'Flash Point'

BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

March 14, 2008

The Hong Kong carrot dangled before us during the inane but occasionally elegant "Flashpoint" is in the action sequences, which blossom like the rare, many-fisted rose bud; the stick is the rest of the movie, with which director Wilson Yip beats us insensible. Set, for no particular reason, on the eve of the 1997 handoff of Hong Kong to China, this politics-free police procedural/sedative features Donnie Yen as Sergeant Ma and Louis Koo as undercover officer Wilson, two cops out to capture a band of Vietnamese triad members who are up to no good, even if we don't know precisely what.

The recommendation here is for the reader to go out and rent Yip's "S.P.L.," the 2005 prequel to "Flash Point," and a far funnier, more action-packed and categorically more sensible take on the Asian-action flick.

FLASH POINT (R). 1:28 (brutality, violence). In Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles. At Imaginasian, Manhattan.