SPL
Blazing Action!
Posted by: Task, September 18, 2005 11:49 PM
Friday, September 16 11:59 PM RYERSON
It takes more than just good fighting to make an excellent kung-fu movie, but with amazing all-real fights and an enthralling story you can make a movie of legendary quality. With the emphasis on "real" action, this movie reminds me a lot of Ong Bak, a previous years winner in the kung-fu category.
Hopefully that would convince most people that this is a film well worth watching. If you need to know any more about what makes this such a great movie, then read on...
The fight scenes are lightning fast and don't stick to any one style of fighting. There are guns, knives, jumping, ducking, punching, kicking, and even grappling/wrestling moves going on. A very mixed bag that flows from one style to the next seamlessly.
So knowing that those elements are all there, I need to mention how good the story is. There's a gang lord who's been getting bigger in Hong Kong, and a detective who has made it his lifes mission to bring him in. That's a fairly basic plot, but that's just where this story begins, this is only the first 5 minutes. The detective leads a couple other men, they're quite devoted to him. After a couple years of no success, he's forced to retire because his cancer is starting to cause him serious problems. Along the way, him and his men have adopted a little girl, they're setting things up so that the little girl is taken care of even after he's been taken by the cancer. It is into this mix that the new cop arrives, the replacement for the detective who is leaving, a young man known for his strength and a killer straight punch. Now we're about 15 minutes into the movie. Before it's over, we ponder the stars and whether or not they have any effect on our destiny, or if "fate" even exists. Whether or not it does, is it wise to tempt it? Do we ignore warnings if their basis is based only in the stars? Do we do so at our own peril?
Before it's all over, a fantastic and not-totally-expected conclusion has done an incredibly neat job of returning us to the beginning of the movie and showing us that if there is such a thing as fate, it works with balanced scales.