Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. This one appears to be going direct to DVD here in the US later this month, but as a semi-sequel to SPL, this is definitely one I’m interested in. Nice to see at least one review to give us an idea of what to expect:
Zorachus here. I got into Hong Kong flicks in the mid 1990's, which was pretty much the tail end of the HK New Wave, but that only meant I had about twelve solid years of movies to catch up on...there was a local martial arts school (the Siamese Shaolin Kung Fu Institute!) that rented movies, and I’d go over there and get six at a time, watch three every day if I didn’t have anything I had to do. Generally, even when the flicks weren’t very good, there’d usually be one or two amazing bits of business in them, really fabulous stuff, and I’d feel like I got my money’s worth; then, of course, there were the genuinely good movies, and there were a surprising number of those. So, there was quite a while there when I could just OD on these things. Needless to say, I finally ran through the backlog, saw pretty much everything that really needed to be seen...had to make do with movies as they were released, and there got to be less of those, largely because the economy started sucking in Hong Kong. Nonetheless, there’s still some awfully cool stuff being done over there—most notably Johnny To’s movies, and Wilson Yip’s. Since Johnny To’s become a big critical darling (and deserves to be) I’m not going to say much about him here, even though I just watched Exiled for the umpteenth time; I’m going to stay on the topic of Mr. Yip. If you’re not familiar with him, he’s the guy who directed Bio-Zombie, one of the very best zombie movies ever; he also did 2005's Sha Po Lang (recently relased on DVD here under the ridiculous title Killzone), which was sort of a cross between a Johnny To movie and a kung fu flick, with hellacious action sequences directed by Donnie Yen, who had a couple of very mean fights with Wu Jing and Sammo Hung. It was a well-acted, well-constructed actioner, vicious and to the point, and served as excellent proof that they still know how to crack cinematic skull in Hong Kong, and do it way better than anyone else, except maybe for those Ong Bak guys. Yip and Yen followed SPL with Dragon Tiger Gate, which wasn’t nearly as violent or as good; among other things, it was full of CG stuff, when what you really wanted to see was Donnie Yen doing what Donnie Yen can actually do. As if to redress the situation, the SPL team have now come out with Flashpoint (another stupid title, the actual one being Po Jun), and action junkies should rejoice. The movie has Donnie going up against Colin Chou, who played Seraph---the role wisely turned down by Jet Li--- in the Matrix Sequels; Chou also squared off with Li in Bodyguard from Beijing, and Kung Fu Cult Master. He’s got impeccable martial arts credentials, and he and Donnie are very well matched. There are some wirework stunts, but the fighting is pretty much wire free, as far as I could tell, and was kinda unusual in that it emphasized a lot of submission holds, which is what knowledgeable people usually employ as conversation-stoppers. The story is set in 1997, just before the takeover. This is a typical dodge in latter-day Hong Kong flicks, to keep the Commie censors off; ostensibly, all the badness is happening on the Brits’ watch, but we know better—there’s hardly the slightest attempt to set any thing in period. In any case, Donnie plays Jun Ma, a HK cop with a well-deserved rep for kicking ass too enthusiastically—he’s after Colin’s Tony, who’s the leader of an extremely violent group of ethnic-Chinese Vietnamese. Unknown to Tony, his gang’s been infiltrated by an undercover, Wilson, played by Louis Koo. Soon after we’ve established that Tony’s a pretty horrific guy (who nonetheless really loves his senile mother), he finds out what Wilsons’ up to, and goes after him; Wilson winds up in the hospital, even as Tony’s brother gets arrested by Ma; since Wilson’s going to testify against the brother, Tony makes repeated attempts to kill him and his girlfriend. Some some other cops, including Inspector Wong (played by the legendary HK fatty, Keng Cheng, whom I haven’t seen in a while!) get in the way. Ultimately, the girlfriend gets captured by Tony, Wilson tries to exchange himself, and it’s up to Jun Ma to save the day. Sounds pretty simple, and it is...but that’s okay. It all builds pretty nicely, and the final third of the movie is one long beautifully-staged cavalcade of mayhem, first with guns, then with Kung Fu and wrasslin, all shot in the swampy area where Johnny To staged the gold-heist shootout in Exiled. There’s a whole lot of spurting blood and extremely-painful looking stuntwork, and the wires are only employed when nothing else would really do. I wouldn’t rate it quite as high as Sha Po Lang, primarily because it lacks the likes of Sammo Hung and Simon Yam. Also, it isn’t as violent—there’s nothing quite so wince-inducing as Wu Jung slicing people up with that shortsword or whatever it was. Still, it’s quite brutal enough, and I really got into it. Highly recommended. Zorachus
