Despite having two of the most experienced veterans in the cop drama genre with Danny Lee and Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Blue Lightning fails to become anything more than an average release. Perhaps it is because the stars are so familiar with this type of material that the movie comes off as a bit limp, because most everyone involved looks more than a little bored with the proceedings -- and the viewer sitting through this film will probably be as well.

Blue Lightning sets off with a cracking sequence (helmed by the under-rated action director Tony Leung Siu-Hung) where a hitman takes out a couple mid-coitus. It's nudity and violence -- just what the doctor ordered in terms of setting the tone for a high-octane action/thriller. Unfortunately, things settle down into a fairly standard drama after that, with Danny Lee playing an alcoholic former cop (who is the ex-husband of one of the victims) teaming with Tony Leung Ka-Fai to find the killer.

The film follows a fairly straight-forward path: Danny struggles to put down the bottle at the behest of his son (Wong Kwan-Yuen, who is one of the better kid actors you'll see in a Hong Kong movie), Tony butts heads with his boss and is eventually taken off the case, and both men show a general disregard for the rules as they discover a bigger conspiracy behind the murder. There's nothing necessarily wrong with a cop drama, but with so many of these types of films coming out of Hong Kong around this time, it would have been nice if the film-makers had tried something a bit different, especially considering some of the cast and crew involved.

Disappointing as the end results are, Blue Lightning still does enough things right to make it worth a look for fans of hard-boiled Hong Kong cop pictures. The film has a nice noirish look to it, the soundtrack is one of the more unique you'll hear in a movie of this style, and there's also a decent amount of action, of which it looks like poor little Wong Kwan-Yuen took the brunt of the punishment. It's that sort of little thing that seems to be only done in Hong Kong productions, and why even the more average releases from the "golden age" still hold up (at least somewhat) today.

RATING: 5