Once a Thief

One of John Woo's last Hong Kong films, and the inverse of the style he is known for: this is an action comedy. Three orphans grew up together and became art thieves. Joe, Jim and Cherie love each other, and two of them love the same woman. A job stealing a painting in France goes wrong and Joe is presumed dead. He returns some time later in a wheelchair. Woo's slow-motion gunfights are here, but the register is entirely different; tape recordings, dance sequences and passages built on jokes dominate. Woo described it as an attempt at something close to a Cary Grant comedy. Chow Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung and Cherie Chung star. Its oddest scene is a wheelchair fight, where Woo's acrobatic choreography meets comedy. He remade the story as a television film in America in 1996. An enjoyable choice for anyone curious about Hong Kong cinema and Woo's lighter side. For a viewer expecting hard action, the film keeps switching register and its dramatic passages are weak.