This kind of premise has proved serviceable many times in the past, and there's no reason it shouldn't work here. But the film is oddly structured, with jarring shifts between sleepy whimsy and hard-edged violence.

Hong Kong action-comedy auteur Sammo Hung has instead relinquished the controls of his first directorial effort in nearly two decades to a screenplay drenched with cliched mobsters, maudlin melodrama and a plot with red herrings aplenty.

This is a classic Hong Kong marriage of weepy melodrama and brutal, bone-crunching action, and there’s a touching sweetness and tragedy to the story of the quiet, reclusive old man, a career soldier now abandoned by family and by his very mind.

There's enough here to entertain, with adjusted expectations at least, and it's always great to see Sammo Hung on screen and behind the camera