		Year: 2000 Director: Stanley Tong Starring: Aaron Kwok, Noriko Fujiwara, Coolio, Mark Dacascos, Ruby Lin, Ken Lo Genre: Action/Adventure

Aaron Kwok plays Darren, an up and coming police officer in China. His partner, Alex (Leehom Wang) is dating their chief's daughter played by the Ruby Lin who is an up and coming fashion designer. Tony, (Mark Dascascos) is the successor to a Chinese smuggling ring and wants to start bringing drugs in to the Mainland with the help of a drug dealer from LA named Coolio who is being tracked by Norika an undercover Japanese Interpol agent.

Stanley Tong has, in the past, directed some of Jackie Chan’s best work but has yet to prove himself as one of Hong Kong’s best directors. This was his chance with an $8 million budget and a top-notch cast to make something special. However, ‘China Strike Force’ does not look anyway near as good on screen as on paper. The film runs like two separate entities an American movie (starring Mark Dacascos and Coolio), and a Hong Kong one (Starring Aaron Kwok and Leehom Wong). These two movies seem to never properly gel. There are some big budget chase sequences here but they never seem to engage and can only be admired on a technical level. Aaron Kwok is given one good scene where his character is shown to be not-as-cool-as-he -thinks but apart from this is wasted. Coolio too is by no means menacing enough to play a bad guy and is given some embarrassingly bad English dialogue to deliver. What saves the film is are the performances of Mark Dacascos (who delivers the film’s one good fight scene), and newcomer Noriko Fujiwara who has both the looks and acting skills. Some sequences are quite nicely done, like the climax where Aaron, Noriko and Coolio must fight on just a pane of glass suspended over the city. But unfortunately bits like this are just too few and far between.

Poorly paced, this film really does Stanley Tong no favours at all as a director. Some bits are very badly filmed and some of the dialogue on display is too trite and cheesy for it’s own good. There are some impressive stunts and all the money is up there on the screen but on the whole it is a real shame that Tong could not deliver anything better with all the tools here at his disposal. A nice attempt at a Hong Kong/Hollywood crossover that just doesn’t live up to expectations at all.