Popular Hong Kong film-maker Andrew Lau (he's the guy behind crowd-pleasing pictures such as Infernal Affairs and Young and Dangerous) travels to Amsterdam to direct a group of mostly Korean actors in Daisy, a pan-Asian production that has some interesting ideas on paper, but is ultimately felled by its' pedestrian execution of the tired cop-versus-gangster love triangle scenario.

The woman caught in the middle of the triangle is Hye-Young (played by Jeon Ji-Hyun, who became Korean cinema's "it" girl after her turn in the box office smash My Sassy Girl) who is a young artist that becomes infatuated with a stranger leaving daisies on her doorstep. She thinks they are from a officer named Jeon-Woo (Lee Sung-Jae), but they're actually from a killer named Park-Yi (Jung Woo-Sung). Nevertheless, Hye-Young and Jeon-Woo begin dating, but their budding romance is cut short after a gunfight between Jeon-Woo and Park-Yi leaves Hye-Young mute.

This sort of story has been done many times before -- there are certainly echoes of John Woo's classic gangster film The Killer here -- and Andrew Lau's lackluster direction does nothing to breathe any sort of new life into the story. The "international cut" version of Daisy watched via instant Netflix for this review clocks in at around 125 minutes, and it definitely feels like there could have been some elements tightened up, or outright cut. Yes, not every movie has to run at ninety minutes, but this production does carry some bloat to it.

Also hampering matters are the actors' performances. While they're not egregiously bad, there is nothing really all that great about them, either. This leads to none of the main characters coming off as all that compelling or even likeable, and, as such, it's hard to the audience to become invested in what happens to them. When you throw in an almost total lack of action -- the few gunfights feel like they were thrown in as tokens, or for something to slap on trailers to try and woo western audiences -- Daisy solidifies its' below-average standing in the crowded realm of Asian crime dramas.

RATING: 4