Kill Zone S.P.L.

This is some of the best fight choreography I have ever seen in 25+ years of watching martial arts films. The action was so exciting the entire crowd I was with in the theater were howling with delight. Sadly it is so rare nowadays to see a martial arts film where real martial artists are fighting instead of pop stars on wires, and it makes such a huge difference because Donnie, Sammo and Jacky Wu were simply incredible. My only complaint with the action was that there was not enough of it. Donnie Yen has finally joined the ranks of great fight choreographers with S.P.L.

As good as the action was though, the story fell flat for me and put the film into the "Very Good" category when it could have been "Great". They tried for an "Infernal Affairs" style police thriller and didn't nearly hit the mark. While Simon Yam and Sammo Hung were both great in their parts, the other acting was just functional and the story had way too much overdone melodramatic content that seemed very forced. The emotional arc of the picture was pretty much set up right at the beginning and would have been sufficient, but they had to keep laying on the unrealistic drama and it did slightly take away from my enjoyment of the film. Another criticism with the story was that it seemed like parts may have been cut from the film, because some pieces of the story that earlier had seemed pretty insignificant became a big deal towards the end of the film and it felt like it came out of nowhere, like we weren't told everything.

Having said that though, my negative criticism about the story should not stop you at all from seeing this film. I didn't go into S.P.L. expecting The Godfather, I just wanted to see some incredible martial arts action and I got it. I cannot wait to see what Donnie will do next.

What do you get when you pair two martial arts legends against each other, throw in a dark, gripping, sadistic story and a boat-load of action? Well, that's simple: you get one of the best Hong Kong action flicks of recent memory. "SPL" brings it all back home and it does in violent fashion. Donnie Yen leads a cast that also includes Sammo Hung, Simon Yam and Wu Jing. I loved everything about this movie. I thought all the actors were great. I thought the story was good. The action was just brilliant! Donnie Yen's fight choreography is some of the best work he's ever done (check out the alley fight scene against Wu Jing). He mixes traditional kung fu with a little UFC grappling which I thought was pretty cool. Seeing Donnie and Sammo face off for the very first time was quite astonishing. Some of you may agree, some might not, but I think Donnie Yen is the most underrated action actors of them all. I love Jackie Chan and Jet Li, but they're like Van Damme and Seagal. They play the same character in every film. Donnie, on the other hand, is a much more versatile actor who's willing to play supporting roles or even villainous roles. It's really a shame that he can't get the Hollywood leading roles that often go to Jackie or Jet. But that could change soon. In the mean time, check this movie out! You'll love it.

I love eastern cinema. Be it Hong Action movie or quite a few of the recent South Korean efforts (and of course Kitano). Since Tony Jaa came onto the screen (and therefor into many peoples lives), pure action movies do have a difficult stand. Ong Bak (the first one) set a new bar concerning action scenes. They even set the bar higher with Tom Yum Goong. Story-wise on the other hand, both those movies had not that much to offer.

And the same can be applied here. Though the movie tries to have a coherent story, it never got me involved into anything. But the action is more than decent (even when compared to the Jaa-Mayhem). So watch this for the action and try not to mind the story too much.

When I found the film was having its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, I made it first priority to go see it. I saw it with a friend at an Industry screening in rush line. Donnie versus Sammo, can it get any better than that?

The story of the film, to make it simple, Simon Yam is the retiring determined bad-good cop, Donnie is the new good-good cop replacing him and Sammo is the mob boss. The film takes place during father's day and every character in the film is either a son or a father. Everyone is dealing with some form of father and son relationship; Sammo's character is expecting a child, Simon Yam has an adopted daughter of whose real parents were killed by men sent from Sammo, Donnie's character defies his father's wishes to become a policeman and so forth. The theme serves to add a emotional element that connects all the characters in the film. None of the characters are extreme good or extreme evil, everybody is shades of grey on different levels. There seems to be a very heavy Infernal Affairs influence here coupled with the bleak colours and dark settings. However, the film does not take itself as seriously as the IA trilogy. There are many moments of humor and it works well to break the tension of the film in the beginning to middle. The humor leaves at the middle to the finale at the end when things start to get serious; which helps engage the audience and assures them the film does not take itself any more seriously but to engage you for the duration of the movie to entertain you.

The film is shot very stylishly. Combined with the duration of the film (the film clocks in to about 97 minutes), I can imagine the meanest western critic would say this film is pretentious, trading too much style for not enough storytelling in such a short time. (Yes I already see that coming, aren't I pretty?) I would d say that would be the wrong way to look at it, because he would be forgetting the fact that this a modern day kung fu film, which has always been a very hard genre to do. In the modern day setting, it basically means you're more grounded and limited by the realms of reality, which means no obvious wirework and more realistic choreography, which you need expert talent to pull off. When you're in ancient times, you can get away with stuff, not in modern day. The story lines for modern day martial arts films have not been very impressive either in the past. It's it's own ballgame in my opinion. Only recent one I can think of is Danny the Dog/Unleashed, an old example being Jackie Chan's Police Story series (and I don't count the unevenly New Police Story).

And now, the thing you've been waiting for,.... the action! Donnie Yen commented that this was the pinnacle of his career with SPL. When you see the film, you can see what he's talking about. You know that thing when you hear reading about kung fu movies sometimes when Bruce Lee moves too fast for the camera and they ask him to slow down so people can see what's going on? I don't think much of that was going on here in SPL. The fights were lightning fast and brutal. Every move was checkmate and everyone's going for the throat. The fights are not many, but they are cruelly intense. The fight with Wu Jing and Donnie Yen in the alleyway was spectacular, I think they were rolling camera and just going at it full speed. I guess it seemed natural to do a weapon fight (baton vs. a short Japanese knife) because Wu Jing has a more graceful swift strength as to Donnie's hard and solid's. The finale with Sammo and Donnie was my favorite. Sammo is a fifty-year old two hundred pound fat man and he moves like he never aged at all. He keeps up every second with Donnie. No one had to slow anything down for him, nor nothing was undercranked or wired. Wrestling seemed to be a very natural choice for this fight, given the circumstances; Donnie and Sammo are hard, solid strength types and it added a new visual element compared to Donnie's In The Line of Duty and Tiger Cage days. This fight was so intense it made me forget what the plot of the story was about, I forgot why Donnie was fighting Sammo plotwise and just purely experienced the cinematics of the fight. You'll see what I mean when you see the film.

Yes, SPL succeeds in what it does. With more martial arts films coming out internationally (such as Ong Bak), as Donnie has been quoted as saying repetitively, Hong Kong has deteriorated in its quality of kung fu film, despite the fact that Hong Kong choreography has now become international. SPL sets the standard again and reminds the world that we still have a few things up our sleeves and that this is the Hong Kong brand of action choreography. So yes, martial arts fans, you'll definitely dig it. It's on your must-see list for sure.

This is a low budget movie about good intentioned cops taking the law into their own hands to take out the bad guys. With some kung-fu fighting mixed in. When it came to the cops trying to frame and wipe out the bad guys, it just wasn't all that interesting. Nor was it all that entertaining to watch. In another words it just wasn't one of the great Hong Kong crime syndicate movie or anything like that. So I just wanted to get to the fight scenes. Which is very very few in this movie. There is two main things that stands out about this movie. The first, is the fight between Donnie Yen and Wu Jing. The second is the ending, which I just didn't expect. Besides that this is a watchable flick, but not really a stand out movie.

6/10