I really wanted this to be a better movie. That's probably my fault. After all, the director, Ringo Lam, is more noted for directing Jean-Claude Van Damme's Maximum Risk. I love Chow Yun Fat, but this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen him in. He plays a bouncer named Jeff at a Bangkok strip club (which isn't nearly as dirty as it sounds) who gets called in after his buddy, Sam, racks up a huge gambling debt he can't pay off. Desperate for cash, Jeff, Sam, and their other friend Chung decide to join up with Sam's gay magician cousin Judge and his crew to knock off an armored car. Unbeknownst to them, Judge has taken a payment from the mob boss to kill them all after the job.
So Chung catches a bullet to the face and Jeff manages to hole up in some poor Thai family's house with the bad guys outside. Judge sends Sam in to finish him off. Being a giant pussy, Sam shoots his friend and then runs out crying. Judge proceeds to blow up the house, murdering the entire family except for Jeff and the teenage daughter, who just gets horrible burns.
Jeff takes Burned Girl and heads to a monastery to recover. Meanwhile, Sam and the bad guys go to Hong Kong and Sam starts dating Jeff's stripper girlfriend, Mona. Eventually, Jeff comes back for revenge and there are a couple of decent shootouts. This leads to the only mention of Burned Girl in the rest of the film. Jeff throws her out there in conversation to make Sam feel guilty for shooting him. That's exactly as lame as it seems.
Payback this is not.
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