Foh bau long ji

Shaw Brothers star and Hong Kong cinema hard-man, Wang Lung Wei directed this triad action-thriller, with fight choreography by the infamous Jackie Chan Stunt Team, and additional stunt work by the great Bruce Law!

A bit of a rarity to Hong Kong fans, this Jackie Chan produced action film finally got more of a wide-scale release thanks to Joy Sales and Fortune Stars, Legendary Collection (of who's catalogue I highly recommend looking at)...

While not offering anything overly fresh or new in terms of story and plot, The Angry Ranger is still a pretty entertaining movie with the handsome Ben Lam as its leading man; a face you would more recognise as a bad guy in films like Police Story 2, High Risk, and Legend Of The Wolf to name but a few. I've always like Lam on-screen. He has the looks and definitely the moves to impress and is a pretty damn good actor on top of that.

Director Wang is no stranger to violent, triad action movies both as an actor and director, with films such as Escape From The Brothel, Bloody Brotherhood, and the classic Hong Kong Godfather starring Leung Kar Yan.

While there may be some teen-triad-drama sprinkled throughout the storyline, there is more than enough hard action and tense moments to keep you gripped (not to mention a disturbing one when the bad guys smash up a fish shop). The action reminded me of that seen in Police Story 2 and finale of Heart Of The Dragon - a bit harder, with full impact and tight choreography, and although the fights may seem short for the first half of the film, they pick right up in the second especially the lengthy, explosive and violent finale which highlights some amazing choreography and stunt work!

It definitely would have been interesting to have seen producer Jackie Chan in Lam's place, giving him such a straight-laced role and dark film that would have predated Crime Story by a couple of years, as his 'first' real, serious movie...

Overall: Hardly groundbreaking, but a lot of fun with hard, gritty fight action and the brilliant Ben Lam in top form!

Peter is released from prison. He returns to the triads and deliberately offends them. This is supposed to make him an anti-hero. I have never like that concept, in my mind the guy is simply an idiot. His actions have consequences and innocent people are affected even more than Peter. The scene always goes like this – the bad guys are looking for Peter so they ask one of his friends where he is. They don't know, so the bad guys beat them up.

I also had a problem with the fights. They are mostly gang rumbles, street fights, with the stunt men tossed around and the sets trashed. Every fight starts to look the same beginning with the second. The one exception is the fight with the butterfly knife. When the high point of a movie is a butterfly knife fight, enough said.

I hung in there for the final fight. They set some stunt men on fire and I always enjoy blazing stunt men. Still, this was a watch once, review, and never watch again. Yet, I have read other reviews of this movie and it seems everyone but me enjoyed it.

When I came across this movie, I had never heard of it, nor of the people involved with it; so I really did not know what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprise! Angry Ranger is a very fun exciting action packed movie, with entertaining fight choreography, and charismatic characters (the writing and story is quite character driven, and very entertaining). One really entertaining factor is how bad ass the anti-hero main character is. This film falls into the brawling street-fight style Kung Fu movie genre; where most of the fighters mainly use punches, kicks, grapples and or nearby weapons; but still in a noticeably Hong Kong Kung Fu movie style way (some other films of this genre include the Donnie Yen 'Tiger Cage' films, the Jackie Chan 'Police Story' films, and the Jackie Chan film 'Gorgeous' ext. This genre of Hong Kong action fighting style is very unlike the fancy Kung Fu fighting style genre; where most of the fighters use elaborate martial arts moves, stylish fighting stances, and eccentric weapon handling. Some films of the fancy genre include Jet Li's 'Tai Chi Master', Jackie Chan's 'Legend of Drunken Master', or Donnie Yen's 'Ip Man' ext.)

I am extremely happy to have come across this rare gem of a film, which I very high recommend to martial arts film fans!