Wow! Such a good movie.

So much average

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A very brutal gangster gangster epic about an Asian gang in New York in the 80's and early 90's.Although the gangs are supposed to be immigrants they all speak perfect English which I guess was mostly to do with it being more easily to comprehend and more easily accessible for an English speaking audience who otherwise wouldn't watch Asian cinema.So it's a non-issue really that one can look aside.The acting is fine, as is the cinematography and editing etc. As I was watching it I found myself wondering why the rating was so low because I felt like it was a well-made movie on all levels.But then of course in the end they had to throw one final twist into the mix that didn't make any sense with the movie we just witnessed.Really irks me when they do this in films, if you're gonna add a twist you need to make sure that everything we witnessed checks out and that character personalities aren't completely bypassed just for the sake of throwing in that twist.Which is the exact thing they did not do here, won't get into details but when you see it you will know what I mean.Would have gotten a 7 but because of that I have to pull it down a notch to a 6.

For a movie I knew nothing about and had only read a generic one-sentence description, this film turned out to be a good movie!The story is entertaining and fascinating, the violence is story driven and not unnecessarily used but while the movie did start out entertaining, it did start to lose it's way after the halfway point.There is very little action, it's mostly drama driven, but there is a graphic torture scene. It's well acted mostly by unknowns (well to me anyway) with the only people I knew were Harry Shum Jr (Glee) and Ray Liotta (Goodfellas). There is twist at the end and because it's based on a true story, there are some details on where some the characters are now.This is a film that is okay to watch once but I don't see myself watching it again.

I watched this with my wife who is from Hong Kong (while I am a whitey who grew up in Australia). This movie, while based on true events, has a very similar and predictable feel to many of the Hong Kong gang films in Cantonese that we've seen together. The main difference being, despite having dozens of Chinese actors, nearly all the dialog is in English and the film is set in New York. Anyway, my wife gave it 6/10 because she knew what was going to happen before it happened as she's watched more of these movies than me. I give it 7/10.However, while the film had this feeling of predictability for the most part, the ending has a plot twist that neither of us saw coming. There is strong violence in this movie and a torture scene that I found a bit disturbing, so stay clear if you don't like that sort of stuff.

Generic, Cluttered, and Confusing, this Under Developed and Utterly Exploitive Examining tries to be too many things. But it is too Short and Unrealized and it Comes Off as Slick B-Movie Badness so often seen.It's a Mad World, the Setting that the Illegal Immigrants Find Themselves, where Human Trafficking, Torture, Guns, Drugs and Money are all in Plain Sight and Little is Offered to Them that is Not a Daily Drudge of Lost Hope and Dreams.This is a Story of Two Youngsters Flushed down the toilet of Humanity and End Up at the End of the Line that is Presented as a Way Out of Ordinariness. "A fisherman in China will always be a fisherman in China, but in America even a dishwasher has hope.".At the End of this over Indulgent of Everything in the Melting Pot is Familiar Stories since Forever, You will Find Nothing New or Nothing Worth Knowing that isn't already a Common Thread that is on going Weaving Fabric of America's Crazy Quilt to this Day. Not Much has Changed in well over a Hundred Years Except the Countries of Origin.