The most compelling thing about this routine action caper is that it leaves itself open to charges of dwarfism from the politically correct.

The vertically-challenged victim in question is tossed around a boxing ring by Jet Li's undercover Taiwanese cop before being used as a human cosh.

That stirring scene dispensed with, there's little to distinguish this martial-arts based yarn from a thousand others before it.

DMX, who sounds more like a latterly fashionable bicycle than an action hero, is Tony Fait, a career criminal with a strict 'no guns' rule.

Li's Su is the 'kung fu James Bond' in LA to retrieve a handful of black diamonds that are wanted by hi-tech mobster Chi McBride.

They're brought together when Tony's daughter is kidnapped by the high-kicking Far Eastern villains chasing the prized ice.

We've already had our doubts about Tone's concept of fatherhood - he handed over a stolen diamond necklace as a pressie to his eight-year-old after the last heist.

Now his paternal instincts erupt and he's forced to kickbox his way around the criminal haunts of LA to find his precious nipper.

The annoying thing about this is that it launches with a slickly effcctive jewellery heist that raises false hopes of an above-par actioner.

It then proceeds to slump back onto a plotline so jarringly familiar that it hits home like a multiple case of deja vu.

Leaps of logic that would confound Steven Hawking are punctuated by fight scenes memorable mainly because Li conducts them with his hands in his pockets.

One for martial arts afficionados only, while the rest of us - fans of little people included - get pretty short shrift.

Tim Evans