Good production values, great photography, seamless editing, attractive young Oriental stars, and a puzzling plot leave you guessing to the very end what the outcome is. In the meantime enjoy relentless action in a realistic gorefest involving a competitive face-off between the 2 best hit men in the Far East, and some pretty smart and relentless police who are out to take them both down. It all takes place in many exotic locales around Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. What impressed me was that although my initial reaction to the two main protagonists was negative, I began to like and to root for each one to survive. It's not all bullets -- the gore is quickly passed over, and there's a lot of athleticism to add some interest, as well as some arty overtones by way of O's interest in photography, and even a brief, artfully-done sex scene. There are flashbacks and story-telling which confound the plot by taking you back and forth in time and back and forth between fiction and reality. I recognized Andy Lau, playing Tok, from House of the Flying Daggers. This movie is much better for its genre than a lot of the dreck coming out of Hollywood.