I did not know whether I should try this movie Cop On A Mission or not, but after looking at it a few times in the video store and the Chinese title (translates to: Knowing the Law, Breaking the Law), really somehow tempted me to buy it.

Cop On A Mission stars Daniel Wu and Eric Tsang.

There are several themes in this movie: good vs. evil, letting evil influence and take over one's mind, greed, power, poor vs. rich, conflicts with job duties, choosing money over friendship, etc.

Daniel plays the character named Mike who is a good cop, turned undercover, turned bad guy/triad member.
In the beginning Mike is a good policeman but is finding it hard to earn a good living and is always tired of seeing if he has enough money to take out his girlfriend.
Later, Mike goes on an undercover assignment. He meets Eric Tsang's character, Tin, a mob boss, who has everything, tons of money and a pretty girlfriend. This is where all Mike's troubles begins and this is when the evil enters into Mike's mind, heart and soul.

Daniel's performance was breathtaking, he had me hanging on the edge of my seat. Even though some of the things that occur in the film are predictable, like it is very obvious that Daniel's character Mike has the desire to take over everything that belongs to Tin -- still his performance left me speechless. I never knew Daniel could play a bad guy, because most certainly in my opinion he does not look like one.
But he is very convincing as a bad guy. Mike has this huge idea to destroy Tin and take over and be boss. But his idea was too big for him to handle, due to his egotistic attitude and greed for money and power, he underestimated his ability to take over Tin's empire.

Eric Tsang is not too convincing as a triad boss, I guess it's because he is more fit for comedy than drama/action movies. Eric Tsang is better in comedy movies like Merry Go Round, And I Hate You So.

There are quite a number of fighting scenes, sometimes I felt they went by too fast, not that I like to watch bloody and gory scenes and sometimes I wish for them to end faster than they should last. But some of the fighting scenes seemed unrealistic, and they are not shocking at all. I have seen much worse and cruel bloody, fight-to-the-death scenes in other movies like God of Gamblers, Casino Raiders, etc. The stuff in Cop On A Mission is nothing.

There are some scenes which just reminds me of the show NYPD Blue, and there's the shot of Daniel's back side in the shower scene which is very NYPD Blue. But his back side looks way better than the guy's on NYPD Blue.


This movie is really good to watch, the story line is pretty coherent and it unravels in a good and moderate pace.

The DVD image is very clear and crisp, the sound quality is excellent, and also there are subtitles to choose from, you can choose Traditional Chinese, English. Also, there is a movie trailer for this movie you can watch.

All in all, it's pretty decent and was worth the extra few bucks for the DVD. I liked it so much that I am going to watch it again this weekend.