It's a busy month for Daniel Wu, starring as a police officer in the recently released Hit Team and now as an undercover cop in Cop on a Mission. The latter displays Wu's progress both histrionically and linguistically. The American-born model-turned-actor, who spoke almost no Chinese on his arrival in Hong Kong a few years ago, manages long stretches of Cantonese dialogue credibly (albeit heavily accented), and acquits himself well in the relatively complex role of a good cop gone bad.

If nothing else, the movie displays the actor's total confidence in those calling the shots. Director Marco Mak, one of the best editors on the local scene, creates a very slick product that is astonishingly uneven, veering from the highly polished to the outrageously crude. He is aided the script, composed by a scribe with the intriguing pseudonym "Not a Woman".

At times the proceedings are downright gripping, as we witness the descent of Mike (Daniel Wu) from Mr. Nice Guy into the incarnation of evil as he doublecrosses and schemes to reach the top and scrape the bottom. Just when the viewer gets involved in Mike and his milieu, the audience is jerked out of its collective mood. It is but the first of many scenes in which Mike, his backside totally naked, showers and masturbates as he fantasizes about the buxom wife (Suki Kwan) of the kingpin (Eric Tsang) whose gang he has infiltrated. The sleazy jazz score adds to the impression of cheap soft core porn. Granted, Daniel Wu has become something of a gay icon since his 1998 debut as the sexually conflicted patrolman in Bishonen, but the numerous displays of beefcake seem amusingly out of place in Cop on a Mission.

The movie begins in an offbeat manner reminiscent of Sunset Boulevard, with Mike narrating from the grave as he is being buried alive. One thus immediately knows where the film is headed and focuses on how it gets there. Though the lusty detours give Cop on a Mission a laughably campy dimension, the journey is at times downright touching. Eric Tsang, as the impotent mobster who deeply loves his spouse, delivers another poignant performance and shows that it doesn't take six-pack abs to steal the spotlight.

2 1/2 Stars

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