[WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS]

I can't recall the last time I had this much fun watching an action film.

Sometimes it's good for the soul to watch mindless, yet enormously entertaining, popcorn movies. That's exactly what Corey Yuen's "Chik yeung tin sai" is.

The plot's preposterous, but no more than most Hollywood blockbusters. It's just that "So Close" - the film's English title - provides tons more fun than any recent Hollywood actioner. And Yuen and screenwriter Jeff Lau still toss in a doozy of a plot twist that most American action filmmakers wouldn't have the chutzpah to do.

The plot: Two sisters, Lynn (a tremendously sexy Shu Qi) and Sue (Zhao Wei) turn assassins after their parents get gunned down by gangsters seeking the girls' father's invention - technology that can infiltrate every closed-circuit monitoring system in the world. Lynn, the brawn, and Sue, the brains, now use that technology to fight bad guys. Tracking them after their latest hit is female cop Hong Yat Hong (Karen Mok).

Although it's occasionally referred to as Hong Kong's "Charlie's Angels," comparing the two American films to Yuen's work is akin to likening a Pauly Shore movie to "Pulp Fiction." Charlie's Angels got nothing on the three women in "So Close." These heroines would mop the floor with Charlie's Angels.

The film's charm is that it doesn't delude itself by pretending to be something it isn't. Yuen set out to make an action film brimming with sensational stunts, exciting gunplay and cheeky humor and starring three attractive women. Lau's script espouses a feminist message, not only with the sisters' high-kicking independence, but also with Hong's struggle in a male-dominated police force. But feminism isn't the film's main goal. Dazzling us with awe-inspiring action is. And Yuen packs his film with plenty of it.

One particularly astounding display of gunplay features Lynn, clad in a tight white body suit, calmly eviscerating an army of bad guys in a shiny high-rise. The sequence features the most novel pair of stiletto heels and quite possibly the best and cheekiest use of Burt Bacharach's "Close to You" I've heard in a movie.

There's also a rousing fight between two handcuffed women within the claustrophobic confines of a parking garage. No wisecracks, no expressions of bravado. No dialogue whatsoever. Just the grace and beauty of a magnificently choreographed action sequence.

Yuen clearly is having fun. A three-person brawl with swords, guns, knives and bamboo seems like a tribute to himself – the scene's reminiscent of a fight featuring Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock in Yuen's "Huang gu shi jie" (1985), aka "Yes, Madam" and "Police Assassins."

The music's often cheesy and dialogue doesn't exactly zing. But "So Close," nevertheless, enthralls because it's so unpretentious in its aim.

American action films would be so much better if their filmmakers were half as imaginative as their Hong Kong counterparts. Is it any surprise that Hollywood now actively courts Asian filmmakers and stunt coordinators? Of course, thanks to studio meddling, they've wound up making mediocre stuff here.

Yeah, Hollywood makes popcorn actioners, too. But they're rarely as thrilling or enjoyable as "So Close."

SO CLOSE is an unwieldy combine of high energy and poor production values. Certainly as a film it bears little artistic merit, coming across as unfocused and rather cheesy throughout; the CGI and wire effects (which sometimes mimic THE MATRIX) are completely unbelievable and the film opens with possibly the worst, most over the top set-piece in the history of cinema.

Thankfully things settle down a little after that and the film steps into gear, becoming a cat and mouse game between the police and the antiheroes propelling the narrative. Basically, there are a couple of assassins who are involved in a feud with a large organisation; this feud consists of each side constantly trying to kill the other. Meanwhile, a dedicated female cop and her sidekick are trying to catch them.

There's no more to it than that, and for the most part SO CLOSE trades on the charisma of its female stars. Shu Qi (THE TRANSPORTER) is the icy femme fatale, Zhao Wei (MULAN) her technology-adept sister. Karen Mok (THE MAN OF TAI CHI) is the cop, and Yasuaki Kurata has a guest role as a random villain who inevitably gets a big fight scene with the girls at the climax.

The action in this one isn't too shabby, but then you'd expect it to be good with Cory Yuen at the helm. Sadly this is one of his lesser efforts and it's a big comedown from the likes of POLICE ASSASSINS back in the 1980s. It is kind of fun, though, in its own cheesy way, and I'd rather sit through it again than watch the US CHARLIE'S ANGELS films.

So Close? Not Even Close is more like it, this showy but shallow action flick from the usually reliable Corey Yuen missing its mark by a mile. Shu Qi plays sexy assassin Lynn, Zhao Wei is her cute computer whizz sister Sue, and Karen Mok plays Yat Hong, the tough cop trying to track them down, but a trio of appealing female leads isn't nearly enough to compensate for the unexceptional plot and a glut of CGI and wire enhanced slow-motion action scenes that fail to get the adrenaline pumping.

A dull romance between Lynn and an old flame drags things down even further, making it a long slog to the admittedly fun final showdown, which pits Wei and Mok against countless gun toting henchmen and a samurai sword wielding boss.

I rate So Close a probably-too-generous 4/10 for the juicy squib work and the samurai sword fight, although I almost knocked off a point for all of the computer generated broken glass that isn't fooling anybody.