For those who want to spend time watching Hong Kong police vs.Triad gangs with their progressive conflict, this effort may fill the bill, although it will be for most viewers merely a cliched and meandering tale that seldom holds one's deep-cut interest, due to some incoherence in the storyline as well as its failure to provide rationale for much of the depicted conduct. Simon Yam plays Lok Man-hwa, a police inspector assigned to work undercover within an organization led by narcotics sachem Feng (Yu Rong Guang), who is nurturing Hwa for greater responsibilities in his cartel when an unexpected arrest attempt of Triad drug bosses results in Feng's fiery death as his car pitches into a harbour. Hwa attempts to resume his former professional and private lives, but a miraculous renascence by Feng during the moon festival, and a clandestine romance with Feng's former mistress Yung (Christy Chung) are developments that may spoil Hwa's planned future. This film is of the Conflicted Loyalty genre, specially favoured by Chinese producers of crime related movies and is lacking in fresh concepts although devotees of this type of affair will probably not care if the policeman bonds with the criminal or his erstwhile moll, but will instead find the graphic violence and lusty explosions that regularly occur to be quite satisfactory, and a lack of chemistry among the various leads will without doubt seem insignificant amid the dazzling choreography displayed by bullet riddled victims before they fall to earth. The production is available with or without English subtitles, the dialogue being in Cantonese (a Hong Kong patois), Mandarin and poor English, and there is trouble with sound synchronicity as several of the principal players loop lines that are not mixed well during a portion of a work also burdened with a score that includes many mawkish Cantonese pop songs.
Review of Man Wanted
