I haven't seen any Hong Kong John Woo movies in years and years, but every time I see one of his American ones (I also recently watched Broken Arrow), I suspect that I won't like them. Maybe America really did kill everything that was exciting about him, but these movies are so crappy and ineptly constructed and, despite all their whirling movement and sometimes-intricate choreography, so weightless and inconsequential. This movie feels like amateur-hour, which, for such a heralded and longstanding action director, is pretty much baffling.
This part might not exactly be his fault, but sorta like Unknown it goes to great lengths to squander a fairly promising set-up. Both movies have the ability to use their mystery status, with a protagonist lost in a world he doesn't quite have a grasp on and trying to make sense of it while people are possibly trying to kill him, as a way to explore tension and suspense in a "is it real or am I crazy?" way, but both move too quickly into their respective plots and spend too much time on the least interesting aspects of their narratives.
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