While I have not seen earlier films in the Young and Dangerous series, I did find the plot easy to follow and reasonably engrossing, despite some rather awful cinematography. Jordan Chan carries the movie with a remarkable performance. Sonny Chiba plays his customary gangster role to perfection. Other characters are two dimensional. Ekin Cheng looks sullen and pretty; how does he see with all that hair in front of his eyes? Shu Qi pouts and looks beautiful, and plays an airhead so well that one wonders whether she is acting. Indeed, her efforts at crying look suspiciously like laughing. All in all, "Born to be King" is a quite a decent B movie, if one ignores the smarmy bits about Asian brotherhood.
Review of Born to Be King
