Throw Down — or How to Lose All Your Tokens Playing Virtua Fighter 4 — is the latest from mainstream Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To, and the last I ever want to see. Resembling my last bowel movement more than a coherent film, Throw Down is a torturously terrible Karate Kid for the new millennium that fails miserably as an action film, as a comedy and as a people-coming-to-grips-with-things drama. Not even sweaty man-on-man action can save this one from the recycling bin.

Its plot — and I use the term in the most generous sense — involves Tony (Aaron Kwok) picking fights and breaking night club furniture, Sze-To (Louis Koo) getting drunk and stumbling around comically, and Mona (pixie-cute Cherrie Ying) chasing after paper money again and again... and again. And again. And then she does it some more. A handful of themes (ie. drunkard making a miraculous comeback to win it all) are haphazardly sewn into the tattered fabric of this hand-me-down street brawler.

Very few throw downs occur until the latter half of Throw Down, where Throw Down fulfills its throw down quota with a heaping helping of piping hot throw downs. Did that sentence annoy the piss out of you? Now you know my pain, dear reader. My throbbing, urethra-searing pain. To's uncanny ability to torment an audience is expertly conveyed through a number of overwrought slow-motion musical montages, yawn-inducing action setpeices and the aforementioned chasing-after-money plot device, the patent to which To must own.

Throw Down's slick, neon-infused visual style is its only saving grace, but it amounts to little more than a brightly-colored candy shell on top of a hollow, peanut-less center. That To has the audacity to dedicate this hum-drum heap of refuse to Akira Kurosawa is its ultimate insult. Do whatever you must — call your mother-in-law, go to church or just tear your own head off — to avoid wasting 95 minutes on this rancid slice of cinematic super slop.

Thumbs Down. Throw Up... er, Throw Down reminds us that crummy films come from all corners of the globe. Shame on you, Hong Kong!