I don't know, but why does Hong Kong always make these crime films? It's been over done so many many times why can't they take note from Korean Cinema? These Hong Kong crime drama is such an old genre that nobody watches any more. They over done it and it's becoming boring typical of Hong Kong to make these kind of crime films which nobody really cares for. Why waste good talent with these films. I'm serious, every film coming out of Hong Kong and China has just been really stale. The ideas are stale and the this film is stale. I wish they rethink about their way of filmmaking. The next wave is Korean cinema which is refreshing and full of surprises. I hope they learn a lesson from it! Stop making pointless cop drams that nobody watches or cares about!!!

7.5 /10 rating. Original title is Theory of Ambitions, Crime drama set in Hong Kong spanning 1960's to 80's.

Tony Leung, Aaron Kwok, Richard Ng are the big names here in this really well acted and tough film about police corruption, set in British controlled Hong kong, back in the day. Everyone is dirty, they try their hardest to keep things in order, amongst them selves, along with the British, and the crime gangs- The Triads.

Things get very messy, as drug lords try assert control and even the cops do try to do their jobs, law and order is not an easy game with so much at stake here. The wives do their fair share of power games and violence breaks out with guns and knives. Things, after a time ruin family life and spiral out of control on the streets and the offices.

Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok are the corrupt cops play cat and mouse with each other, but have a respect with each other. But the fallout is coming at some point.

A well told true story about a time of Hong kong where who had power, is anybodies guess?

The premiss of this cop drama is quite promising. It depicts a scenario in which the dedication of the few honest officers amongst Hong Kong's colonial police have to combat both their own crooked comrades as well as the increasingly powerful Triad gangs that are gradually overrunning the place - to the extent that the British might have to send in their troops to restore law and order. What also complicates the story is that both "Nam Kong" (Tony Leung) and "Lui Lok" (Aaron Kwok) are aspirational policemen who are prepared to use whatever it takes to get on - and that, coupled with the equally ambitious attitudes of their wives, means that they are just as corrupt and devious as those they are purporting to be trying to control. The thing with this drama is it's pace. It takes far, far, too long to get going with way too little action or intrigue until well into the second hour, by which time I was starting to wriggle in my seat. There's an inevitability about the whole story thereafter and Philip Yung just doesn't manage to create characters about whom I could care less. The whole honour code/triad criminality plot is largely neglected in favour of an half-hearted, semi-westernised, crime thriller that really is distinctly lacking in thrills and that is just too long. It meandered and rambled too much for me with much to much dialogue and nowhere near enough focus on what could have been a really good hybrid-culture, political, adventure. It's OK, watchable, but really nothing more.