The Big Holdup

Attempts of the Shaw Bros studio to branch out have rarely been successful. Yuen Chor takes his usual martial arts crew and turns them into bank robbers, coming out the other side with a veritable heist film. Safe one or two decent action scenes, the result is a rather slow and overly sentimental misfire.

Five men with no prior history as criminals band together and plan a heist. The heist itself goes surprisingly well, but as is always the case with this type of film, the problems start afterwards. When they get the police on their tail and the members begin to distrust each other, a fated ending seems unavoidable.

Yuen Chor doesn't do much with this film. The plot isn't anything special, the cinematography is bland, the pacing is too slow as the tension is lacking and the drama is way overblown. It's understandable that the Shaw Bros wanted something to fall back on when martial arts would inevitably go out of style, but there's more to it than just jumping from one genre into the next with the same team of people. Not very good.