This apparently marks the return of Jackie Chan from his Hollywood "prison" back to the serious thriller fare where he made his name.

The trouble is it's very difficult to take the rickety 52-year-old very seriously after a series of knockabout American comedies cemented his crossover appeal.

Where once he could draw favourable comparisons as a sort of light-hearted Bruce Lee, you now fear for his knees as he attempts the sort of stunts he should have replaced with a night in flicking through the Reader's Digest.

Here Chan basically reprises his earlier Police Story inspector except this time he's hit the bottle after his squad were snared in a trap and wiped out.

The killers - who have the appearance of a heavily-armed Hong Kong boy band - turn out to be the rich kid offspring of various magnates and tycoons with a burning hatred for the police.

The main dynamic is the spiky camaraderie between Chan and his young sidekick Frank (Tse) although a bolted-on romantic angle with Charlie Young was apparently added afterwards at Chan's insistence.

Setpieces - including a runaway bus and a vertigo-inducing final scene on the roof of the Hong Kong Convention Centre - invariably impress...but the plot is a formulaic yawn-fest.

With the likes of Tony Jaa and his artifice-free stunts coming up on the rail, Chan is looking increasingly like the embarrassing uncle showing off his martial arts moves.

If he wanted to be taken seriously again he's chosen a pretty strange way to do it.

Tim Evans