tin (chow yun-fat) and alan (alan tang) grew up on the streets, stealing food to survive. turning to a life of crime, the two brothers become successful, but soon find themselves in trouble with kao (patrick tse) - a local boss with a bad attitude - after they refuse to sell his drugs in their clubs, bars and brothels. in order to appease kao, alan heads to thailand to strike a deal with a munitions supplier, whilst tin stays in macau and finds himself bumping into, and falling in love with, ka-hsi (pat ha): a girl who used to feed tin and alan when they lived on the streets. when alan returns from thailand he has big plans, whilst tin wants to go straight. regardless, kao looks like he's going to be causing trouble...

basically, this is entertaining junk. alan tang, who other reviewers seem to have praised, is dreadful. really dreadful. chow yun fat, on the other hand, does a reasonable job. the story itself is pretty straight-forward and the film's only stand out feature is the amount of blood and a couple of bits of nastiness. yep, it would seem that the majority of the film's budget was spent on squibs and fake blood, whilst instead of choreographing complex set pieces, they just decided to fire as many shots as possible every time a gun is drawn. not a great decision, but it gets away with it.

entertaining, if not particularly good...