Martial arts star Tony Jaa joins the zany
police franchise as our heroes head to Tokyo for more no-holds-barred slapstick action
Asian cinema’s wackiest buddy-comedy action franchise is now at the threequel stage and after a period of bewilderment I’ve begun to enjoy its eccentric hyperactivity. The two zany Chinese cops, Qin Feng (Haoran Liu) and Tang Ren (Baoqiang Wang), have already clocked up some misadventures in Bangkok for the first film and
New York for the second (which featured a peculiar cameo from Michael Pitt); now the daffy duo rock up in Tokyo, where they have been summoned to tackle a bizarre crime.
A local gang boss has been murdered, apparently by a turf rival called Watanabe (Miura Tomokazu) over dinner, but this man insists he’s innocent and demands our heroes find the evidence that will acquit him. The rest of the film is one bonkers digression after another, concerning some strange criminal conspiracies and the shadowy motivations of the victim’s assistant Anna Kobayashi (Masami Nagasawa).