Anyone whose appetite for John Woo's electric filmmaking was whetted by this summer's terrific Face/Off will still want to keep their distance from this Woo vehicle, a video repackaging of a failed Fox pilot. Though retaining some of the director's unmistakable touches, most notably in the toned-down-for-TV action scenes, this semi-remake of his 1991 action/comedy lacks all of the dramatic energy that gives such touches their power. Nicholas Lea—as smarmy and unlikable as the hero here as when playing the villain on The X-Files—is a thief who leaves his crime family to become involved in a top-secret crime-fighting organization. Presuming him dead, Lea's girlfriend becomes engaged, another old friend becomes a dangerous enemy, and all three eventually get mixed up in a dull art heist. Though some sequences are imaginatively staged, this is pretty tepid stuff, at best reaching the level of a post-MTV MacGyver. Perhaps a Woo-produced series would liven up the essentially dead TV-action genre, but not unless it's an improvement on this. Fans of the director should look for less adulterated thrills elsewhere.
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