Duo shuai

Written and directed by Dennis Law, Fatal Move was originally conceived as the prequel/sequel to 2005's SPL, which had Donnie Yen and Simon Yam pit their skills on the side of the law against triad members played by Sammo Hung and Wu Jing. SPL had an interesting concept to begin with, but I guess with the ending as it was (a cop out in my opinion), a successful sequel with an interlocking storyline with the surviving characters would prove challenging. A prequel on the other hand might not be as engaging, as if we were to see the rise of Sammo's character to triad boss status, it would ring too much a bell with Infernal Affairs 2.

So Fatal Move offers a completely new storyline, albeit with most of the SPL main cast coming back for another go. Donnie Yen is absent (I'll see him in action later with The Empress and The Warriors), and Simon Yam crosses over the fence to star as the brother of Sammo's triad boss character Lin Ho Lung. However, Yam's Lin Ho Tung seems to be having a walk in the park (and in fact he really did!), as is Lin Ho Lung, because those itching to see some serious butt-kicking action by Sammo Hung, will have to wait until the last 10 minutes of the movie. There are plenty of Milkyway regulars here, with Lam Suet, Cheung Siu-Fai and Maggie Siu on hand to lend their heavyweight support to appeal to Westerners here who are familiar with their works, and Danny Lee returns after a long hiatus to play, what else, a cop yet again.

The storyline is nothing to wow over, and most times seemed to be running on a railway track, completely fixed and one-way, chugging along almost endlessly, without a destination in sight. Character motivations were unclear, and Tien Niu as Lung's wife Soso really let it all rip in a melodramatic monologue that contains a lot more story in her words than all the dialogue put together in the movie. It's about the self-destruction of a triad gang from internal strife from the greed of man, but its central theme was touched upon in a rather haphazard, messy manner that you'd wonder if the sub-plots were just bookends for the action sequences.

However, despite its title, Fatal Move is severely lacking in compelling action scenes. You have the tired car chases, and it seems that there was little effort in trying to milk what Wu Jing and Sammo Hung could do. They're martial arts exponents, but get to handle guns most of the time, and this does not exploit the skills they are trained with, which you can probably employ anyone to take over their place. Most of the fighting sequences were courtesy of Wu Jing, who's especially mean with his lopsided blue-dyed hairdo and an extremely sharp sword, but given no competent exponent character-wise to spar with him, it all boiled down to a one-sided affair. Seriously I'm a fan of his and I think it's about high time he takes over the starring role mantle for Chinese action movie stars, instead of getting bogged down playing side show villains.

What gets compensated for the uninspiring action sequences, was blood and gore done in CGI. I'm placing my bets that Herman Yau, as director of photography here, would have added some of his own pointers in this aspect, and the camera does linger on in some of the more violent and gory aspects, such as pumping continuous lead into a body, and various forms of decapitations involving limbs and fingers, right down to a castration. The much touted fight between Sammo Hung and Wu Jing was the main draw for me I have to admit, but if you were to put SPL and this side by side, Wu Jing vs Donnie Yen had a lot more intensity and slick moves compared to Wu Jing vs Sammo Hung.

But alas despite the M18 rating here, the movie was still subjected to multiple edits (originally rated R21 uncut, but no thanks of course to money-making distributors), and most of the gory bits couldn't escape the censor's scissors. What made it unforgivable, was that the much awaited duel too became victim, and for that, with the insipid storyline and relatively generic action, I would have to recommend that this be skipped at the cinemas, and rent the DVD if you're really interested.

Following a police raid on a triad drugs shipment which leads to the arrest of a drug dealer the man's wife decides to try to extort money out of the triads by suggesting they know the account details of where Triad boss Lin Ho-lung keeps their money. Unwilling to risk the possibility that the man might talk they take drastic action and launch an attack on the police station where he is being held. That isn't the end of their problems though; Lung's friend and financial backer is kidnapped and held for ransom. Lung doesn't realise that those responsible are working with people close to him and soon is involved in a full scale war with rival gangs as well as the police.

If you want full on action this is probably the film for you; it is very violent with numerous shootings; limbs being hacked off with swords, explosions and a very gruelling torture scene that certainly made me wince! The basic story is simple enough although with just about every group having insiders they shouldn't trust there is always the possibility of sudden betrayal. The action set pieces are exciting and feel realistic; this isn't the highly choreographed action that approaches dance one finds in some Hong Kong films. Director Denis Law did a fine job keeping the action gritty while also having some more gentle moments; the scene where to senior triad members remember their childhoods while playing hopscotch was a delight. The cast did a solid job; particularly Sammo Hung, who impressed as Lin Ho-lung; Wu Jing, who plays his right hand man Lok Tin-hung and Tien Niu who plays Lung's wife and shows that women shouldn't be underestimated. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of full on Hong Kong action.

These comments are based on watching the film in Cantonese with English subtitles.

FATAL MOVE is a grisly Hong Kong Triad movie that reunites many of the same cast members from the excellent KILL ZONE (aka SPL). The storyline charts the misadventures of a Triad gang who initially seem to have it all before lies, backstabbing and deceit beget eventual destruction and chaos.

At first, it's quite odd seeing all of the familiar cast members on the same side for once; there's little conflict, and it takes a while for the plot to begin properly. Once it does, though, things become almost Shakespearian in tone, with one character's imprisonment (Jackie Chan's former bodyguard, the excellent Ken Lo) leading to all manner of massacres and berserk action.

