To say that the whole "undercover cop" genre that this movie falls into is one of Hong Kong's most prolific is a bit of an understatement. Even though Undercover's star, Shawn Yu, has only been acting in movies for the past few years, he's already appeared in several such pictures, such as Colour of the Truth, Wo Hu, and, most notably, the Infernal Affairs trilogy. Unfortunately, unlike those films, Undercover doesn't really break any new ground and comes off as just yet another Hong Kong crime movie.

That's not to say that it certainly doesn't try to differentiate itself from the pack. Visually, Undercover is quite a striking movie, and stands apart from a lot of Hong Kong's recent output. It's quite clear that the film-makers were going for a particular look, and they accomplished that. It's too bad, though, that that look seems to be totally ripped off from the TV show CSI. After a while, all the camera trickery just came off as gimmicky and bothersome.

Perhaps the film-makers knew they had to try and add a special wrapping to this present, since what's inside the box is really quite pedestrian. Yu plays a cop named Feng who has managed to survive his time as an undercover. Of course, now his Triad friends hate him, and his new co-workers don't trust him. His only friend is a drug dealer, Fai (Sam Lee), but after they end up killing a cop after a drug binge, Feng finds himself all alone on the cold streets of Hong Kong with both the police and gangsters after him.

The script does a fine enough job in moving things along, the actors pull their weight in making some characterization out of stock characters, and there is even some nice ultra-violence to liven up the proceedings along the way. But at the end of the day, this is all stuff we've seen dozens of times before, and no matter how pretty it looks, sometimes a Triad movie is just a Triad movie.

[review from www.hkfilm.net]