A big venture for Cinema City, a stab at international market exposure by featuring synch sound in Chinese and English, Eastern and Western cast, global locations and an award winning director at the helm. Sadly and also deservedly, Undeclared War no doubt played in the factors that led to Cinema City closing down. Their aim for an experimentation between East and West may be what an A-list production could've executed in Hong Kong at the time but it ranks as B in a global perspective. All well and good if director Ringo Lam had given us a ride worth taking for all its flaws. As it stands now, it's full of flaws and contains way too little ride.

Not that this is territory Lam works best in but he does showcase early a ruthless nature that means killing off everyone in sight to trigger internal hatred in characters such as Gary. On a technical level it seems awfully weird to have gore manifest itself in the form of puffy smoke but we'll take the indication and hope Lam can run with it together with action director Chris Lee (director of Queen's High). Because for all the uninteresting and stock tangents that his brother Nam Yin together with Deborah Grant, Timothy Lung and Louis Roth have concocted at script stage, Undeclared War doesn't declare itself to deal with highly layered issues. It's the Eastern world countries rebelling against the capitalist West with the two sides also butting heads within the law enforcement. Tommy Wong's character calls the leader of the free world "President George Bullshit" at one point so simple minded antagonism from the Chinese is there, without it really mattering as such for the layers of the film. But then again it is very much allowed to indulge in story aspects too but that comes from a place that worries that Lam's mayhem isn't very spot on. In fact, it's very pedestrian aside from a good apartment chase/shoot-out and a brief boat chase but you do think back that his mayhem works best for Lam when characters are established prior, within and after it. Undeclared War therefore trips, again and again even, with its basic plot points, inane dialogue and attempts at bonding between the camps.

The CIA character of Gary is quite the messy, street level agent, spouting slurs of the worst kind before being taken down to earth but same is of course true for Danny Lee's Bong. Shame again that the interaction halts here before anything inspired can take over. Lee does what he can with very little, doing fairly tuned work when speaking English but as with most of the Hong Kong performers, this dialogue doesn't come with the right tone even within the character shells of Hong Kong people. It doesn't help to have a ropey performer in Peter Lapis either who was probably drawn in 5 minutes at script stage. Rosamund Kwan probably delivers the best pronunciation but the reporter fighting for her right to express herself while also being drawn into a totally unnecessary romance sub-tangent with Lee's Bong makes Kwan unfortunately just decoration. Extraordinary beauty Olivia Hussey as a member of Liberation Army looks weak initially for possible character reasons but ends up on that verdict acting-wise while it's actually the late Louis Roth who surprises with an intense turn as a Russian member of the World Liberation Army.

Take a cue out of the villain concept book by making Vernon Wells's terrorist leader white haired, a rather dull looking scope frame, the manifestation of the ultimately lame social commentary concerning East vs. West as a fight breaks out between the tourists and the locals and embarrassment for many involved in the production rears its head. Was Cinema City truly believing they had a global winner on their hands here? Even if not, they didn't manage to clinch the B-movie mark either and as much as one should extend love towards the legendary production house, Undeclared War merely runs on fumes that means for a Ringo Lam movie, images are merely requisite.

Undeclared War uses the age-old plot device of the mismatched "buddy" cops. This time out, it's Danny Lee (yes, contain your shock, he's once again playing a cop) and Peter Lapis (an actor whose only other role of note before this was a guest shot on "Hunter"). The guys are both trying to catch a terrorist named Hannibal (played by Vernon Wells, who went on to star in such classics as Sexual Response, Manosaurus and, of course, Power Rangers Time Force) who has started bombing areas around Hong Kong. As you might expect, Danny and Peter hate each other in the beginning, but end up teaming together to bring down Hannibal once and for all.

As you might guess from the plot, Undeclared War is almost night and day when compared most of Lam's earlier work like Prison on Fire. Even though the movie presents itself as a serious thriller in the vein of the Tom Clancy films like Clear and Present Danger, there's a lot of humor -- both intentional and, unfortunately, unintentional. For example, in one of the opening scenes, a group of terrorists (complete with sunglasses and five o' clock shadows) dress up as nuns to do an assassination. It's absurd -- almost Wong Jing-esque -- and leaves the viewer to wonder how "serious" this movie is supposed to be, especially since each bullet hit seems to draw forth a fountain of bloody mist.

Despite the inherent cheesiness of Undeclared War (which includes some very bad acting, though Danny Lee does a good job in a role where he predominately speaks English) it still manages to gel together into something interesting. The action (over-the-top as it may be, especially in this type of movie) is done well -- one definitely sees the beginnings of Lam's firefights in Full Contact here -- and the movie moves along at a good enough clip so that the shortcomings don't have too much time to sink into the viewer's mind. Flawed as it may be, Undeclared War delivers the goods for fans of Hong Kong gunplay, but those wanting a little more substance with their movie viewing will probably end up feeling a bit shafted.