More Hong Kong John Woo. It starts out playful, light and fun with a bromance between triad members Lung Ti and Chow Yun-Fat — at the glamorous end of an operation counterfeiting US banknotes — before sliding into heavy sludge that yields to only ten minutes of world-on-fire Woo right at the end. That shootout is too farcical. The shot of Chow lighting up with a $100 bill is classic. Waise Lee, the heel of Bullet to the Head, was the heel here first. There's a bolted-on undercooked domestic thread involving Lung Ti's implausible police brother Leslie Cheung (who I haven’t seen since Wong Kar-Wai's Days of Being Wild and Happy Together) and father. Cheung's squeeze Emily Chu is squeakily annoying. I didn't totally follow the cops' angle: one scene shows Interpol taking an interest and many have a bloke who looks like he's above the scene.
I'll be giving the sequel a miss.
IMDB trivia. The children's choir in the middle was a highlight.