Dante Lam is completely out of his depth here. His gifts as a filmmaker lie in pitting strong individual personalities against each other so that his action scenes have a melodramatic heft to them because they are character-driven. This is why when you take properly developed dramatic conflict away from him, Lam's style becomes a liability. Handheld shots that normally achieve a sense of intimate proximity come off sloppy during the action scenes. The off-kilter editing that used to convey messiness becomes merely messy. It also doesn't help that because this is basically a Chinese propaganda film, Lam is forced to crowbar shots of Chinese military pageantry into the film. What a mess.

Dante Lam is completely out of his depth here. His gifts as a filmmaker lie in pitting strong individual personalities against each other so that his action scenes have a melodramatic heft to them because they are character-driven. This is why when you take properly developed dramatic conflict away from him, Lam's style becomes a liability. Handheld shots that normally achieve a sense of intimate proximity come off sloppy during the action scenes. The off-kilter editing that used to convey messiness becomes merely messy. It also doesn't help that because this is basically a Chinese propaganda film, Lam is forced to crowbar shots of Chinese military pageantry into the film. What a mess.