A good looking and well produced film that only suffers from some overly abrupt editing. Action scenes are sparse, but Yuen Tak provides some excellent martial arts choreography and the fights are delightful to watch. To offset the grim and serious tone of the film, strange lighthearted comedic moments are sprinkled throughout, including an undercover intelligence mission at a gay bar played mostly for laughs. Ti Lung gives a strong but restrained performance, and Waise Lee does a great job as the ruthless villain. Maggie Cheung is little more than window dressing in this otherwise male dominated film.

Still, I enoyed the movie overall. The characters were enaging (especially Simon Yam's turn as a weaselly rat, a total 180 from the usual suave characters he plays), the story was interesting, and the action was pretty exciting. First Shot is really not that much different from many other similar movies (except that it is based -- albeit loosely -- on a true story), but it is done well and worth a look.