I actually enjoyed watching this movie. It wasn't great; in fact, it's basically filmic storytelling at its worst, with a plot so abstract that there's never any sense of causation; people shoot at each other because they're enemies, not because there's a real goal. There are also too many characters, and as a consequence, very few of them are anything more than stick-figures. The laughable and transparent attempts at characterization would've been better used in improving the flow of the storyline. In addition, the character who's supposed to be the big hero, Aaron Kwok, basically does nothing; he makes all the wrong decisions and trusts all the wrong people, while the people around him are responsible for most of the dirty work.

So what's to like? Well, despite the total ineptitude of the screenplay, it's rarely dull; it's not especially fast-paced, but it doesn't drag. The three major action scenes are spectacular, though the "finale" is one of the biggest letdowns in movie history. Gordon Chan's overly-stylized direction keeps the action interesting, and gets you through the "down time." The film is also fairly solid in areas in which other films of this kind fall short; while the effects are far from perfect, they aren't intrusive or embarrassing like some of those in, say, Purple Storm. Very little of the English dialogue is glaringly badly written or delivered, though I should emphasize that the absence of bad doesn't necessarily mean good. And, of course, a few English lines apparently slipped by Gordon Chan with the emphasis misplaced.

Overall, I wouldn't call 2000 AD a great movie, and I'd be hard pressed to even seriously call it good. But considering that I expected to feel insulted, bored, and ripped off, 2000 AD at least failed to meet with my worst expectations, and the action scenes and Francis Ng's character tipped the scale to make it a worthwhile movie.