Hong Kong action movie based on real-life gangster from the 60s Crippled Ho. Interesting that this movie would be allowed to be made considering how strict the Chinese government is these days with censoring anything that shows a corrupt government. Lucky for these filmmakers that this movie takes places well before the Chinese takeover of 1997 and blames those naughty British colonialists for much of the terrible state of Hong Kong at that time. Pretty good epic retelling of this story(which had been done as TO BE NUMBER ONE back in 1991) that is a little overlong at over 2 hours but moves along well enough. There's a decidedly American feel to this thing with some of the funky soundtrack choices and if you watch the dubbed version you get some African-American-sounding voices on a few characters that seem a bit out of place. Donnie Yen in the main role and Andy Lau as Lee Rock(who he had played twice before in LEE ROCK(1991) and LEE ROCK II(1991) making this technically a part 3 to those films) are really excellent in their portrayals making this worth a watch if you have a lot of time to spare. A couple of strange highlights are a guy that has a hairdryer inserted into his mouth as a form of torture and another guy who they try and force to drink a fresh glass of piss just for shits and giggles. Another example of a good modern foreign film that blows Hollywood away.
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