Though it has not been well-received by many, I still went into a viewing of Badges of Fury with high hopes and an open mind, mostly due to the high caliber of work Jet Li has done over the years. Sure, the guy is now fifty years old and we shouldn't really expect him to be on the same level he was at when he was starring in classics like Fist of Legend, but his recent pictures such as Flying Swords of Dragon Gate show he can still bring the goods. Sadly, even after just a few minutes, one comes to realize quickly that there's a reason this release has gotten such bad word of mouth.

Jet Li is known as more of a serious actor versus some of his other contemporaries, most notably Jackie Chan, but he has had found some success in the realm of martial arts comedies, such as with Last Hero in China and High Risk (aka Meltdown), which is one of this reviewer's favorite Jet Li films. The fact that this film seems to share a lot with High Risk -- over the top action choreographed by Corey Yuen combined with big doses of "meta" flavored comedy -- boded well at first, but first time director Wang Zi-Ming (who is not coincidentally the son of long-time Jet Li production partner Chui Bo-Chu) never seems to be sure of himself or his actors.

Too many of the jokes are on the nose; they are far too obvious in showing "hey, we have Jet Li making fun of his own movies", right down to having his character named Wong Fei-Hung, a Chinese folk hero Jet portrayed in the Once Upon a Time in China series. The slapstick bits (of which there are a lot of) are punctuated by Warner Brothers style cartoon sound effects, just to make the audience know this is where they should be laughing, even when they aren't. Hong Kong cinema is often goofy and over the top, but this sort of juvenile approach would make even Wong Jing groan at its' obviousness.

The action scenes don't fare much better. On paper, this sounds to be a great setup, with a list of accomplished martial arts actors included in the production, including Jacky Wu Jing, Ngai Sing (aka Collin Chou), "Beardy" Leung Kar-Yan, and Leung Siu-Lung (aka Bruce Leung). However, even though there are some fun bits in the fights, matters are muddled and hampered by some very poor looking and clumsily employed CGI effects. One would think with China now being a major hub for producing special effects, they could come up with better quality stuff for their homegrown features, but, instead, we are treated to visuals that are on the level of a cutscene from a low budget Playstation 1 role playing game.

One other point -- and this just may be my cinematic equivalent of wearing a tin foil conspiracy hat -- but this is a movie about Hong Kong cops that is set in Hong Kong, yet everyone speaks Mandarin, which is the dialect of Mainland China, where a lot of the production money came from. The Mainland government is well-known for censoring films so police officers are shown in a positive light, so it would serve to make sense from this perspective to change the location to Hong Kong in order to compensate for the cops' buffoonish antics. It's this sort of kowtowing to Mainland standards which has been a major factor to Hong Kong cinema losing its' identity, and a trend that unfortunately will not subside soon as long as the money train keeps rolling.

RATING: 4