This is an awesome film. It comes off as unexpected, and as I thought, it's going to be a comedy-action film a la Jackie Chan, but that's not the case. It's quite a deep film, exploring dying cops, undercover agents, and how hard their lives can be. It shows comrades being killed, accidentally killing fellow cops, civilians dying caught in gunfire, secret messages, decoding them, and the smuggling of arms.
I think the prominence of the babies in the movie is somewhat annoying. This is copaganda. John Woo's previous works glamorized criminals, while this film attempts to glamorize and humanize cops for a change.
The infants serve as a symbol of hope and innocence, but there are too many scenes that revolve around babies, which slow down the action and get many cops killed who could have helped in the fight. This is a product of rewriting, as the original script was supposed to be darker, but I guess it was deemed ill-spirited. I still think the final product is great.
