Genre: Crime

Working with what is probably a minimal budget by Hollywood standards, Chin Ka-Lok fashions quite an impressive action film, complete with international locations and slick looking set-pieces.

‘Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon’ seems to do so much right that it makes me wonder why this wasn’t the start of a series of films.

‘Golgo 13: Queen Bee’ is a short and not particularly sweet film that fails to make effective use of one of the coolest Japanese characters around.

‘Golgo 13: The Professional’ is a truly genre-defining anime classic that is as exciting today as it was back in the 1980s.

If you manage to remain interested while the film establishes a story and can tolerate the odd sense of the macabre, then ‘Gonin’ does provide a few flashes of excellence.

‘Half Past Dead’ is another poor addition to the rap fu genre and is less entertaining than both ‘Exit Wounds’ and ‘Romeo Must Die’, whose audience this clearly aims itself at.

John Woo allowed his imagination and cinematic showmanship full flight in ‘Hard Boiled’, strapping his trademark visuals and themes to an RPG and launching them into orbit.

‘Heat Team’ will undoubtedly baffle more than it will appease; the fractured style and severe lack of focus on what the film actually wants to achieve is difficult to forgive.

Another one to add to the dust gathering pile of DVD’s – and recommended only for Koichi or Shannon completists.

Not as enjoyable or as accomplished as some of the director’s other efforts but worthy of a look if you’re a fan of Sono’s work and “non-conventional” cinema.

Penned by prolific director and writer Wong Jing, ‘Hit Team’ is a formulaic cop thriller done on a low budget, something that makes itself very apparent early on.

While it does have its fair share of amusingly bizarre dialogue and cheesy action sequences, it also has quite a bit of uninteresting filler that regularly drags it down.