Director Ricky Lau had a string of success through the 1980's and 1990's with movies that dealt with the supernatural, most notably several entries in the popular "ghost busting" Mr. Vampire series. But as the popularity of the genre waned in the late 1990's, Lau found his career to be out of direction, and turned to other genres, such as 2000's crime actioner Super Car Criminals. Sadly, the magic Lau had with handling the other-worldly is not apparent at all here, and we're left with what is widely considered to be one of the worst Hong Kong movies of the past ten years.

For a movie called Super Car Criminals that's about high-class car thieves, there's very little in the way of action and/or excitement. In fact, there is not one single solitary car chase. Maybe they had to have the cars (most of which look like cheap kit replicas anyway) back to Hertz by 5 PM. The low-budget (and not in a good way) feeling expands to most other areas of the production as well, wether it's the same items of clothes that are worn throughout the movie, or pistols that look and sound like a child's cheap cap gun.

Probably the ultimate sign of just how low-budget Super Car Criminals is comes via Michael Wong. I know the big lug has his fans out there, and I can find him affable enough if he's in the right role, but his work here is poor, even by his low standards. Of course, he delivers half his lines in English, but poor Mikey can't even deliver those properly. Having him stumble through gear-head talk is one of the lowest depths I've ever plumbed in the twelve years of writing about Hong Kong movies. Roy Cheung and Simon Lui try and prop things up, but ultimately fail to contain the gweilo juggernaut, and poor Louis Koo -- who had just established himself as one of Hong Kong's better actors with the excellent Bullets Over Summer -- looks like he wants to take one of those aforementioned cap guns to his temples.

When you throw in a terrible romantic sub-plot that involves bonding over Dance Dance Revolution, a soundtrack that sounds like it was lifted from the latest Ron Jeremy masterpiece, fight scenes that have the coordination and flair of your average backyard wrestling match, and, once again, the fact that there are zero chase scenes in a movie that is about stealing cars, you get the big stinky lump of day-old cinematic chum that is Super Car Criminals. While it fortunately isn't the worst Hong Kong movie I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through -- William Hung still takes that trophy with Where is Mama's Boy -- by the time the movie was over, I couldn't hit the eject button on my DVD player quickly enough.

RATING: 2