terrible... so disappointed.

Admirable film.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Much like the US, the Asian film market delivers films from all across the spectrum, but most popular is the action genre. The latest The Viral Factor takes the straight forward gun toting action direction while throwing in the popular chemical weapon story line. Will this film live up to the top notch action expected from Asian cinema or will it be one of those confusing all over the place messes that they so popularly deliver.The Viral Factor follows an ISA agent who is betrayed and shot in the head while transporting a scientist to another country. Realizing he has only weeks before the bullet causes complete paralysis he sets out to find a brother he knew nothing about and meets up with a doctor willing to look into treatment for his condition. When his brother attempts to kidnap the doctor, they are forced to work together to stop the criminals from unleashing a disease on the world. This film sports some great action, mostly consisting of gun play, but a few martial arts pieces here and there. Jay Chou most notably to American audiences as Kato from the Green Hornet film takes the lead here and does a good job carrying it on his shoulders. Some aspects of this movie seem all over the place, but nothing too confusing. The film opens with a really good action piece, but does slow down a bit before finally getting back to the action bringing this film full circle.This is a decent action film with just enough twists and turns to deliver a good action film, but could have been so much more with some better pacing and a little more cohesion to the overall story. If you're a fan of Asian action cinema, this is a decent bullet flying showdown to satisfy your appetite.http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-dallas/bobby-blakey

This movie gets a 4/10 for its good photography work and action sequences, but as a film, it fails. The story is overly long and stretches one's incredulity. Plus, the lead actors do not die, no matter that they were shot point-blank and shown to be hurt or dead. The scene cuts to another without explaining how they survived. A scene where one of them falls into a shaft and emerges unhurt was, how to put it? Quite incredible. There were also just to many coincidences. If everything happened in a confined space, fine. But these are international terrorists and agents.And the ideal of a rogue agent is no longer fresh. It's been done to death in Mission Impossible and 007 movies. Directors like Dante Lam must think the audience to be very dumb to fall for the same line again.The first part of the movie feels as if director is trying to cut a "Hey, I can do that too", mimicking camera work and clear as sky photographic shots ala Transformers and Hurt Locker. That the locale is a war-torn area does not help. It's to reminiscent of recent war movies. Best to just move it along or show something different.What impresses is how much action they managed to shoot in Malaysia. If you live around that region, you'll enjoy the scenes. Jackie Chan hasn't filmed there in a while and so this is welcomed.What started as promising degenerated into an overly long story arc. Perhaps the story of a virus for sale isn't that exciting anymore. It would have been a better story about how one agent coped with his loss and injury. Perhaps finding redemption and revenge and what else. HK movies typically dilute human emotion into convenient clichés, and that's their problem. They forget that it is not always that simple or straight forward. Do HKongers ever pause to reflect? Go deeper? Be different? Not by the evidence of this movie.Dante Lam may be a competent action director, but even though he has shown he is as capable as Michael Bay. He has also demonstrated that his story-telling is just as bad. All maybe worse.

A team of military special forces are escorting a scientist and his family in the Middle East when they are ambushed by terrorists, intent on taking the scientist's work on a genetically engineered super-strain of smallpox and using it for their own private financial gain. One of the operatives receives a bullet in the head, but declines to stay in hospital to recuperate, instead heading off to Malaysia to look for his estranged father and the brother he never knew he had. As luck would have it, this course of action brings him back in contact and indeed conflict with the terrorists.Hong Kong does not typically do hi-tech action thrillers very well, and terrorists seeking super-viruses is certainly a red flag when it comes to a Hong Kong movie. The smarter Hong Kong's scriptwriters try to make their characters sound, the dumber they usually come across, and this is no exception. Additionally, credibility-stretching coincidences are rarely a hallmark of a well-written script. One incredible coincidence which becomes the centre-piece of the story, exploring how the effects of random probability or the hand of fate can transform a person's life, can make for an interesting story and film. When your hi-tech action thriller introduces at least 3 unbelievable coincidences in an attempt to make your story about super-viruses seem more coherent, you should probably realise you've taken the wrong track.In short, the script for The Viral Factor is a mess... ridiculously, eyeball rollingly so, really. The annoying thing is that it's all quite unnecessary... at its heart there is a story of two estranged brothers that have found themselves on opposite sides of the law, but who have to cooperate to protect their family and see if they can find forgiveness and redemption. The implausible coincidences don't really add anything to that scenario, and the whole terrorists with super-viruses aspect is basically not needed, too. They're plot devices that speak of a weak writer, one who feels that the simple motivations of family, love, guilt and redemption just aren't enough to engage the viewer... when in fact they're the only parts of the script that do.Somehow, the glaring flaws in the story do not derail The Viral Factor nearly as much as you feel they ought to. The writing is awful, but pretty much everything else about the film is good. Dante Lam's direction is strong, the performances from Jay Chou and Nic Tse are good, visuals and production values are excellent and the action scenes are top calibre. Some individual scenes are well written and executed, and there is generally a lot to like about the film. Generally, the further the whole 'Viral Factor' aspect is pushed into the background, the more engaging and enjoyable the film is - and for much of the running time it is indeed relegated to the background.If Lam had had the confidence to just excise all the hi-tech espionage type fluff and focus on the emotional core of the story, he could have made a great film here... though admittedly he'd have robbed himself of some excuses for staging some quite remarkable action scenes (though I'm sure he'd have found a way). As it is, I guess he can take some credit for managing to produce a pretty solid film despite the self-imposed handicap of a ridiculous script.

