Badge of Fury

"Badge of Fury" (aka "Bu er shen tan") has one of the most misleading DVD covers ever. It shows Jet Li looming over central Hong Kong engulfed in flames. First of all, the movie is nowhere near as explosive as the cover makes it out to be. Secondly, Jet Li is not even the main star in the movie.

The movie is a comedy action of sorts, which I didn't know, so I was a bit surprised when finding out. So does the comedy work? Sure, most of the time, but at times it was awfully forced and scripted. But if you do enjoy silly action comedy movies, then you will get some enjoyment out of the movie.

The characters were colorful and the dialogue was oddly quirky enough to match the characters. But the movie was somehow lacking a deeper storyline and meaning, giving the movie a somewhat irrelevant sensation to it.

It should be said that the actors were doing good jobs all round. I just wonder why Jet Li actually agreed to be in this movie, because it is really way off from his normal arena. And this is definitely not what you would expect from a Jet Li movie.

One thing that puzzled me senseless was why the movie was in Mandarin language when it was filmed and set to take place in Hong Kong. It was just so stupid. It should have been Cantonese.

All in all a mediocre movie that was nothing at all what the DVD cover presented it to be.

Having Jet Li headlining the cast will really set high expectations. However, in the first few scenes of this particular film, you will know that you need to tone these expectations down.

There is a series of mysterious murders in the city. The victims were all young men who strangely die with a silly grin on their faces. The policemen who get assigned to this case were unlikely partners, the young bumbling Wang Bu Er (Zhang Wen) and grizzled veteran Huang (Jet Li), under their lady boss Angela (Michelle Chen). Investigation lead them to a young actress Liu Jin Shui (Lui Shishi), who was the girlfriend of all these victims.

Zhang Wen plays the slapstick comic lead in this action/comedy. He is shameless in some really embarrassing scenes and stupid situations. He does have fight and chase scenes, but will usually end up bungling everything. Jet Li plays straight man to Zhang here, but Li of course figures in some exciting though exaggerated martial arts fight scenes. Michelle Chen is quite funny in her cute little way, though she was not entirely believable as a police chief at all.

This film is shallow and light-hearted, not to be taken seriously. There will be scenes that you cannot help but laugh out loud in their craziness. The investigation of the murders has its own nifty twists and turns which can puzzle you. It can be a fun way to spend a lazy hour and a half, if you do not expect too much.

Badges of Fury has the same style and tone of the Leslie Nielsen Naked Gun series from the early 1990's. Of course, the satirical targets in this movie are to be found in Asian pop culture rather than American pop culture. Once you understand this, Badges of Fury is a very entertaining movie.

Jet Li is surprisingly good at comedy and still has his martial arts skills.

As the younger partner, Zhang Wen is also very good and gets to do most of the funny bits.

Michelle Chen is especially good in her relationship with Zhang Wen's character.

Ada Liu and Cecilia Liu are two of China's most beautiful actresses and are great to watch.

I like Jet Lee but in this movie he acted looks like a stupid. The story is not good at all. Most of the actors and actress did not perform properly. It seems low budget movie. It should be not published because can ruin the Jet lee reputation. The director could not do anything as a result, the screenplay were playing not professional. The actors and actress seem really so childish and mostly the actors were less involved in this movie's story. Regarding the ending of the movie, it could be predicted from the beginning of the movie. That's way is not a good movie. Don't think I will recommend this movie. Once again don't watch this movie.

"Badges of Fury" is a short and fast paced action comedy movie which is certainly entertaining but overall disappointingly superficial.

The movie has a clever marketing strategy and includes many cameos by famous Chinese stars which include not only actors but also sportsmen for example. The longest cameo includes Jet Li who appears from time to time in this movie but doesn't really play an important role as the trailers might suggest. Even when he's there, his acting is wooden and lifeless and this could be considered his worst movie ever and I'm saying this as a big fan who has watched almost all of his movies.

The film is also a parody of several Hongkong blockbusters from the last thirty years. Some of the insinuations are funny, for example when the main characters coincidentally capture a fashion icon who is behind online piracy acts. Most jokes are though either silly in a very childish way when we get to hear weird cartoon noises during some action scenes and overacted reactions by some of the characters. These ridiculous noises that seem to be taken off some old Looney Tunes episodes are overused in the first half of the movie and get completely dropped in the second part. Other jokes are simply sexual innuendos as we get to see many close-ups of Liu Yan's big breasts which get a lot of attention from female and male characters throughout the entire film. In general, men are mostly portrayed as dumb and superficial machos while women are mostly portrayed as silly sexual objects. I'm someone who likes to laugh a lot and this includes dirty and slapstick humour but this kind of silly rehashed comedy is nothing but embarrassing.

The action scenes are quite a mixed bag. Most of them are voluntarily exaggerated and feature massive CGI effects that kill any kind of charm that the parodied Hongkong classics have. Still, a few fighting scenes are well executed and filmed. They are filled with adrenaline and grace and use several interesting items as weapons. Even in his weakest movie, an elderly Jet Li can still show off his incredible talent and his acolyte Zhang Wen does a quite convincing job if one ignores the distracting slapstick moments during his fighting scenes. On the other side, the final fighting scene involving Jet Li is overlong and unspectacular.

The plot of this movie is extremely odd. The film starts with three random slapstick murders where the victims all die with a strange smile on their faces. The main suspect of the movie is a shy actress with good manners in her late twenties who hasn't got her breakthrough yet and who was engaged to each victim over the past years. Her sister soon becomes another important suspect as the superficial beauty with bad manners stole each of her sister's fiancés and sold insurances to them that made her a wealthy woman when they died. The unpredictable final twist of the movie where a rabbit gets pulled out of a hat is though so absurd that it even feels misplaced in a slapstick comedy flick. In between the morbidly amusing opening and the forced twist followed by a stereotypical happy ending, a few more plot lines are introduced only to justify many pointless cameo appearances. None of the few potentially promising ideas such as the relationship between the two investigating officers or the meeting of the criminal gang at the beginning of the movie are pushed further. Any kind of character development is completely absent in this hollow movie.

In the end, this movie is bearable because of a few gripping action scenes, a couple of acceptable jokes, a high number of cameos by famous actors and allusions to classics any Hongkong cinephile should know and the fact that one is impatiently waiting for the outcome of the story as the tension slightly increases even if the twist ends up being a huge letdown. Despite its obvious flaws, I was overall very well entertained by this dynamical movie for the reasons mentioned above. I would surely watch it again in a couple of years. Those who are mainly planning to watch this movie because they are expecting an explosive martial arts blockbuster with Jet Li should be careful though and rather rent the film for a reasonable price instead of buying it or going to the movies.