The trailer for “Plastic City” is exhilarating, depicting a movie that mixes “Infernal Affairs”-style intrigue with rough-and-tumble, in-your-face “City of God” action. Unfortunately, “Plastic City” is not that movie.

In fact, “Plastic City” seems to think that it can get away with simply stretching the trailer out over two hours. The plot certainly seems to make as much as sense as you can jam into a 30 second advert—that is to say, it makes hardly any sense at all. This is what we’ve figured out: Anthony Wong plays a Chinese immigrant in Brazil, where he runs an illegal sweatshop. Usually capable Japanese actor Jô Odagiri plays his son, who forms a gang, which ends up—for some inexplicable reason—in a brutal war with another local gang. Oh, and his gang practices choreographed parkour because, um, that’s what you do when you have machete battles with impoverished Brazilian mobsters?

Actually, calling this movie a glorified trailer isn’t quite right—it’s more like a glorified music video. For there is one thing this movie nails without question—and that is the cinematography. Which makes sense considering that the director, Nelson Yu, manned the camera on nearly all of esteemed mainland director Jia Zhangke’s fine films. And this film is just as well-shot with beautiful compositions and a lot of glorious color saturation that leaves it looking glossy, slick and polished—almost like a cartoon. Or, more accurately, a rap video. Too bad the rest of the film makes just as much sense.

The acting could be considered solid, we guess, if only we knew what the heck was the point of all their ranting and raving. This film famously received boos and walkouts at the Venice Film Festival. The producers argued that this was simply because they hadn’t screened the final cut. Well, if this is their final cut, we have a few suggestions for one more: pare it back another 116 minutes, and release the two-minute spot exclusively on YouTube.

1/5 Stars by Justice Lai.

Directed by Nelson Yu. Starring Anthony Wong and Jô Odagiri. Category IIB, 118 minutes.