Flashpoint

This was a real surprise as on a rainy day in the only Chinese cinema left in Sydney, to think i only went into Market city for some yum cha and got a whole lot more than i bargained for.

A fantastic roller-coaster ride of a film, OK so the long slow ride up to the top end of it can be daunting for those with ADD or a high blood sugar level but its sure worth it once you get there. Intense satisfying action shot from every possible angle yet still filled with a spontaneous verite energy unmatched by any Hollywood film i have seen..ever.

Its innovative style while a bit light on plot or dialogue (OK so i am stuck with subtitles which obviously lose something in the translation) overcomes any accusations of pretentiousness that could be leveled at a lot of similar films. The raw energy of the film leaks into every scene however still and explodes onto the screen when the action finally ramps up. Considering the violent nature of the film a lot of the actual killing is suggested rather than replayed in Technicolor from umpteen angles, but we still experience every kick and punch as if it were flying our way.

OK admittedly the story is about as engrossing as 300 or a lot of other HK cop films, IE runs at a primal level deeper than mere plot twists or any complicated subtext. No, its all about the man versus what he sees as injustice and occasionally about a friendship. Mostly though its about the battle for whats right even if thats not quite clear sometimes, by the end you know who the good guys are and as manipulated as you might feel you are rooting for them all the way.

OK I'm running out of superlatives and metaphors now..just go out and watch it if you like a good old school popcorn bash and can handle some underplayed buddy semantics.

to keep it short, i was highly surprised from it's great entertainment value.

the plot is hollow (good cops vs bad guys) but the good cast, camera work and fight scenes are over the top. speaking of the fight scenes, very impressive style from Donnie Yen (with age 44) and also the bad guys hand out some damage before they go down.

the first movie half is slow, but the ending will round it up. this action flick was nice done by the film crew, they put some work & love in it, something you miss in many HK movies nowadays.

(don't miss the end credits :)

I've been a fan of Donnie Yen for over twenty years now and had heard that the fight action in Flashpoint was amongst his best work. I hadn't heard wrong: the hard-hitting full-contact mixed martial arts scenes are as awesome as they say.

It's a shame then that the plot for Flashpoint is so unremarkable, a routine Hong Kong police drama—cops vs triads—which introduces lots of indistinguishable characters in such quick succession that, for a while, it's hard to work out precisely who is good and who is bad.

The dull plot trundles along, with the occasional brief spot of action or brutality to spice things up, and it gradually becomes clearer who is who: Archer Sin (Ray Lui), Tony (Collin Chou) and Tiger (Yu Xing) are Korean brothers who run a smuggling operation, Sam is a gangster who has ratted on his bosses, Wilson (Louis Koo) is a plucky young undercover cop working with tough police inspector Jun Ma (Yen), and Julie (Bingbing Fan) is Wilson's really hot girlfriend. So far so mediocre.

The final third of the film, however, is a whole lot better. A non-stop, blood-soaked, showdown between Ma and the bad guys, with incredible gunplay and some of the most painful looking fight choreography I have ever seen, it is everything I had hoped for and more, leaving the viewer with a better impression of the film overall than it probably really deserves. Hence my more than reasonable rating of 7/10.

Donny Yen plays a no nonsense cop who basically beats up every bad guy in this film. The movie is about Donny Yen and his partner who is undercover trying arrest some drug smugglers. The plot is nothing special and you don't really care for the characters that much but you should't be here for the plot or the acting. The action/fighting in this movie is incredible. The last fight scene is one the the best fight scenes I have ever seen put on film. My recommendation would be to watch the first 10 minutes and then skip to the last 30 minutes of the movie because nothing really happens in between. His partner falls in love and there is a car chase that's nothing special. Watch it for the great fights, not for the acting or plot.

Rating: 10 for the fights, 5 for everything else = 7

In his black leather jacket and oozing plenty of charisma, Donnie Yen's Inspector Ma Jun quite resembled his other character in SPL, which was also directed by Wilson Yip, because at one point Flashpoint was supposed to be an SPL sequel. But in any case, the character is slightly tweaked. Early in the movie, Ma Jun tells it straight to the camera that as a cop, his job is to apprehend criminals, and it's as simple as that. And the trailers would have you believe here's a man who's lightning quick with his punches, throws and kicks.

However, you've got to wait until the hour mark for all that. For action junkies, your patience is severely tested, but the wait is well worth every minute you're put on hold. I've caught the trailer at this year's Hong Kong Filmart, and it was one that had action and more action, with nary a line of dialogue. But in the movie, much time is devoted to attempts in building characterization, until the story realizes it better give what the audiences are here for, to see Donnie Yen kick ass.

Having teamed with Wilson Yip in earlier action productions like SPL and Dragon Tiger Gate, Donnie Yen returns as action choreographer for Flashpoint, and the cast adopts the fighting style called MMA - Mixed Martial Arts, which is something of a blend of various martial arts techniques, that audiences probably haven't seen before stylistically in close combat scenes. Flashpoint boasts some incredible action sequences with explosive hard hitting fight combinations, and the sole complaint I have is I can't get enough of it! What more, as learnt from SPL having real martial arts exponents like Sammo Hung and Wu Jing fighting opposite himself, it made the sequences look more authentic, and the pace at which they can go at each other much more frantic. Collin Chou (Seraph from the Matrix movies) stars as one of the chief baddies, and watching the two awesome gladiators duke it out is nothing short of edge of your seat material - you'll feel their pain!

But as I mentioned, you'll have to be patient during the story's buildup. Writer Szeto Kam Yuen (SPL, Exiled, Dog Eat Dog) weaves in yet another undercover story into Flashpoint, with Louis Koo's Wilson as the mole within a gang of Vietnamese brothers Ja Ge (Ray Lui, in an over the top impersonation of Tony Leung's Big D in Johnny To's Election), Tony (Collin Chou) and Tiger (Xing Yu). A simple romance tale is worked into for Wilson with Fan Bing Bing as love interest Julie, but as expected, action movies seldom have much time devoted for love scenes.

Without a doubt, Ma Jun as a character overshadows them all with his motivations and drive. His temper is as quick as his reflexes, and he doesn't tolerate bull from the top brass, which resulted in rather muted (or negligible) action for about three quarters of the movie because his behavior is reined in by order. And there is a scene though which will make you question his excessiveness, and wonder if his doggedness in pursuit and apprehension actually clouds his ethical and moral judgment.

Flashpoint is still an awesome action movie when the time came for it to deliver the goods, highlighting that Hong Kong action films still have what it takes to innovate within the genre. Oh, and stay tuned during the end credit roll for scenes of outtakes, which shows plenty of training that the cast had to undergo to perfect their MMA techniques. Sure packs quite a punch in this compact 90 minute movie.