Fridae

This Singapore-produced Hong Kong-style action film stars Francis Ng as a hitman who gets caught up in various plots and subplots involving criminals and mobsters. Between the requisite gunplays and menacing stares, he finds time to fall in love with an attractive waitress (Vivian Hsu) and play correspondence chess with a police captain (Ti Lung).

Directed by the Brazilian-born Max Makowski, the film is somewhat derivative of Hollywood crime movies and Hong Kong action flicks. It never rises above the predictable genre conventions that one come to expect from this sort of film, leaving only Francis Ng to lend grace and inspiration to an otherwise C-grade movie. (The glorious Harvey Keitel has too small a role to make a difference.)

You could take it or leave it. But it is a made-in-Singapore film, so if you want to see how Hong Kong action sequences play out on our home ground, go splash your $8 on.