Reviewed by: j.crawford Date: 02/19/2006 Summary: By the numbers..... Patrick Tam Yiu-Man and Michael Wong Man Tak in the third sequel to the worldwide box office hit The Final Option. This time around Gordon Chan Ka-Seung handles the producing chores while Clarence Ford is credited as the director of this film presented by Wong Jing. The film is technically superb. The basic cops and robbers’ story follows by the numbers the formula that worked so well in the earlier films. In fact, the film is so by the numbers that I suspect "director" Clarence Ford spent little time on the set. [The print of the film I saw did not have a credit for Ford.] You'll have to look hard for them but there are some very "Fordian" touches that the acclaimed auteur managed to work into the film. Patrick Tam Yiu-Man gives, as usual, a chilling performance as the bad guy who is really despicable. The screenplay gives him plenty of chances to be a nasty son of a bitch. Michael Wong Man Tak gives his usual wooden performance which works beautifully here as the calculating SDU commander named Stone. happyfortune.org Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: Sydneyguy Date: 12/19/2005 Summary: What you would expect A hollywood type feel to this action movie, where the story seems to get in the way of the action. The action itself was well set out and planned, i was quite impressed with this. I found the Shawn Yu side story almost like a time filler.It did not interest me!! Micheal Wong is wooden once more, just glad he speaks mainly english PAtrick Tam was passabled as a villian, its only his young look that makes its a little unbeleiveable. Another movie in the "options" series, all of them have been good but not great 6.5/10 Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: magic-8 Date: 02/13/2003 Summary: Effective Option Outing Michael Wong returns to the police assault team or Special Duty Unit (SDU) in Clarence Ford's "The New Option." Ford is given the task of trying to recapture the allure of the SDU-genre films that were successful in the past ("The Final Option," "The First Option," and "Option Zero"). Instead of the all-out firefights of previous pictures, Ford is subtler in his approach, leaving the staging of gun battles to the film's climax. I was pleasantly surprised that the film was as entertaining as it was even without the wall-to-all action. Wong, playing the character named Stone, takes a new bunch of recruits out for training. The most promising recruit is Jesus (Shawn Yu Man-Lok) who is drummed out of SDU by Wong. Yu goes back to his criminal investigation of a gang led by Patrick Tam. It is during this point in the film that Rico Chung's script comes to life, as Yu tracks Tam's gang's movements. Chung interjects some effective psychosis in Yu's mind after he gets rejected from the SDU team. Is he going mad from getting rejected by SDU or just being overworked? Yu is very compelling as he tries to come to terms with his behavior and is trying to figure out whether he's going insane or not. Shawn Yu does a very convincing job as the burnt out cop trying to redeem himself after losing a spot on the SDU team. Ford is able to get credible performances out of most of the cast, including Wong, who at times looks a bit bored by it all. And, as aforementioned, Chung's script really shines after the initial SDU training scenes, but it would have been nice to see more action, since this is, after all, an SDU movie.