Kuen san

AVENGING FIST was supposed to be the live-action version of TEKKEN the video game, but apparently no one bothered to tell creator Wong Jing about that little thing called "copyright infringement". Hence the re-title, even though the whole movie is really one big mishmash of other, better sci-fi films, mostly lifting plot points and gimmicks directly from Lucas' STAR WARS films. (i.e. Young boy accepts fate, learns skill, faces brainwashed father. Sound familiar?)

Notable are the special effects, which are quite good. Some of the fights are not too bad, although they are heavily manipulated by CGI, up to a point where you can't say a single person in this movie actually knows kung fu.

Sammo Hung has a funny cameo, playing up his weight angle. A good looking film, but highly unfocused and too derirative for its own good.

4 out of 10.

Overall, a pretty poor attempt to do "The One" on a Hong Kong Budget. Sammo Hung and an almost unrecognisable Yuen Biao are wasted in pivotal roles as the Hero's mentor and evil father, respectively.

The irony is that while the characters joke about Sammo having put on weight, it's Yuen Biao who needs the metal mask to cover his chubby jowls.

I thought that with Cory Yuen on Action Choreography we'd at least have some interesting fights, but it's mostly characters "gesturing hypnotically" while the SPFX guys add in all kinds of cheesy lightshow effects.

Disappointing.

Take Demolition Man, Final Fantasy, The Matrix, Star Wars, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and put into a food blender. Mix well for an hour an a half, pour into container, put in the fridge for a little while, serve with icing sugar...

In watching this film, you easily can make comparisons with the five films listed above and more, as The Avenging Fist has taken many of the ideas off them and crammed them into this fast-and-furious, high adrenalin, backside-kicking thriller. Oh, and add in 'Tekken' for good measure as well, although the end credits explicitly state that this film was not based on Tekken and not endorsed by Namco.

Tekken, sorry, The Avenging Fist tells of Nova, a son of a police officer who was the master of the Avenging Fist, a series of martial arts moves that were highly lethal. Whilst at the police force, Nova's father was brainwashed by Combat 21, who steals the Power Glove that, to cut a long story short, gives him powers literally untapped by anyone else. Twenty years on, Nova learns of his father's fate, and he seeks to prevent Combat 21's world domination plans.

Ultimately, a film of this description is always going to be targeted at a younger audience, and inevitably a certain amount of cheesiness and unimaginative fantasy are both always going to appear. But, the film does go beyond that. Computer graphics reminiscent of The Matrix and Final Fantasy and choreographed martial arts of CTHD quality add immensely to the film. Also a little bit of subplot (yes it has some!) does go a long way too in the movie.

But one of interesting decisions in the film were the choice of leads, who are a young bunch, and yet were teamed up with veterans of the the martial arts genre. With the success of The Stormriders and the like, you might have expected Ekin Cheng to lead the cast. But all credit to Wang Leehom and Stephen Fung as they did an excellent performance. I would have loved to have seen more of Kristy Yang, though.

Ultimately, the young cast do equal the performances of the veterans, and despite all the criticism I seem to have written more about than I probably should have, it is a thoroughly enjoyable film. One for a good-spirited evening.

I saw The Avenging Fist after watching Stormriders at a friend's house. I was grossly disappointed in Stormriders just because of the fact that there is no actual fighting. I was expecting the same thing from Avenging Fist, meaning just pretty CGI and a couple fireball here and there. I was actually very surprised that the movie wasnt that bad. What I really liked in the movie were how the fight scenes were mixed with wires and CGI, how sparks would fly off of the fighters' limbs as they strike each other, how the villain used telekinesis very much like in Dark City's final scene, and its main characters looked like Hwoarang and Jin from Tekken. However, the story was very corny, the whole scenery reminded me of the 5th Element, and the actors for the main characters were complete turds (I.E despite the attempted style of Tekken characters they looked like a couple of a-holes you could careless about). All in all it's not a bad movie at all, but it definely could be way better. With every movie Andrew Lau does, I'm sure he learns what people like and don't like. Me personally, I'd rather see good ol' Wire-Fu.

The film is a dreadful bore filled with cheesy special effects and lousy young actors. This is the stupidest movie to come out in years. Please avoid it.

I paid a dollar to rent this and I feel ripped off.

Power glove may be the most retarded concept in movies I have ever seen.

The fighting in this movie sucks.

Absolutely dreadful.

I can not emphasize enough to how bad this film is and

why you should avoid it.

The only decent thing about the film is the women aren't bad looking.