Rating: B-
Dir: Jeffrey Lau
Star: Chow Yun-Fat, Chien-Lien Wu, Chia-Hui Liu, Chin Han
[22] Chow Yun-Fat playing a CIA agent sent into China scarcely seems like a stretch, but this is less wall-to-wall action than poignant romance. Chow ends up stuck in a Shaolin temple, where he meets and falls in love with Wu Chien Lien, a girl possessing psychic powers – and introduces the monks to the delights of baseball and Nintendo! It’s all rather sweet, with one particularly beautiful moonlit flight through the snow, and not much violence or blood until the bad guys kidnap his girl when…well, I’m sure you can guess what happens. While the gunplay seems somewhat perfunctory and half-hearted, the other elements work nicely, right up to an ending straight out of The Railway Children. Heroic tearshed, shall we say.