Under-appreciated and unhappy Match (played by Stephen Fung from ‘The Haunted Office’, ‘Cheap Killers’ and ‘Women from Mars’) and Alien (played by Sam Lee from ‘Fist Power’, ‘Crazy N’ the City’ and ‘Bio-Cops’) regroup once again in the awful and disappointing ‘Gen-Y-Cops’. When the latest US robot RX-1 goes on a killing rampage, following hacking into the main system by the irate and suspended software engineer Kurt (played by newcomer Richard Sun), who self-obsessively blames the US Government for shutting him out from his creation. Kurt plans to hijack RX-1 and sell it on the black-market to the highest bidder. As part of his grand get-rich quick plan he enlists his unwitting friend and undercover policeman, Edison (played by Edison Chan from other roles in ‘Moving Targets’ and ‘Infernal Affairs’), who has recently been partnered up with Match and Alien via drugging and controlling his motives (so as to speak). Following the hijacking of RX-1, the FBI agents are chasing Edison as well as Match and Alien who become embroiled as prime culprits of a conspiracy to steal US government property. The FBI led (in partnership with his superior and trainer Mark Hicks) by a maverick blonde hunk, Paul Rudd (also a newcomer) is in no mood to negotiate and with his agents seems to be targeting everyone as prime suspects whilst a Chinese-American employee, Jane (played by Maggie Q from ‘Naked Weapon’, ‘Around the World in 80 days’ and ‘Rush Hour 2’) gets caught up in this game of wits and deceit. A co-ordinating officer (played by Christy Chung from ‘Red Wolf’ and ‘Tai Chi 2’) also makes up the cast of characters.

The plot is non-existent with a minor twist and a few sub-plots. This movie is a comedic youthful action-thriller with a low budget (surprising considering the big names and international actors involved). The acting is also quite bad with non-existent character-development and appears scattered with no real focus. Unfortunately, there is not one good thing that can be said about this movie besides some of the half-decent action that occurs in small doses (excluding the lame special-effects). No police or FBI procedures figure in this movie and their working practice looks chaotic at best, Edison Chan and Stephen are carrying baggage, make coffee and waving Chinese welcoming flags for the newly arrived FBI agents for some reason (where were the personal assistants and so on?). Furthermore, it is not clear whether Christy Chung or Maggie Q is the female lead (similar to male lead and main villain)!

Maggie Q should have stayed in modelling instead of trying to spread her wings as a charismatic and innocent actor and her role as an FBI agent is not convincing since she seems to be lost most of the time and not respected by her US counterparts at all. Furthermore, Christy Chung’s presence is supplementary as always and confirms that she is supposed to purely serve the purpose of eye candy along with Maggie Q of course. No explanation is offered for the absence of Nicholas Tse or other changes in circumstances from the first part (since besides the inclusion of Stephen Fung and Sam Lee there is no resemblance) and an unreasonable and less authoritative Edison Chan takes his place as a renegade police officer. Another obvious flaw is that the maverick American FBI agent is always speaking in English throughout the movie and clears appears to not be able to comprehend or converse in Cantonese, then why does he utter a few Chinese words at the end after a few days visit since he seems to be a detestable over-dedicated workaholic and never takes an interest in common talk!

This movie tries to mix languages similar to its predecessor by being a bi-lingual feature this time around and Richard Sun is so bad at speaking (in an Afro-American street-gang culture accent) that his role as a gifted software engineer is always questioned as well as where he picked up his English from! The tension between the American FBI and Chinese Police is childish since this issue dominates most of their difficulties in capturing the RX-1 robot. Also, the design of the RX-1 and various other robots under development by Anthony Wong is so crap that dust-bins look more technologically advanced. Furthermore, an experienced and talented actor such Anthony Wong is demeaned by being a side role. The real problem with this movie is that there is no convincing hero or main villain (supposed to be Edison Chan/Stephen Fung and Richard Sun/Mark Hicks respectively) in this feature. Benny Chan clearly seems to be trying to make an improved sequel with a reasonable few changes to his previous outing with an unknown action-director (Lee Chung-Chi) and a smaller budget, but none of this pays off!

Overall, Gen-Y-Cops is no doubt worse than Gen-X-Cops as with most other trashy sequels produced to-date. However, where this production succeeds in putting such, still respectable, follow-ups to shame are its lack of coherence, meagre budget, wasted experience and talent and lame excuse for a movie. Let’s truly hope that they do not decide to make Gen-Z-Cops.

Overall Rating: 6.0/10