Considering the state of Hong Kong action cinema with a thriller touch, it's encouraging to see a low-budget film being executed with a fair amount of skill. Originality is not what Explosive City will ever be associated with and director Sam Leong, whose Color Of Pain received mostly poor reviews, certainly is in the viewers face. 90% of the film is a dizzying, headache inducing handheld experience, also within the gunplay scenes and it's more a strained attempt to provide style. Even when going for character depth, Leong's choice is to have the film being a visual- and audio exploration. But in the long run, Explosive City manages to not falter that much at all actually. Leong's echoing of plotlines from 24 and to a certain extent Shiri is less intrusive than it sounds and he supplies a decent amount of edge of your seat-entertainment throughout this ride. The intrusive cinematography even works with the desired choices at select points and it's a tight experience for a surprising amount of minutes. Simon Yam may look like he's phoning in a performance but his dead cool is still an immersing act while Alex Fong's trademark quiet dignity gets another worthy showcase.

Towards the end the energy starts to peter out, Sonny Chiba's brainwash scheme towards kids feels just a little too sci-fi for this film and the mixed language usage provides its set of problems but Hong Kong cinema have before thrived on low-fi vehicles that delivers desired genre entertainment. Back then, Explosive City wouldn't have turned heads. Today, it's kind of welcome. Eddy Ko, Samuel Pang and Lam Suet also appear.