Year of release: 2004

Rating: IIB for violence and language

Genre: Triad drama

Director: Wong Ching Po

Producer: Eric Tsang

Stars: Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Shawn Yu, Edison Chen, Eric Tsang, Miu Kiu Wai, Norman Tsui, Lam Kar Tung, Wu Chien-Lin, Chapman To

DVD: Mei Ah - catalog number 679

Extras: trailer, data bank, making-of featurette, cast interviews, music video, out-takes, deleted scenes, photo gallery, poster featurette

Notes: Another great new DVD from Mei Ah. Everything is presented well, even down to the packaging. The much-ballyhooed scene featuring Edison Chen getting "romantic" with a dog can be found by selecting "play all" at the deleted scenes menu on disc 2.

Even though Hong Kong's movie output has fallen dramatically over the past few years, there is always one thing that the film-makers can go to with confidence: the Triad drama. Bolstered by the success of the Infernal Affairs trilogy, there has been a series of new crime pictures (Wong Jing's Colour of the Truth and Johnnie To's PTU among them) which have found favor with both critics and fans all over the world. Unfortunately, Jiang Hu isn't one of them. It seemingly has all of the ingredients of a classic gangster flick, but it never seems to pull everything together, and the resulting product is a bit bland.

"Jiang Hu" is a Cantonese term that loosely translates to "underground/hidden world" and falls into the Chinese names of many Hong Kong crime or swordsplay movies. In this particular instance, it tells the story of two sets of friends. Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung play the heads of a Triad gang who are under attack from their lieutenants. Shawn Yu and Edison Chen are on the other end of the spectrum -- they're low-level punks who are assigned to their first real job, a hit on a big crime boss. During one fateful night, the friends put each others' relationships to the test as their stories intertwine.

The story isn't too mind-blowing, but it is suitably different enough from the "some guy killed my buddy as a kid so I have to get revenge when I'm an adult" or the "undercover cop gets in too deep and sacrifices everything" motifs found in so many other Triad films. Jiang Hu's main problem is that it doesn't know how to deliver the story. Is it a serious drama ala Infernal Affairs? A artsy picture like Chungking Express? Pop fluff like Young and Dangerous? Jiang Hu tries to be all of these and never delivers. Much of the suprisingly short running time (about 85 minutes) is dominated by scenes where Andy and Jacky talk to each other over dinner. When it's not that, it's oddball stuff like Edison Chen having "relations" with a canine. I'm not the world's biggest Edison Chen fan by any means, but I almost felt embarrassed for the guy.

Jiang Hu tries to capture the icy-cold cool of recent gangster film hits, but it just ends up being lukewarm instead. It's not a horrible movie, but there was a time when most any Hong Kong crime film was almost guaranteed mandatory viewing for fans of the genre -- 2004 doesn't seem to be one of them. This is an admirable attempt, but I hope director Wong Ching Po soon realizes that keen visual trickery can only take you so far. Movies like the aforementioned Young and Dangerous certainly used their share of camera flair, but audiences cared about the characters. More and more, Hong Kong film-makers seeming to be confusing style with substance, and Jiang Hu is just the latest example of that.

RATING: 6