Forgive us if we wax lyrical about Dante's latest film- it represents not only his best work to date, but it is also easily the most accomplished contemporary action thriller from Hong Kong/ China. Yes we kid you not- each one of the breathtaking action sequences that Dante stages with aplomb can rival the kind of stuff we've only seen so far in big-budget Hollywood movies, and to think that Dante has managed to accomplish it with only a fraction with what it would have cost in a Hollywood production is a triumphant feat in itself.Dante's ambitions for what is- at US$17 million- his most expensive production to date is clear right from the beginning, kicking off with an edge-of-your-seat gripping sequence in the heart of Jordan where a group of highly trained International Disease Commission (IDC) operatives are ambushed while escorting a scientist who has just created a lethal biological weapon from mutating the smallpox virus. Besides orchestrating a jaw-dropping sequence where an RPG explodes under a tank and causes it to tumble off the road and down a cliff, the veteran man of action stages an intense street battle in the style of 'Green Zone' that leaves the entire team dead- save for Jon (Jay Chou) and his leader Sean (Andy Tien).The latter is however alive for an entirely different reason- Sean was in fact behind the very ambush, just so he can sell the virus and its cure to a wealthy buyer halfway around the world. As for Jon, he has to live with a bullet lodged in his brain, which becomes the cause of the severe headaches he encounters from time to time. While recuperating, Jon finds out from his remorseful mother that he has an older brother living with his father in Malaysia, the separation a deliberate act by his mother some many years back to get away from his gambling addict of a dad.En route to Malaysia, Jon meets Rachel (Lin Peng), a medical scientist tasked by the Asian Centre for Disease Control (ACDC) to study the newly created virus. Rachel also happens to be the target of a group of kidnappers led by Yang (Nicholas Tse), and Jon unwittingly gets dragged along when he tries to rescue her. Thus, with a bit of narrative convenience, Dante and his recent muse Jack Ng put brother against brother on different sides of the law- though as you would expect, at some point the two long-lost brothers will eventually reconcile to defeat a common enemy.Pretty much two-thirds of the movie is set in and around the streets of Kuala Lumpur, and the gleaming metropolis as well as its grittier outskirts prove to be an impressive backdrop for the unfolding action. From the crowded streets around the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) to the bustling KL Sentral railway station, Dante keeps the adrenaline pumping and never lets the pace slip. Personally taking charge of the stunt design and entrusting the action direction to another of his frequent collaborators Chin Kar Lok, Dante ups the ante with every elaborate sequence he stages.And trust us when we say that each one of them is as exhilarating as the next- from a shootout along a busy road packed with cars bumper to bumper, to a car chase right in the heart of KLCC, to a helicopter chase around the iconic buildings of the KL skyline, to a three-way battle at a construction site, and finally to a climactic showdown set on board a freighter, there is just so much for action fans to drool over. Thankfully, his d.p. Kenny Tse doesn't adopt the shaky-cam style of Hollywood's 'Bourne' trilogies and wannabes- he keeps the camera steady so the audience can take in every shot, and complements the rest of them with the occasional wide shot to give a panoramic perspective.But this is not merely a collection of well-shot action sequences; rather, at its core, Dante has fashioned a moving story about the immutable bond of brotherhood. Beyond the guns and bullets, there are gripping moments of tense emotion as both Jon and Yang learn to stop blaming the other brother as well as their respective parent for their divergent fates and reconcile as flesh and blood. Kudos to Dante for weaving in the human drama so adroitly amidst the action, alternating between intense action and intense drama seamlessly and delivering a riveting watch all the way through.That the movie proves so captivating is also testament to the charisma of both its leading actors. This is undoubtedly the best role of Jay Chou's acting career to date, his intense brooding performance neither fluffy like 'Kung Fu Dunk' or 'Treasure Hunter' nor over-dramatic like 'Curse of the Golden Flower'. Nicholas Tse once again demonstrates how his acting chops have matured under the watchful direction of Dante, and while it isn't as groundbreaking as his 'Beast Stalker' or 'Stool Pigeon', the recent Hong Kong Film Awards Best Actor winner is still mesmerising in a complex good-bad role. Both Jay and Nicholas also gamely perform their own stunts in the movie, and the authenticity of watching them both run, leap and brawl just adds to the excitement.With 'The Viral Factor', Dante has not only reached a new zenith in his career as a director, but also achieved a breakthrough for the Hong Kong/ China film industry as far as making Hollywood-style action thrillers are concerned. It is a white-knuckle adrenaline-pumping thrill ride from start to finish, accompanied with poignant human drama and top-notch performances by both Jay and Nicholas. Indeed, it is well- deserving of all the superlatives we have lavished on it thus far, and if you don't remember all of them, then just remember to make this a must-see movie this year.