An armoured truck is secretly transporting $100 million for a US bank when it is hijacked by a band of robbers calling themselves the 'Ronin Gang'. The gang blows up the truck and makes off with all the cash. Three young detectives, led by Chan Chun (Nicholas Tse), are soon assigned to thwart another massive bank robbery organised by the Ronin Gang.

As far as action thrillers are concerned, Hollywood's forte seems to be in 'computer-assisted' stunts while Hong Kong film-makers still rely on hard knocks and physical visuals. While Benny Chan's "Invisible Target" has as many explosions and car crashes as, say, "Die Hard 4.0", it is the physical stunts like fistfights and jumping over buildings and plunging a few floors to the ground, that keep our adrenaline pumping overtime. Could the 'Target' of the title refer to the competition from Hollywood?

As expected, director Chan opens right smack with the action - a gang of Vietnamese siblings stages an armoured truck robbery outside a jewellery shop where a young woman is busy selecting her engagement ring. The robbery goes awry, the armoured vehicle is blown up and many are killed - including the woman in the gems shop.

Six months later, HK cop Chan Chun (Nicholas Tse) is still feeling the effects of that US$100 million heist - that woman in the jewellery shop was his fiancee. Need we say he vows revenge? Need we say that the Viet gang is also back - to settle a score with those who betrayed them and took off with the loot?

Before we get down to unravelling the plot, some introductions are in order, and we meet Fong Yik-Wei (Shawn Yue), an experienced detective whose working style is 'hit first, ask questions later', and Wai King-Ho (Jaycee Chan), a rookie police constable who still believes in upholding the law, no matter what happens. Somehow, Chan Chun teams up with these two cops to hunt down the gang led by the vicious Tien Yeng-seng (Wu Jing, hamming his way throughout the film) who discovers that someone 'very high up the social ladder' has sold him out.

I am happy to note that with so much action and stunts in the works, Benny Chan still takes time to develop his characters and even throw in the little details (like a caring but suspicious grandma). Yes, some of the action sequences, especially the brawl in the cafeteria, are rather unnecessary, but Chan manages to use them for comic relief and to show how the three get to bond with one another. Gradually, in between the seat-gripping action, we get to learn more about the cops and even the robbers. Indeed, one of the gangsters even explains to King-Ho that he does what he does because he was brought up that way - in a dog-eat-dog world. And he even gets to die like a hero!

The one big flaw of the movie is its preoccupation with brutal scenes of punishment. Jaycee's role here reminds me of his father, Jackie Chan, in the 80s when his characters always got thrashed relentlessly. Now the son seems to be in the same school of hard knocks and broken noses - and we hope he would graduate (hopefully with honours) to something more subtle and profound. Like in most action movies, logic gaps abound, and don't bother trying to figure out the mechanics of the plot. They don't make much sense. Just enjoy the action and look forward to the next Benny Chan actioner.

I don't know at the time of writing if Cecilia Cheung has given birth to Nicholas Tse's son (reportedly due August) but this movie is sure to make you wince if your dad is jumping off buildings all over Hong Kong while getting blown up and knocked about by double-decker buses like a test dummy.

Still, step aside "Die-Hard 4.0" because as heroic as John McClane is this season, he takes a back seat to the gritty and downright greasy action thriller that is "The Invisible Target". Having just watched the sentimental "Wonder Women" (translated as 'the essence of women'), I'm almost embarrassed to admit that "The Invisible Target" (translated as 'the essence of men') seem to affirm the traditional gender difference between the two!

Maintaining their one-punch charisma despite the scissor-happy censors, three police officers of different rank but equal fury go after a gang of machine-gun-toting robbers who did an armoured truck job some six months back. Chan Chun (Nicholas Tse) is the scruffy, headstrong fighter who'd fight for a laugh but he's hiding some emotional baggage about a dead fiancee, really. Fong Yik-Wei (Shawn Yue) is just as impetuous, having previously been forced to swallow some bullets (quite literally) by the gang leader. The most interesting character belongs to Jaycee Chan though - his police constable Wai King-Ho is a sensitive cop defending the honour of a brother who is accused of defecting from the police to the thugs.

The action in the film stings like peroxide on rubber burn. The feel is great because our characters get burning gasoline all over them, as they ignore the obvious pain from one knockabout to another. Without turning this into a John Woo shoot-'em-up, Benny Chan reuses his "New Police Story" formula of two parts drama and eight parts action, never letting the film turn into one man's sob story.

You'll catch Wu Jing over-acting again as the villain but this film is the latest in a spate of recent H.K. fare which discusses the duality of good and evil more convincingly. Gone are the days of one-dimensional baddies with bleached, VCD-seller hair - our villains these days have deeper motivations. It seems that Cantonese action films are now boasting a higher level of moral ambiguity - something notably captured by the 'mole' plot device in the "Infernal Affairs" series.

Complaints about "The Invisible Target" could be on the finer points of editing, as I felt the story could've been much tighter, with which it would have delivered the five-star knock-out punch. Still, the film is largely effective and very entertaining. I'd watch it for the on-foot chases alone!