Love, romance, action, thriller, surprise ending, history of triads and China/Taiwan/Japan/Hong Kong relations, politics, betrayal, and the good guys/bad guys win in the end (happy ending). So, how could it turn out so boring? Whatever your interest, there was too much of the other stuff and too little of whatever your interest might be.Maybe it was how poorly woven all the elements were? Maybe it was the not so surprising ending? Maybe you need to have seen the first five episodes in this series? Maybe you should skip this one! For aspiring filmmakers/cinematographers this could be a valuable lesson in why the KISS principle should be applied to cinema.

Keep in mind that the title here is "Young and Dangerous Part 6." It would be an insult to the audience if each of these flicks had to recap the previous plot points for those who can't make it down to the local video store. Personally if I see Kickboxer III on the shelf I look again till I can find Kickboxer. It's the best of the series since part I, and chicken again steals the show from Ekin Cheng as his character allows humility and depth. Real treat to see Sonny Chiba of the over-the-top streetfighter series hold it down. It was nice to see Gigi Lai overshadow Shu Qi even as a dobbleganger. This genre of hong-kong action flicks often asks the western audience to suspend their standards of Hollywood style visuals and comprehendable plots. But "Born to be King" is visually appealing throughout and is logistically comprehensive. We need not know the backstory of each of our leads to grasp their current position on the triad totem pole and their moral dilemmas in a grasp for more power and responsibility.

While I have not seen earlier films in the Young and Dangerous series, I did find the plot easy to follow and reasonably engrossing, despite some rather awful cinematography. Jordan Chan carries the movie with a remarkable performance. Sonny Chiba plays his customary gangster role to perfection. Other characters are two dimensional. Ekin Cheng looks sullen and pretty; how does he see with all that hair in front of his eyes? Shu Qi pouts and looks beautiful, and plays an airhead so well that one wonders whether she is acting. Indeed, her efforts at crying look suspiciously like laughing. All in all, "Born to be King" is a quite a decent B movie, if one ignores the smarmy bits about Asian brotherhood.

Having never seen another "Young and Dangerous" movie, watching part 6 in isolation is rather like viewing a single episode of a long-running soap-opera, in which you have no idea who the characters are or what their backgrounds might be.The film is surprisingly talky, with lots of double-dealing and back-stabbing, and the odd action set-piece to spice things up. The sub-plot concerns Chicken's attempts at communicating with his new Japanese wife (the highlights of the film, very funny). The moral of the tale seems to be "why can't we (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Beijing, Japan) just get along?". Overall, its all rather baffling to an outsider, and I would definitely recommend watching the previous films in the series first.