Full Alert resembles John Woo’s Face/Off, but then without transmogrifications. It is an action thriller in which a police inspector hunts a criminal masterbrain and vice versa. Kwan, a former expert in blowing up old buildings, is in jail for murder. However his influence outside the gates is so great that inspector Pao rightly fears an escape. Huge sums of money change hands at the race track in Hong Kong. So Kwan is ordered by the Taiwanese Triade (the Chinese Mafia) to rob the heavily-guarded safe with the takings. The motive of many million dollars makes Kwan an even more formidable and harder adversary than he already was. After his spectacular escape from jail, it is Pao’s job to get the ruthless villain back behind bars. And he will stop at nothing to achieve his end.Former actor Ringo Lam got his first Hollywood experience last year with the successful action film Maximum Risk, in which Jean Claude van Damme was given the better punch and kick part. Full Alert is technically flawless and contains everything you may expect from the genre: smoking policemen in Venetian-blinded offices lit blue-grey, explosions, a sensational pursuit with crooks shooting in a gold Mercedes, psychological warfare and plenty of tough language.