The brutal fight scenes are what propel this action-packed enterprise and they make liberal use of CGI blood throughout. Wu Jing plays another cocky, hateful killer who enjoys mutilating his victims and during a torture sequence the film takes violence to a whole new level. Vicious car chases and the like certainly keep the energy flowing, and my only complaint is that there's too little martial arts to enjoy. We have to wait until the climax before we see Sammo back in action, although I have to say it's well worth the wait.

Cast-wise, Sammo bags the most interesting role, playing a conflicted mob boss who doesn't seem to be that bad a guy for the most part. Simon Yam has a slick, somewhat minor role and doesn't really do much, and Wu Jing is there for the violence alone. However, it's great to see Danny Lee (THE KILLER) back on the screens once more, even if the film doesn't give him much to play other than the stereotyped dogged cop.

FATAL MOVE is no masterpiece but I found it highly entertaining as genre entries go. It's certainly not on the level of the Wilson Yip/Donnie Yen collaborations but it comes close at regular intervals.

There's no guarantee in life that another day means another dollar, but you can pretty much count on a new Simon Yam movie coming along. And here he is again in a triad story, but don't let the fact bring you down or put you off: this is actually a cool movie, marrying as it does serious underworld scheming with fantasy violence. It's kind of like the Infernal Affairs trilogy condensed and on crack.

Fatal Move is a Category III for violence only – and it's indeed relatively bloody, even if much of the gore is cheap CGI. This is no Hostel, but nonetheless the body count is impressive and the range of physical outrages quite extensive, including one torture scene where Simon not only says it's pain time, but also does most of the inflicting in person.

The result of all this bears some similarity to last summer's Invisible Target, although Fatal Move isn't as compelling or refreshing, nor are its characters quite as appealing. It also has crooks masquerading as cops, a raid on a police station and a SWAT/SDU team being made fools of, and does possess considerable talent – in addition to Yam, we get Sammo Hung and Wu Jing, both very capable performers, albeit not in their strongest outings here. This is especially true for Wu Jing, whose looney-aggressive act appears lifted directly from SPL, only not as sincere. Sammo gets very little time to show off his moves, yet does well as clan leader Lin Ho Lung, a veteran criminal who for once bothers with differentiating between "triad" and "mafia", a point rarely noted on the big screen.

The story begins with Boss Lin celebrating the birth of his first son, and all's well – his deputies Ah Tung (Simon Yam) and Tin Hung (Wu Jing) seem to have things under control, while his female right hand person Soso (Tien Niu) maintains the books balanced and the money flowing in.

This being a triad actioner, calm isn't the primary directive, and quickly things go sour as internal conniving and treachery become the order of the day on top of pressure from ever-present cops, led by Danny Lee as Inspector Liu, and with Lam Suet throwing in a cameo for some tragic-comic relief.

Soon the choppings, sword slashings, bludgeoning and outright gunning down of cronies by the van load commence, accompanied by a rather convoluted string of double-dealing and treachery that affects all involved parties. Although this means the characters aren't totally flat and do have motivations, this facet of the story is left somewhat under-developed and thus results in mild confusion. As a consequence, the ending, which has a couple of supposed stunner-twists, fails to stuff the bucket, as they say, instead coming across as a bit of a red herring in fancy evening wear. This applies to many parts of Fatal Move – even at two hours it still feels cut in many instances, like they had to remove scenes at the last minute or something.

Overall, Director Law (who did Fatal Contact before, also with Wu Jing) supervised a competent project here. This is a worthy addition to an already heavily populated herd of jiang hu flicks, and Fatal Move is all-told a memorable and visceral release that's unlikely to go down as a classic despite being a solid viewing with a healthy dose of both Election-like gangland politics and comic book hyperbole. We'd say go for it, it's one move you'll live to not regret.

Sigh.

I have to admit that Simon Yam is my favourite actor in Hong Kong cinema. I'll now also confess that Jacky Wu (or "Wu Jing" as he's known in Asia) is simply fantastic to watch; and then we have Sammo Hung who is a legend...

With this main cast and a violent, dramatic, martial arts setting then, one would naturally expect something great. Alas, this was not the case.

It's difficult to say just went wrong with Fatal Move but the disjointed storytelling is definitely the main factor. Simon Yam's character starts out as having the potential to be compelling and Jacky Wu certainly looks to be the man with whom not to ***k (as his talent deserves), but things quickly fall apart as too many characters are chucked at us too quickly, for no real reason and after an hour or so of action scenes occasionally having been slotted in to keep our interest in an otherwise dull, difficult to follow film, I soon found myself scratching my head, wondering how the mess on screen before me escaped some serious script re-writes.

Aside from men carrying out hits with ninja weapons in a ludicrous excuse for more M.A. choreography when a machine gun could have done all the work in half the time, there's also some truly awful CGI blood and gore effects which made me wonder why the art of film is de-evolving (compare Lord of the Rings to Ghandi; Lone Wolf and Cub to this), and to make matters worse, the dramatic element which had been so sorely lacking throughout, only graces us right at the very end when Sammo's wife, Soso, turns in a deft performance, too little, too late..

No Simon Yam lines to justify wasting his talent; no unarmed Jacky Wu.

Fair enough, Sammo still surprises us with a cool scene to show he's still got the moves despite his age, but nothing could save this wreck once it had been green-lit without undergoing serious surgery at a local script doctor's.

It's unfair to say that there's no story, for as jumbled as it is, it's there, but the action just seemed to be tossed in for the sake of it for the most part, was unrewarding, and the total of this flick came up incredibly short given its concept, cast, budget and just about any other pro it had.