The SPL 3: Paradox trailer for the upcoming Chinese release of the action-thriller has gone live ahead of the August 17th release. The movie sees Louis Koo and Tony Jaa returning to the franchise after appearing in SPL 2: A Time For Consequences, also known as Kill Zone 2.

The original Kill Zone starred Simon Yam, Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung. Yam and Yen’s characters died in the film, and Kill Zone 2 brought back Yam in a different role, but had Wu Jing and Tony Jaa co-starring along with Louis Koo. In the second film Koo was the main villain, and this time around Koo seems to be fulfilling Wu Jing’s role as the desperate man caught in a bad position.

It’s hard to tell where Jaa fits into the film, but he’s still kicking butt and taking names. You can check out the near two-minute trailer below courtesy of New Trailer Buzz.

Interestingly enough it appears as if Koo has been working on his martial arts skills. He’s mostly known as a pretty boy in the movie space, despite starring in a ton of action films (usually the action scenes are carried by his co-stars, such as Donnie Yen, Nick Cheung or Ching Wan Lau).

In this film, though, we see that Koo is kicking, punching, elbowing and slashing the crap out of guys just as much as Tony Jaa. I’m surprised that the pretty boy was willing to get down and dirty for once.

It seems to be a tradition now for the SPL (a.k.a., Kill Zone) series to recycle the previous leads and put them into different roles. I can dig it.

It doesn’t look like there will be many action sequences in SPL 3, but the series was never really known for having an abundance of action set pieces. The first film only really had three noteworthy action scenes, two of which involved Wu Jing. The second movie had some really inventive action sequences, far more than the first film, but they were very much contextualized within the story, save for maybe the ending fight sequence (but I’m not complaining). It looks like there’s only a few noteworthy action sequences in the third film as well.

The series is mostly known for its morally ambiguous characters trapped in a layered story of betrayal, revenge or redemption. They’re usually pretty good films and I thought story wise SPL 2/ Kill Zone 2 was a lot more engaging than The Raid 2. Anyway, you can look for SPL 3/Kill Zone 3 to land in theaters on August 17th.