An old and tired Jackie Chan wanders sluggishly throughout this movie, as his age clearly shows in his few action sequences, where fast cutting and armed showdowns try to play the trick to cover the obvious lack of physicality. This even becomes more evident with the classic outtake clips that roll with the credits at the end of the movie. But while you can obviously understand that a 70‑year‑old man won’t be moving with the same pizzazz as someone in their twenties or thirties during their physical peak, what makes the action particularly disappointing is that these same editing techniques are applied to fights where you would expect a bit more physicality from the younger generation. Only a fight where a blade in the hands of Tony Leung Ka‑fai takes centre stage as he faces multiple opponents, and the increasingly bloodier elements to the fights as we get close to the end, save the action.

Another quite embarrassing aspect of this film is its intended sentimentalism. No relationship feels really profound (not among the band of criminals, not between Chan’s and Zhang Zifeng’s characters, not among police officers). On top of that, the style of acting, apparently intended to be quite melodramatic, makes the actual emotional moments at times laughable.

Otherwise, the movie truly becomes thrilling during those scenes where it attempts to build tension, which fortunately are also considerably present throughout the story, either through the quietest exchanges between characters at an elevator, street market, dinner table, or restaurant, as well as those in which our undercover division is tracking the elusive suspect.

All in all, it is a rather uneven film with a convoluted plot in which the 50% driven by action lacks punch, but the other 50%, driven by tension, truly puts you on the edge of your seat.