Kill Zone

A surfeit of well-staged martial-arts mayhem can't save this chop-socky action flick, which rehashes situations from countless earlier—and better—movies of the same stripe. Hong Kong-based detective Chan (Simon Yam) wants to nail crime boss Po (Sammo Hung) for the murder of his brother, but feels he'll never marshal enough evidence to make the charges stick and—resigned to this reality—decides to retire from the police force. But his replacement, principled but hard-driving Ma (Donnie Yen), brings new energy and determination to the task, and before long he and Po are pitted against each other in a violent, bloody war. The three leads go through their paces with admirable earnestness, but there's no disguising the plot's thinness, and while the action scenes are impressive—with the bulky, middle-aged Hung more than holding his own against the younger and trimmer Yen—the suffocating sense of déjà vu will have some people punching the fast-forward button to zip past the preliminaries in order to get to the main bout. Not a necessary purchase. (E. Hulse)