Woo's last film in Hong Kong returned him to the dizzy highs of such films as A BETTER TOMORROW and THE KILLER, after his light-hearted caper flick ONCE A THIEF the previous year. This film, like its predecessors, also shows that when Woo claims musicals, particularly Gene Kelly musicals, as his inspiration, he's not kidding; each of these movies has a balletic grace that lifts it above the normal action movie.
Chow Yun-Fat, Woo's most frequent star, returns as Tequila, a cop who, in the opening sequence, tries, with his partner, to bust an arms deal in a restaurant - but not before he takes a turn jamming on a soprano sax at a club. This is not just to cement Yun-Fat's status as an icon of cool, but to show that balletic grace that's to come. True, as one critic would later put it, the resulting shootout that follows shreds the entire restaurant to the consistency of bean sprouts, but it's all done with style, with such Woo trademarks as Yun-Fat doing his damage with a pistol in each hand.
At that shootout, Tequila's partner is killed. Naturally, he's despondent, and his boss, Superintendent Pang (Philip Chan) is furious. Tequila wants to track the gangs that are fighting over arms shipments - one led by Mr. Hui (Kwan Hoi-Shan), the old-timer, the other led by Johnny Wong (Anthony Wong), the brash up-and-comer. But Pang orders him to sit tight. In this case, however, there's a particular reason for that. Pang has an undercover cop working the gangs, one who sends messages through notes that accompany flowers delivered to Teresa Chang (Teresa Mo), a detective, and Tequila's ex-girlfriend (In a nice touch, the messages are lyrics from American pop songs - one says "Are you somehwere feeling lonely, or is someone loving you?", which is from Lionel Richie's "Hello"). Pang, of course, wants to save him from exposure.
Meanwhile, there's an assassin named Alan (Tony Leung) working his way through the ranks. Alan works for Mr. Hui, but Johnny recruits him anyway. This leads to a memorable scene in a parking garage where Alan must finally decide where his loyalties lie. Complicating matters is the fact that Tequila has followed both gangs to the garage, and that - you guessed it - Alan is in fact the undercover cop. Once exposed, he and Tequila team together to stop the gangs. These unholy alliances have always been the hallmark of Woo's work - remember THE KILLER, where a hired killer and a cop both teamed together because they loved the same woman - but it's made particularly poignant here. By all rights, we should despise Alan, yet Leung perfectly captures the strain and revulsion he feels on both fronts.
