The pace of this movie is a bit slow. The drama and crying scenes are a bit longwinded. But we manage to build a good story within the first half an hour still. It’s an interesting story where a Chinese triad boss kills his wife, and his daughter sees it then runs away to America along with a bunch of other illegal Chinese immigrants. They all get found, and the girl gets taken in temporarily by a social worker who happens to be Van Damme’s wife. But the cops are bent – they help the girl’s father track her down, so he kills Van Dame’s wife but the child runs off along with Van Damme’s son. Now he’s trying to track them down – the temporarily adopted Chinese girl, along with his missing son, after finding his wife dead and his home watched by a bunch of Chinese men with guns. So it’s time to reconnect with the local mafia lifestyle that Van Damme recently retired from in order to find his son and seek vengeance for his wife’s murder.
About an hour in, there’s an explicit depiction of a man using a power drill to drill into a kidnapped cop’s arm, to make him talk, while Van Damme is asking him “who killed my wife”. This is an ugly scene but it’s kind of tolerable considering the circumstances in how such torture techniques are kind of warranted, considering how this cop was involved in the murder of Van Damme’s character’s wife. Still, it’s a bit unpleasant, and then the torture continues for several minutes more. These scenes would be condensed down and mostly replaced by other stuff in a better action movie, but the directors obviously have a passion for horror. They should keep it to themselves – it doesn’t belong in our genre.
The final action scene is quite longwinded and soul-less, letting down the whole movie which started off with a slightly interesting story. For this reason I have to rate this movie Watchable – no more. I even find myself fast-forwarding through much of the slower scenes here. After the first hour, this movie was on course for a Lower-OK rating, a bit better than those rated So-So, but after finishing the movie with its weak ending I have to rate it just Watchable – a bit worse than those rated So-So.