Made in 1983, this was shelved, then released in 1986 to cash in on the success of A Better Tomorrow. For about one minute it’s a good film. Unfortunately, there’s 84 more minutes, none of them remotely good.
This is regarded as Woo’s first stumbling step in the Heroic Bloodshed genre, and he’s disowned this because the studio added soft core sex and extra gore without his approval. If it were mine, I’d disown it out of sheer embarrassment. Even without the unwanted additions, this is still a pretty nasty film, and the rat-tat-tat-tat-tat action punctuated by frequent explosions is more Rambo then bullet ballet.
Woo completists will probably still want to seek it out, but this is really one to avoid.
2 Annoyingly Stoic Kids out of 10.