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Director Ringo Lam briefly flirted with Hollywood with the lean, assured Jean-Claude Van Damme revenge picture Maximum Risk before returning to Hong Kong with a darker, more somber style. The Suspect concerns former teenage hit man Don (Louis Koo), released after a 12-year prison stretch, who's pressed into a political assassination and framed by his one-time best friend, who carries out the killing when Don refuses. Sought by the cops, targeted by the crooks, and hounded by a shadowy mercenary force hired by the dead man's associates to capture the real killer, Don travels from the Philippines to Hong Kong and back again to find his phantom former boss Chan Hung (Simon Yam) and confront his former comrade in arms. Lam fills the film with impressive action scenes: assassination by rocket launcher, a car chase through Manila city streets, and raw, explosive shootouts. Where John Woo turns violence into a kinetic ballet of pure cinema, Lam pares action to the essentials and makes every death resonate, and it's that gritty intensity that makes the film work. Don't expect the brightly colored, roller-coaster-paced comic book craziness of 1980s Hong Kong action cinema. This is a dark thriller with a somber look, and though Lam still subscribes to the romance of the gangster code of debt and honor, he takes the sheen off the armor. --Sean Axmaker
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