Watched the Hong Kong martial arts film Flash Point today on Netflix instant watch. It stars Donnie Yen who's a super star in China for acting and stunt choreographing a slew of martial arts films as well as directing a hand full of them. The film takes place in Hong Kong during 1997 thus right before the handover to mainland China from British Authorities. If you were sleeping in History class this was a pretty big deal. What's important to note is that during this time there were a whole bunch of gangs doing gang things around Hong Kong. Keeping tried and true to the super cop genre of martial arts film our hero played by Donnie Yen is out to take down the bad guys while saving his partner in the process.
Here is the Americanized trailer with a really cheezey voice over:
Looks pretty sweet huh? Well ladies and gentlemen that would be the magic of movie trailers. Cut all the good stuff into a minute and a half. Nothing too cutting edge here. But lets break it down:
The Good: The highlight of this film is the seriously awesome fights. The choreography is the best you will see anywhere. As you can see in the trailer there are shots where Donnie really does punch dudes full contact in the face. Was that a camera trick or did he really just do that? I'm pretty sure he really did just do that, and that's what makes these fights sweet. I really enjoyed the realism conveyed instead of going the tired wire-fu route. When someone gets hit, you feel it. What's different about this martial arts films fights is the implementation of mixed martial arts by our hero. Here we see him fighting with elements of Judo, Jujitsu, Karate, boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, Wushu, and Taekwondo. This creates some fresh fights to those who may be tired of the same old same old. The 8 min final fight between Donnie and Collin Chou is brutal as hell and well worth checking out by itself. It's on YouTube under a couple different things I saw but both had crappy Nu Metal overlayed on it and crappy video quality.
The Bad: I sometimes find that foreign films can hide their bad acting through me just not being able to understand what they are saying. Here is not the case at all. How all of the characters deliver their dialog is pure cheese whiz. I don't know if it was just a bad translation for the subtitles but what they were actually saying was wicked lame. The story is silly and hard to follow for the first hour. Even beyond the cliche story and bad acting is that the fights are few and far between. All the good parts are crammed into the trailer. The rest is pretty boring.
I only recommend this to people who enjoy martial arts films. Other than the fights it has nothing cool/interesting/cinematically noteworthy to offer. Check it out on Netflix instant watch and just fast forward to them.
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