Release Year: 2010

You are either into these kinds of flicks or not but with an infectious energy, a musical score that propels all the lunacy and a complete commitment to going insane, ‘Helldriver’ is, well, as mad as a bag of smashed frogs!

‘Hot Summer Days’ manages the feat that so many productions using multiple stories flatly fail with, namely making each of the plot strands interesting rather than just using a few as killers and the rest as fillers.

Not even the odd moment of black humour and Kim Jee-Woon’s knack for crafting exhilarating sequences of action and tension can elevate his film beyond pure nihilism.

Having emerged from the debacle that was ‘Kung-Fu Cyborg’, Jeff Lau returns to his beloved sub-genre of the nonsensical and it’s certainly an improvement on his previous effort.

Even as an outsider looking in, this reviewer has to admit that the occasional moments of entertainment sprouted forth from ‘Just Call Me Nobody’.

After an appalling first half, perhaps we can be grateful that it at least becomes watchable.

‘Legend Of The Fist’ is a film that promises so much but delivers far less, especially considering this is a collaboration between Donnie Yen and Andrew Lau.

Entertaining in parts with a game cast on good form but frustratingly uneven and unsatisfying a film as a whole, ‘Let the Bullets Fly’ lays on the political subtext but forgets to have fun with it.

There is a good idea for an action thriller buried somewhere in ‘My Best Bodyguard’ but it’s wasted on a cluttered narrative, mostly sloppy action and a whole lot of melodrama daftness.

While some of the humour may be of a particular taste and the tone a little too self aware for its own good sometimes, Thomas Cappelen Malling still fills his flick with stylish sequences and lots of little pokes at the ninja genre.

His film version isn’t quite perfect and unfortunately pales compared to the novel but it is far from disrespectful to the source material and is a better version than many may have expected.

It’s a pleasure to see Jordan Chan given a lead role in a major production and his cowardly cook is a delightful antithesis to ‘Chicken’ from the series that made his name.