China Strike Force (2000)
Reviewed by: pjshimmer on 2001-09-09
Simply put, China Strike Force is just not very good. The action and stunts are respectable. Although I haven't seen Jackie Chan's Super Cop in years, I found references to stunts performed in that movie. Stanley Tong is a good director, and his planned stunts are always more or less inspiring, but that's just about the only good thing in this film.

Let's star with the acting. The only movie where Aaron Kwok doesn't fail miserably trying to prove he can act is Storm Riders. That's perhaps because he did not really have to act so much. The personalities of the character and Kwok were perfectly matched: stiff, serious, and cool. But his acting in this movie is about as bad as it gets. The unthinkable would be Leon Lai gave a better performance in any movie. And Kwok certainly isn't the only one who sucked here. In fact, the whole cast was mediocre. Ruby Lin and Noriko weren't bad, which was strongly supported by their beautiful physical apparences. I can't really enjoy a movie that seems so fake with acting so unconvincing, and I'm sure I ain't the only one.

Next, the plot, not like it had one. I'm tired of using the same old line that I could make a better story, so let's just leave it at this: anyone could have made a better story. There is absolutely nothing new or interesting in this film.

The music. Did they really think using American RAP would be more effective than even folk/revolutionary music? Come on, you've gotta have some ORIGINALITY! I guess it is slightly better than completely duplicating from another film, but hearing half of Koolio's album in a HK music just does not work.

The dialogues. Did somebody say MANDARIN? The version I saw had 3 civilains shouting "HEY" in Shanghai, and those were the only 3 seconds of Mandarin spoken in the entire film. Half of the dialogues is spoken in Cantonese and the other in English, which is ok, though of course it would have been better in Mandarin.

No originality... that's a big problem with HK movies these days.

[4/10]