metacritic.com: Flash Point

Flash Point

Starring Donnie Yen, Louis Koo, and Collin Chou

MPAA RATING: R for strong bloody violence and brutal martial arts action

Third Rail Releasing
Action
88 minutes | Color
Hong Kong
Released In Theaters March 14, 2008

One man. One car. Tearing down the road like a flash of lightning. The man: Jun Ma, detective sergeant of the Serious Crimes Unit. Like the sports car he controls, Jun is fast, precise, and brutal, harnessing a horsepower that fears to be unleashed. Jun detests crime, and his lifelong nemeses are a gang of three brothers. The eldest brother is Archer, the bully; the second brother is Tony, the cool calculator; and the youngest brother is Tiger, the fighter. Their skills have seen them grow steadily in the criminal world. In order to further infiltrate the gang and fight them from within, Jun has planted a mole, Wilson, who has managed to gain the complete trust of the gang and has become their personal bodyguard. Over the years Wilson has become more and more unhappy with Jun's impulsive and unruly style. Their disagreements in their way of working have led to constant arguments and altercations, which will send their mission spiraling out of control. (Third Rail Releasing)

WRITTEN BY
Kam-Yuen Szeto
Lik-Kei Tang

DIRECTED BY
Wilson Yip

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

38 / 100

Critic Reviews

75	San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub Has a solid story, which keeps things interesting during the quiet moments when nobody is getting kicked in the head.
63	TV Guide Maitland McDonagh Donnie Yen is famous for combining martial arts traditions into his own unique fighting style and Collin Chou, who studied with Sammo Hung, is up to the task of holding his own.
50	The Hollywood Reporter Maggie Lee The plot development of Flash Point is purely utilitarian, like a shuttle bus that transports stock characters from one action set to another.
40	Variety Robert Koehler Plainly disappointing as a well-sustained kick-butt thriller, and politically toxic.
40	The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis Flash Point”attaches coldly professional visuals to a narrative so baffling that it’s rarely clear who is pounding on whom or why.
30	Village Voice Ed Gonzalez Flash Point treats its audience like dogs, making us suffer through routine, almost inscrutable plot points and inconsequential characterizations to get to these episodes, and as such reveals itself as nothing more than a dumb action picture with delusions of Johnnie To–dom.
25	New York Post Kyle Smith Flash Point comes loaded with cliches and immediately starts blasting them in every direction.

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