Excellent First Act...Falls Apart in the Third
Where did this badass super nemesis "Alex" come from? Seriously. He emerges suddenly in the last thirty minutes not looking very bad ass at all, and at first seems more likely to be the mayor's assistant rather than the chief bad guy. Even with his identity disclosed, he still looks more like a "brain's of the operation" villain than a professional ass-kicker. Then, worse, the audience is expected to accept that he's better than Statham. C'mon. He's wearing glasses for cryin out loud. Also, it's mentioned twice that he's gay (with the mayor) - the first time it might be a joke, but the second time it's as if we're to take it that he's actually gay two on top of everything else.
The casting and wardrobe issues are actually minor - the film is only truly hurt by the fact that, due to his total absence from the hour's worth of film that came before, the audience has developed no feelings about his character. Becuase of this, the final confrontation has lower stakes. Would have been much better if the last showdown was with Mei's "father" Quan Chong.
There are three antagonistic groups in this film, each with the same structure - a general (Chinese Boss, Russian Boss, Mayor), a chief lieutenant (Mei's "father" Quan Chong, the Russian Bosses son Vassily, police captain Wolf) and a group of soldiers (chinese mob, russian mob, police special unit). The first two groups commit a major wrong in the first 20 minutes of what amounts to be an amazing first act (kidnapping Mei and shipping her overseas, killing Statham's wife and stalking him to kill friends he makes) and so we want most of all for the final showdown to involve a reckoning with one of these two groups, personified by the head man or the second-in-charge for either. Instead, both of those bosses escape unscathed, one lieutenant is offed by someone else, and the other, who brutally murdered his wife, he let's go free. The showdown we get is with the police unit - who never really did anything to him except disown him and kick his ass - and it's personified by a character we haven't even met. I get it. The popular opinion is that Statham's movies have become wrote, and so they decided to do things differently. The problem is it just seems like an arbitrary choice for the sake of being different, and the film suffers more for the sacrifice.