So Close

Most of you will recognise Cory Yuen as the fight co-ordinator on movies such as Romeo Must Die, Cradle 2 The Grave and Kiss Of The Dragon. He also directed The Transporter, which featured high powered and strong fight scenes. But his American work has been dead serious so far - pun intended! So Close isn't so straight-faced, which is a shame, because if it had been, it might have been better.

The plot is total fluff. It's Charlie's Angels on a budget. Hot and sexy sisters Lynn and Sue run some kind of killer-for-hire business and use state of the art espionage techniques, created by their father who somehow managed to hack into every camera on and above the planet. Generic bad guys in business suits hire them to protect their evil (?) computer company, but soon double cross them. A couple of forensic investigators worm their way into the story to make it a bit more complicated. Wirework fights scenes follow. It's nothing at all special, but it entertains.

What bugs me is how light the movie starts out, then, about two-of the way in, we are forced to swallow something pretty hard and it feels out of place. The rest of the movie becomes a revenge flick, in which the established feel of the film is thrown away in favour of gun battles and bloodshed. It's a bold move, but it doesn't gel properly.

And, like I said, the bad guys are pretty lame. It appears that all of the "bad guy" scenes were filmed on the same day, as they do not differ from each other at all and contain zero sophistication. Plus the super spy computer is hardly used to its full potential. It's a bizarre MacGuffin, indeed, which does nothing more than help the plot along a little.

There are a few touching moments, like the burial of the digital camera - I've never seen such a strange, yet beautifully acted scene in any other movie. It's supposed to lead us into the sharp change in the film's tone but ends up being the best part of an otherwise middle-of-the-road action flick.

There are some nice visuals and the chicks are hot - except for the female cop - but Cory Yuen's direction is not as effective as in his American work.

Go watch The Transporter again, instead.