To say that this movie is a let down would be a tremendous understatement. Sitting on the shelves of various high street DVD outlets, resplendent in its Two Disc Special Edition packaging and with a back cover blurb that brings up director Yuen Woo Ping's work as fight choreographer on The Matrix Trilogy and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, you have to give credit for the packaging department for luring you into a false sense of belief that this movie is a hitherto overlooked milestone in HK action. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.<br /><br />I've heard it compared to the similarly disastrous Speed 2. In truth, the only link between the two is the setting on a luxury liner. Unlike Speed 2, where the task of slowing the out of control vessel was central to the plot, here, the ship is little more than something big, large and isolated for Kenny Ho to run around in. And speaking of Ho, his role as lead action hero leaves a lot to be desired. While he can handle the gun play and martial arts with as much flair as his contemporaries, his facial expressions remain largely unchanged throughout. There is a back story involving his dead wife which could have granted him more sympathy, but it is so woefully mishandled it feels like something that was tacked on for no particular reason. Twenty minutes after the credits roll, it's unlikely you'll remember anything about him. Besides, how can you feel any backing for a man who is supposed to be a security chief, yet fails to stop the villains from massacring nearly every passenger on the boat?<br /><br />However, his co-star Elaine Lui really stands out. Not because she's a good actress you understand, but because her role as the comic relief slapstick foil backfires spectacularly as she becomes one of the most irritating screen heroines to appear in the Hong Kong Legends catalogue. A little bit of comedy in action films is okay now and again, but considering the ridiculously high bodycount and number of innocent people murdered in this movie, she seems very out of place. Her fight with Christy Chung for example is extremely tasteless, as Lui imitates martial arts stances and goes through a bumbling slapstick routine, mere minutes after a young girl watched her mother machine gunned before her eyes.<br /><br />All in all then, not worth the effort. The action sequences are decent enough, but a bland leading man, immensely irritating heroine and a complete absence of emotion result in a film that Yuen Woo Ping would most probably want to forget.