Here is another film made in America from
Hong Kong director Leung Po-chi. This time he gets Wesley Snipes as his action
hero and he is a few pay grades above Steven Seagal for me. He actually looks
awake for one thing. Snipes has had a bit of an up and down career - a big
star in the 1990s even receiving a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in
1998. For whatever reason he was in the middle of a bunch of straight to
video films of which this is one. Maybe he needed the money because he was
in deep shit with the IRS and ended up going to jail from 2010 to 2013. But
he seems to have bounced back and has been busy working. For a video film
this was pretty solid and has a decent budget. The script feels old hat but
it gives Snipes plenty of opportunities to show his martial arts and action
skills. Leung's filming of the action scenes is well done and coherent -
the film a tad less so.
Snipes is CIA or ex-CIA - never really clear - has set up an arms deal in
Romania. It goes wrong when one of the men gets a phone call telling the
bad guys who he is. He is forced to kill most of them and gets a Get Out
of Jail Free card courtesy of the the CIA. They ask him to escort a woman
back to America - she may have killed her husband in NYC - and her husband
happened to be the accountant of the Big arms dealer. This guy wants her
because she has the code to $30 million of his money. Someone keeps betraying
Snipes and they keep coming for the woman and he keeps killing them. A few
solid shoot-outs and one good car chase. Nothing spectacular but it kept
my attention most of the time. Been ages since I saw a Wesley Snipes
film and he is the same Wesley Snipes of all his action films.
