Normally, the words "Chow Yun-Fat" are all it takes to get me to watch a movie. The man is surely one of the best actors working today. With the success of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", I only hope this gets people to check out Chow's considerable filmography. But they might be thrown for a loop with "Once A Thief". In his more prominent roles, Chow succeeds at playing the lone wolf, a guy with his own sense of honor... and displaying a considerable talent for unloading copious amounts of lead into his enemies.

But Joe, Chow's character in "Once A Thief" is quite a switch... the lovably misogynistic buffoon and carefree playboy. I guess when you're one of the world's best art thieves, you can get away with that. You see, Joe, along with Jim (Leslie Cheung) and Cherie (Cherie Chung) are world-class art thieves, raised that way since childhood by a cruel man who calls upon their talents to make a quick buck. Joe and Cherie have a "relationship", which mainly consists of him berating her and playing childish jokes on her. Well, it's hard to take it all too seriously, considering how much Chow yucks it up throughout the movie. Every gesture, every insult is exaggerated to the point of absurdity; it's almost hard to believe this is the same guy who played the stern, dignified Li Mu Bai in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

Anyways, back to the movie... during an art heist gone bad, Joe gets killed, leaving Jim and Cherie to fall in love. Seems Jim has been jealous of Joe all this time, because Cherie's quite the woman and Jim has been in love with her all this time. But Joe, for reasons unexplained, never actually died, and now he's back in a wheelchair. When Jim is asked to pull one more job, stealing the painting that caused Joe to get paralyzed in the first place, Joe has to try to rescue him. Meanwhile, Cherie stays behind and looks worried.

The last part of this film is nothing but silly, over the top action sequences as the baddies try to get their mitts on the painting. Of course, it turns out that the trio's patron has been a heartless bastard all this time, and he thinks nothing of offing his progeny to have his watercolor. I have to hand it to Woo... he certainly came up with some innovative ways for Jim and Joe to deal with their foes (my favorite being the exploding microwave and flaming basketball). It's relatively entertaining, especially watching Chow Yun-Fat go nuts and drop some kung fu... and his battle with the guy that throws exploding and flaming playing cards is quite nice. But that's not why you should watch this movie, if you feel so inclined.

Even if you don't particularly care for Woo's brand of cinema, you have to admit the man knows how to film his movies. The guy's a genius when it comes to capturing the mood, the motion, and the energy of a scene, and "Once A Thief" is perhaps the best example of this. The cinematography is almost perverse in just how beautiful and vivid the scenes all look. My personal favorite is the scene where Jim and Joe are sneaking around a castle at night, trying to steal a supposedly cursed painting; the scenes are painted in blues so thick and rich it's almost claustrophobic, and the use of smoke and moonlight is just icing on the cake. It almost makes up for the laser limbo scene immediately afterwards...

Once a Thief may come as a surprise to viewers who are expecting a film on the order of The Killer or Hard Boiled. While Once a Thief has it's share of hyperstylish gunplay, it's a lot less prominent than in Woo's other films. That doesn't mean that it isn't fun. On the contrary, this film mixes action with cool scenes of professional larceny and light-hearted humor, and leaves out the angst typical of Woo's other film. What is present is the theme of intense male friendship, though at least this in this movie Cherie Chung actually gets to do a few things. The love triangle between the three never really takes off though, because there's no tension; as usual, the relationship between the two male leads is more important than any romantic entanglements. While this film lacks the sheer drama, gunplay, and chutzpah of Woo's other films, it's still worth a look.