Kill Zone S.P.L.

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.

Inspector Ma Kwun (Donnie Yen) must make some difficult decisions when he discovers that Chan (Simon Yam), the police detective he is about to replace, and his loyal men have been bending the law in order to convict ruthless gangland boss Wong Po (Sammo Hung).

Donnie Yen first smashed his way onto my screen over twenty years ago in the excellent Hong Kong fight-fests In the Line of Duty 4 and Tiger Cage II; sadly, subsequent roles in some less than memorable films saw him slowly slipping off my radar during the 90s (with only Iron Monkey making any lasting impression on me). However, having just seen S.P.L. (AKA Kill Zone), a powerful crime drama enlivened by some amazingly brutal action, I'll be sure to track his every move from now on.

Admittedly, with both Yen and Hung on board, I would have loved to have seen a little more fight action, but I found the story compelling enough to hold my attention until the inevitable bad guys/good guy showdown, at which point all hell breaks loose and kung fu fans finally get to enjoy some blisteringly fast and bloody battles. Also serving to make S.P.L. slightly more memorable than your average Hong Kong cop drama are the inclusion of a really loathsome assassin (played by Jacky Wu) and writer/director Wilson Yip's relentlessly grim approach which offers little hope for any of the characters and culminates in a real downer of an ending that left me speechless.

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

.. when he called SPL the pinnacle of his martial arts choreography. It rocks. HARD. Not only are the fights are brutal, fast, and complex, but Donnie may have achieved the impossible: He made Brazillian ju-jitsu look exciting on film. Donnie's character repeatedly goes for takedowns, armbars, chokes, and all the moves that you might see in a UFC or Pride match (with Sammo countering attacks exactly how the big fighters do it in a real bout), while seamlessly combining them with the incredibly fast, complex punching and kicking exchanges you'd expect in a Hong Kong flick. Did I mention that the fights are bone-crunchingly brutal? There is a real nastiness to the punchups that should yield a great reaction from enthusiastic audiences. And then there is the spectacular Wu Jing vs Donnie Yen fight. It starts off very, very fast and complex, then at a certain point, the tempo changes and you suddenly realize that it's because they're just making it up ON THE SPOT and the damn thing becomes even more impressive. The long, unbroken takes should please fight purists, too.

The film itself also holds up. Director Wilson Yip really shows off his passion and skill in this film. It's an intense crime drama that doesn't have to pander to any teeny boppers, so he is free to finally let loose. The story is solid and Yip takes the opportunity to devise some great sequences. There's a scene that cuts between Donnie looking at photos of the policemen he's about to lead and footage of the same cops intensely doing their business that is pure cinema.. a scene that could have been plain on paper, but is made exciting purely through the director's vision - the way it's cut and scored and staged. In other words, there is a lot of obvious effort put into the drama. It isn't just some thrown together filler btwn fight scenes. This is a real film. Oh, and one comment about the audio: It's amazing. The music is superb and the sound effects are everything you could hope for in a kung fu film (ie, they accentuate every move and hit as you'd want them to). I hope the DVD has a great DD5.1 track and that you have the system to play it 'cause it'll make a big difference.

Complaints? I have only one: The fights should have been a little longer, but that's okay because they burn twice as bright as most.

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

Despite what others may claim Sha Po Lang is not up there with the best HK movies of it's kind made during the golden period of the 1980s, when the likes of Jackie Chan, John Woo and Ringo Lam were in their pomp. In fact, there have been better cop films than SPL released in more recent times in the territory, Infernal Affairs and Running Out of Time to name just two. What SPL does do successfully is tap into the style and tone of the type of films that made Hong Kong action film popular with western audiences during the 80s and 90s. In SPL, the line between right and wrong, good guys and bad guys, is blurred to the point of it almost becoming invisible (often a feature in John Woo's output). The fact that the film's most likable(?) character is a brutal mobster shows how there is no black and white in the world of Sha Po Lang, just differing shades of grey. It's Sammo Hung's excellent performance as gangster Po, committed family man yet also a ruthless, violent crime boss, that is at the heart of the film. Against him all the traditionally good cop characters seem to have to sacrifice their innate sense of right in order to achieve what they see as justice being done; resulting in them becoming more like the man they're trying to bring down. It all leads to regret, violence, death and a shocking finale that should live long in viewers memories. As for the action sequences, they are well executed if a little too brief, but none of them would make it into a ten (or twenty!) best HK fight scenes list. Simply put, Sha Po Lang is a well put together police thriller with decent action and a satisfyingly bleak, film noir-esquire tone. It's well worth seeing and if it kick-starts a return to the classic action style of Hong Kong cinema, even better!