Breaking apart a bit from his usual action-heavy work, director Gordon Chan has created a picture with Okinawa: Rendez-vous that is much like a piece of angel food cake: it's light and sweet, but not really likely to leave you feeling satiated.

Tony Leung Ka-Fai and Gigi Lai play a couple who travel to Okinawa with hopes of resurrecting their tepid relationship, which is under stress due to Tony's dedication to being a cop, even though he is only a file clerk. On the way to the resort, Tony meets up with Faye Wong, who is on the run from her Yakuza boyfriend (Kato Masaya) after stealing US$600,000, which was to be the payment for a thief (Leslie Cheung) who just happens to be another of Faye's beaus.

Okinawa: Rendez-vous' big problem is that there's really no tension at all put out during the movie. Sure, this is a romantic comedy, so you're not going to be expecting to have a nail-biting experience, but it would be nice to have at least some invested emotion in the characters, so you actually care about what happens to them. Releationships and alliances here seem to come and go at the drop of a hat.

Again, we're not expecting anything heavy, but can one really expect to believe that a woman would want to get married after one date that consists of playing stuff like House of the Dead? As much as the game geek set might like to think so, that's about as likely to happen as your friendly neighborhood reviewer switching to non-alcoholic beer. And before you nerds start firing off angry e-mails, keep in mind that I'm a gamer myself, and have witnessed first-hand the debacle that can result from bringing your date to Gameworks.

At any rate, I'm sure some of you out there would question my review of Okinawa: Rendez-vous anyway, since I'm the sort of guy that usually enjoys more sordid fare like Naked Killer. But I'd like to think that I can appreciate films of any genre, if they're made well. And even though things are enjoyable enough, especially with the charm of its' stars, there's not really anything present here that's going to elevate Okinawa: Rendez-vous to being anything other than an unoffensive picture that'll win guys a few points with their girlfriends if they throw it into their DVD player instead of the latest Donnie Yen movie.

RATING: 5