Joe, Jim, and Cherie (Chow Yun Fat, Leslie Cheung, and Cherie Chung respectively) all grew up learning how to become thieves. They started off as pickpockets, but they later become world-class art thieves. They decide to do one last job to steal another valuable painting, but things take a turn for the worse and it ends up affecting their love triangle, family, and morals. Also starring jokes.
The tone of the film is incredibly uneven. Some scenes display John Woo’s talent of “graceful violence,” but the action in this movie is almost kid-friendly minus a few scenes at the end. The main reason why these two styles don’t fit is because this movie deals with some pretty serious themes. Our three main characters are planning on betraying their father-figure despite him taking care of them as kids and teaching them how to survive. This is a topic that belongs in a much more serious film, but it doesn’t match the comedy.
The action scenes in this movie aren’t terribly impressive. There’s the shot where the car drives through an RV camper which was pretty awesome, but the action lacks the excitement and “beauty” that other John Woo movies have. And since we know that the characters are going to end up okay, we don’t really care. But still, there’s an impressive shootout at the end with some fantastic stunts and it features some of John Woo’s inventiveness, but it’s still too light-hearted to take seriously.
*Make sure to stay through the end credits for a brief, but amusing post-credits scene.
Images from HKMDb and HK Cinemagic