Han cheng gong lüe

I'd give this a lower rating if I could, and that's not because I don't "GET the Asian genre." I love Asian films (being Asian myself), even during times when the story lines become overbearingly sentimental, cute or cloying.

But this one... I could barely get past the first 15 minutes. Each time I saw that smug face of Richie Renn's character I wanted to punch him in the nose. No offense to the actor himself (as I know there are many of his fans probably reading this), but I really hated the character. And his entourage of 3 Korean "babes" -- give me a break! All they did was follow him around and display the worst martial arts skills this side of Kung Pao.

I like Tony Leung, and Qi Shu always makes nice eye candy, but c'mon -- couldn't they have come up with something better than this? It's like they're all sleepwalking through their roles. And the ridiculous subtitles? Who distributed this? I've seen more coherent sentences coming from a 3-year old preschooler.

Movies like this make films like the incredibly bad "Dream of a Warrior" instant classics by comparison. What next? Calcutta Raiders? Mercy, please...