of the use of wires for some of the stunts. Some
of which were way over the top for my taste, and very non-realistic.
You can tell the actors were on wires because it was so damn obvious,
which kinda spoilt it for me. Some members of the audience even
sniggered at the action scenes because of the unrealism, which is
a shame, because the action is very good, and you can see that it
is them who are doing the action - not stunt doubles.
The
highlight of the film was the ending, when Darren, Norika and Coolio
were fighting it out on a large piece of glass suspended 40 feet
above ground. It did look dangerous for all concerned, but the magic
bubble was burst when finally we see a worker who is controlling
the crane, moving the glass panel to a safe position. Why he couldn't
do this earlier when three people were fighting it out on top of
it is a mystery. It is these kind of plotholes that weaken the appeal
of CSF. Without the action sequences, CSF would be too bland for
the international market. The story wouldn't hold up on its own,
and the only marketable asset of CSF would be in its grand action
sequences.
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