The title of this film is a canny attempt of wordplay. The term 'double tap' refers refers to a shooting technique with two shots fired in rapid succession whilst zeroed in on the same target. This skill already acknowledged among the cognoscenti of the shooting domain as tough to accomplish.

Derek Yee's latest offering Triple Tap is thus an aphoristic to what is an even more advanced shooting technique with three shots fired on the same target in quick succession. This impressive feat is somehow accomplished by a full-time stock investment broker, Ken Kwan (played by Louis Koo) in a marksman championship. Playing second fiddle is chief police inspector Jerry Chang (played by Daniel Wu), who could only achieve the double tap. Ironic as it is, given the suit-and-tie nature of Kwan's job vis-à-vis the latter's.

This on-field duel forms the backbone of the rest of the plot, as Chang-very rightly-seems sore about losing to an everyday businessman and aspires to beat Kwan at his own game. As it happens, Kwan becomes the sole eyewitness of an armored van robbery shootout within an hour of leaving the shooting ring and nailing the championship. Such a happenstance would of course raise suspicions in the informed moviegoer. Especially when the sheer bestiality of the robbers leads to Kwan being forced to illegally put his marksman skills to the test outside the ring in order to save lives rather than be a fly on the wall observer.

What ensues is a sinuous plot with more twists and turns than the Malaysian North-South Highway, as the scriptwriters attempt to derail the audience's train of thought by complicating matters. Complicity charges arise amidst an Orwellian courtroom drama of social civic-mindedness versus the law book, the moral impetus providing fuel for an ensuing media backlash. Double lives are led, and one cannot help but wonder the plausibility of such an extent of schizophrenia in a character. And ultimately, the climactic apotheosis fails to intrigue much due to one character's stupidity leading him straight into a cul-de-sac.

Li Bing Bing is Kwan's muse, an overprotective superior-cum-mentor whose cold-blooded front belies an affectionate soft spot towards him. Of course, Kwan does not reject her advances given the potential career prospects that will yield. Yet on the other end of the spectrum he sees Ting, a hospital nurse played by Charlene Choi. The maudlin character has seemingly zero story arc, a flower-vase role that perhaps suggests the size of budget the film has to have such a big name headline a filler role.

Not much can be said about the acting, as both Koo and Wu have played similar roles before, with Protégé (2007) springing into mind. Incidentally, Yee also helmed that film. Wu simply has to look stern and authoritative, while the gamut of expressions Koo offers is so restricted and often over-the-top that I got distracted by his wardrobe most of the time. This is especially when he manages to look stolid and dapper in a business suit and so fragile and misunderstood when not. Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother will definitely approve.

This film can be considered a quasi-sequel to the phenomenal Double Tap (2000) directed by Bruce Law and starring the late Leslie Cheung and the sensational Alex Fong. The latter reprises his role as Miu in this film, the sole weak linkage between the two films. One decade on, the erstwhile top cop is now bordering on insanity and whiles his time away fishing at a seaside resort, aside from being part-time mentor for Chief Inspector Chang. Miu is the enfant terrible to the straight-thinking Chang, providing advice through off-kilter methods in several sequences that develop in such a preposterous manner that I was actually thankful the film is fictional.

I cannot help but feel that this movie is one huge misfire on Yee's resumé following his recent works like Protégé (2007) and Shinjuku Incident (2009), though it is not all bad. At the very least, the film manages to conform to the tried-and-tested clichés of the police-detective espionage culture so ingrained in Hong Kong's film industry. The movie is certainly no Infernal Affairs (2002) and has not attracted attention like Protégé (2007) did, but at the very least the offering is pretty decent, albeit a long-winded script that dragged for half an hour too long.