peter (ben lam) is out of prison, after being caught with blood on his hands in a street battle; the old neighbourhood has changed. his former running mate, hsing (bruce maang) has gone straight and the area is run by gangs run by two men; macau hua (cheung gwok-wa) and big circle han (sun chien). on his first day out, peter manages to chat up jane (leung yuen-jing), han's girl, before stealing lun's (jackie lui)car and wrecking it, lun being one of hua's men. looks like going straight and settling down isn't really in peter's plans...

this was a pretty watchable, enjoyable flick, even if it does tick off nearly every cliche in the book. apparently johnny wang has quite the reputation for delivering violence heavy, chopper filled, triad movies and this one, although appearing to be a good example, pales next to the likes of 'hong kong godfather', which i guess i need to check out. as for this one, i did enjoy it, but it isn't great. the main protagonist is pretty much the architect of his own downfall, or at least that of his friends and sister, who all seem to suffer at the hands of the triads, as a result of him pissing them off.

the action is pretty enjoyable; on the whole, apart from a fight which is more like a demonstration, between peter and hua, the fighting is not too frilly and just gets to the point. kinda rough and raw, which works pretty well. there's also lots of knife action. so, despite there being nothing new here and the fact that it's a film which exists in the shadow of the director's other efforts, it still makes for an entertaining eighty-six minutes.

good enough...