By Stephen Pytak 

     When you pop this one in, try not to blink.
     Some of the best things go by faster than the 
bullets.
     During a hyper car chase scene, a car door 
flies off and, like a Chinese star, sticks in a wall.
     During a gunfight, a child is hit and blown off a 
skateboard.
     During another, a mercenary leaps out the window 
of a multi-story apartment complex and scurries 
down on a rope. We follow him and there are no cuts. 
I don't know how they did it. I guess the camera 
operator jumped out the window too.
     Director Tsui Hark, who produced John Woo's 
"The Killer (1991)," takes us on an incredible ride, 
packing so much movement and artistry into some 
of his compositions, it's impossible to catch it all 
on the first show without a blink.
     The film is peppered with these amazing two or 
three second shots, from imploding backgrounds 
to shots of pistol magazines and babies flying across 
rooms.
     So after I saw it the first time, I had to see it again 
the next day. 
     The story is about two men, their pregnant 
girlfriends, and how fate brings people together and 
tears them apart.
     "Tyler (Tse)" is a punk bartender who, after a 
one-night stand with a police woman, finds out he's 
going to be a father. She wants no part of him. 
Feeling guilty, he finds a higher paying job as a 
bodyguard and forces cash under her apartment door.
     Along the way, he befriends a mercenary, "Jack 
(Bai)," who also has a pregnant girlfriend. Jack wants 
to go straight, but the underworld has a grip on him 
and won't let go. When hired to kill his girlfriend's 
father, Jack takes the money and runs. 
     This leads to gunfights, tricky escapes, high-flying 
action and all the other things which make Hong 
Kong cinema great.
     The ending boasts what is probably the most 
insane and intense scene of a woman giving birth 
ever filmed.
     Tyler is stuck in a train station with Jack's pregnant 
girlfriend, "Ah Jo (Cathy Tsui)" and the money. And 
she goes into labor.
     With the underworld closing in, she gives birth on 
a wood table in a storage room. They lock the door. 
They know it won't hold. So, Tyler gives her a gun 
and tells her to aim it at the door.
     "Push! Push! Hold the gun! That's good…" he 
says as he helps her deliver.
     Hark is a pioneer of action adventure cinema and 
this is his best film to date. Like the mercenary, Jack, 
he's quick and never runs out of ideas or steam.