Notwehr

If you are watching it for good story and acting, you will be disappointed. But the action scenes are good and keep you entertained. Also, the movie was shoot in Japan and it looked beautiful. Decent movie and watchable. 6 stars from me.

What stood out for me in this film was the excellent cinematography by Takuro Ishizaka, and the main reason I scored this film as high as I did.

Next plus was the good choreography for the action scenes, especially the last 20 mins of the film.

The story itself (although we've seen it before) wasn't bad, but wasn't written well into a screenplay. Although the pace wasn't slow, the 106 min length felt longer with the long dragged out scenes and cheesy prolonged slow-mo parts. This film needed to be edited down to a max 80 mins.

Most of the subtitles didn't make any sense, but I'm guessing some 3rd party translator messed those up, so I wont consider that in my rating, but it did make the sub-par acting from most of the cast look very amateurish, as I didn't get to fully immerse myself in each character.

Then there's John Woo's directing, which at times felt like it was his early amateur work, and at other times felt like some grade 8 drama student put it together. He failed to direct his actors properly, as some performed certain scenes so badly, the director should have called a re-shoot. Clearly not his best work in the directing, writing and editing departments.

Throughout the entire film, I had already decided to give this film a 4 or 5/10, but the last 20 mins of fast paced action, plot twists and good choreography redeemed the score to a slightly better 6/10. Had the writing been tighter with less 'cheese', it could have been a 7 or 8/10

I don't know why they decided having people who are obviously not English speakers speaking English. Also the movie is set in Japan with Chinese characters there was no need for anyone to speak English. They should have been speaking Japanese or Mandarin.

Just a action movie. pin up the murder to a innocent man then cops chasing and helping him find out he is innocent long gun fights,chasing scenes,female assassin, unworthy pharma company, same old story

This Japanese and Chinese collaboration of a John Woo directed movie turned out to be one of the least interesting of John Woo's career. And here I am only thinking about his work in Asian cinema.

The story portrayed in this movie was straightforward, but it was so straightforward that it offered no surprises, no twists, no nothing. So you just basically sit back in the seat and strap yourself in for the ride. Except you need not worry about the straps, because the ride here was plain and downright boring.

The action sequences were adequate, although hardly outstanding in comparison to many other Asian movies.

It was gutwretching to listen to the dialogue performed in English, because it was abysmally poorly delivered.

This movie came and went without leaving any lasting impression. Heck, it hardly even left a dent.

I love Asian movies, but this movie is not one that I ever plan to return to watch a second time.