Wong Ching Po takes a bland To Chi-long script and tries to spice things up by using all the tired conventions of the triad genre, resulting in “Jiang Hu,” an overproduced movie that is plodding and dull. While Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung put in solid performances, they can’t overcome the banal writing, which injects twists and turns that create more confusion than entertainment.

Many filmmakers, following in the influence of “Infernal Affairs,” will attempt to create a world of intricate layers and nuances. “Jiang Hu” is only able to attain superficial success on the visual level. Shawn Yue and Edison Chen, as triad wannabes, portray a rendition of Lau and Cheung as youths, but you’d never be able to make the connection. Yue and Chen’s range is fairly narrow in this film and not in keeping with the main pairing of Lau and Cheung. Shawn is stiff while Edison’s over-emoting is, for the most part, much too silly.

It’s always a pleasure to see Wu Chien-Lien and Kara Hui, even in bit parts, but they are only momentary distractions. “Jiang Hu” is one of those projects of style over substance, where the producers hid the thin script with elaborate mise en scene, like the moving table, where Andy and Jacky are seated and having a heated debate (a scene that proved to be pretentious and sillier than Chen's performance). The supposed twist at the end was too little too late. "Jiang Hu" is an ambitious attempt to add to the triad annals, but an ultimate failure for being too mundane.