During the late 1990's and early 2000's, a popular mantra among internet forums and chat sites was "Hong Kong cinema is dead". The leaden and limp excuse for an action picture, Bloody Secret, is a prime example why. Shamelessly pandering to Mainland officials to try and get a release there by stuffing itself full of jingoistic imagery and thinly-veiled propaganda, director Alan Chui seemed to have forgotten to create a motion picture that people would actually would want to watch.

In one of the two dozen roles he had in 2000, a very tired and lackadaisical Anthony Wong pops his head in for a few scenes playing the world's oldest college student, Wang, who is in Japan studying the history of the Nanking Massacre, eventually getting a floppy disc (remember those?) full of incriminating images that his right-wing employers (who deny the event ever happened) want to keep under the table. Wang gives the disc to his friend, Li (Ray Lui), who tries to bring it to the Chinese authorities.

While this isn't really that great of a plot, it does give a base for a decent cat-and-mouse thriller or chase/action movie. Bloody Secret is neither of those. Yes, there are a few chases and action sequences, and there are elements from thriller pictures, but the editing and pacing displayed here are just awful, killing the little momentum the film manages to build up. For example, when Li travels to Macau from Japan, they show him getting off the plane, getting in a cab, riding in the cab over a long bridge, riding in the cab through a city, arriving at a nightclub, ordering a drink, making a phone call, watching the show (a full song and dance number) and then meeting up with his girlfriend (Lisa Lu), who, like evry single scene she's in, begins crying. How exactly is this supposed to build up tension and excitement?

Bloody Secret is a movie that I don't think many people would actually be able to get all the way through, if they ever had the misfortune to have the DVD sitting on their coffee table. For some reason (and even without the aid of Jagermeister) your friendly neighborhood reviewer was able to make it through all eighty-nine minutes of this dreck, and by the time the last frames played, which featured doves flying over a slow-motion shot of the Chinese flag, I knew I had just watched something truly awful, a cinematic misfire that deserves to keep its' place at the deep and murky bottom of the bargain bin from whence it came.

RATING: 2.5