This is How Movies Should Be Made

One of the best films i have seen

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

John Woo directs a TV drama about a couple of thieves (Ivan Sergei and Sandrine Holt) who escape to Canada after dishonoring their former boss in Hong Kong, however Sergei is caught by the cops and comes to Canada after his time only to find Holt and Lea in a relationship their soap opera antics must wait while assassin Michael Wong looks to do in our trio out of revenge for their disloyalty. Before Woo stunk up the multiplexes with Mission Impossible 2, Windtalkers and Paycheck. This and Blackjack were regarded as Woo's worst movies. Blackjack believe it or not has it's merits, it was plot heavy but it featured some good action and decent thesping in making for at least a tolerable movie. Once A Thief however is a sub-par take on Woo's own original and although I haven't seen it yet, one doubts it is as bad as this stinker. The main problem with this movie is just how much it feels like Melrose Place with two guns. It becomes so soap operish in it's moronic threads involving the three leads that I for one was hoping somebody would put a bullet in all three of them. Also it takes talent to be an action star, Chow Yun Fat, Jean-Claude Van Damme,John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Dolph Lundgren and even Christan Slater are far more credible than our teen leads which never convince us that they would do anything but crap their pants when the guns went off. Sergei in particular is a charisma-less lunkhead who seems to have wandered in from a stoner commercial. This is a very dull movie and the action sequences would be good had they not been botched beyond belief, Woo films no suspense and somehow the movie just keeps going for a ridiculous amount of time. This is for only die hard John Woo fans and only they will be disappointed by the awfulness here.* out of 4-(Bad)

Very bad acting combined with an utterly unbelievable chain of events lacking any kind of coherency and spiced with one of the worst dialogue I've ever encountered. This was actually pretty bad even for a purely television production.At times the "movie" felt like a group of stuntmen rehearsing for a neat action flick. At times the dialogue and cinematographic choices made me feel like I was watching a bad soap.The effects were overblown and yet looked cheapish. Shooting scenes had a faint of the usual John Woo in them, but there was no coherent force that would have made the scenes fit with each other or lend them a shred of believability.Stealing the Rembrandt painting and creating a duplicate of it (in such a short time!) was the absolute worst this movie put in front of my eyes. It just kept on going and going ... and going ... with those dudes hanging in the chandelier.While I've watched and liked a number of Woo movies, this is (so far) the absolute worst of his I've encountered.

This is the best double episode of Once a Thief. Nick Lea is the best of the cast and his performance is very good. The talent of Ivan Sergei and Sandrine Holt is undeniable and the story is very interesting.I think that all fans of John Woo must see this episode.

I rented this movie because I thought Woo and Lea were cool, and I was wondering what the results would be when they paired up. Well the results were horrible: The plot was uninteresting and completely unbelievable, the dialogue was absolutely horrible, and the actors werent good enough to save it. Despite my admiration for the two mentioned above, I can't pull myself to even saying that this movie was acceptable; it was just plain bad. If you get it, then you'll regret having spent that $2 on renting it.