At the time of writing, I'm not that long back from a lenghty period travelling abroad. During this time abroad I did not keep up to date with the progress and new films in Asian cinema. So it was not that long after I came back that I asked on the Bullets N Babes DVD forum for
recommendations on good, recent Hong Kong action films. I was aware that in
recent years there has been a marked decline in the quality of action
films, martial arts in particular, coming out of Hong Kong, but I had
hoped that during my time travelling steps had been made to correct the
ailment, especially since Thailand is becoming the main place for martial
arts film now since the arrival of Tony Ja. It was then that I was
recommended SPL as one of the better martials arts efforts from Hong
Kong in the past while.
On the surface I figured SPL should live up to expectations as
the cast list certainly looked impressive. Donnie Yen has failed to
impress me in the majority of his films that I've seen, but from the likes
of Hero (2002), Once Upon A Time In China II and Wing
Chun I know what he is capable of, and starring along side Sammo
Hung I greatly hoped that he was due another good performance. Also at the
top of the cast list is the every reliable Simon Yam. On paper it
really does appear that SPL should be a decent film.
Sammo Hung plays the crime lord Wong Po, a triad leader that Yam and
his men have been trying to put in jail for years. Their best hope for
sending him to jail was a witness that was going to testify against him
three years prior to the present, but Po managed to intervene and had
the witness assasinated. In the present time, his team are still trying
to nail Po for something and are willing to go to any lengths to achieve
their goal. Yam, however, is on the eve of his retirement with Yen due
to come in as the new boss, and it is on that night that everything
comes to head leading to a final confrontation between them all.
I'll be honest and admit that I chose to watch this film purely for the
action. I was in a no-brainer sort of mood, looking for some
unaldulterated, gratuitous violence that good old fashioned brutal action can
satisfy. On that respect, I was only marginally satisfied. The reason
being that SPL is not the out-and-out martials arts film that I was
hoping for. This is a crime thriller with martial arts in it, therefore
the fighting isn't the sole focus. But what there is, is good. There
are three main fighters in the film, the first two being the obvious -
Hung and Yen - but there is a third who is possibly one of the main
people to watch and that is Jacky Wu (Tai Chi Boxer). He plays a cool
assasin working for Wong Po and is responsible for the majority of
deaths that you see on screen. His fights are also the more entertaining to
watch. He's fast and fluid with hismoves and performs many acrobatic,
aesthetically impressive kicks and strikes that left me with a giddy
grin as they reminded me of the reasons I love good martial arts films so
much. Unfortunately those moments were too few and far between to make
SPL the memorable film I was hoping for. Donnie Yen, I am
pleased to say, is also impressive on the whole but the main criticism I have
for his fights is something that plagues most of his work that I've
seen. Yen is an incredible athlete, of that there is no doubt, and his
ability is also undeniable, but when he performs his fights in front of
the camera he seems to have an uncontrollable urge to crank up the
playback speed to make everything faster than it really is. He obviously
thinks this makes it look better, but for me it doesn't. It becomes obvious
that what we are seeing isn't really what they are doing, and is as out
of place (when used excessively) as Jet Li's bewildering anti-gravity
ability in Romeo Must Die. While Jacky Wu was the surprise
package that made the film more entertaining, the main anticipation was for
any fights between Yen and Hung. They are they martial arts superstars,
and it is them that we want to see fight. For this, we are made to wait
until near the end of the film. Hung still he can hold his own in
fights, despite looking a lot older these days. Their fight, while
entertaining, didn't quite satisfying my craving as there wasn't as much of the
standing and fighting that I like. A lot of the moves were very
contemporary, incorporating some wrestling style throws which Yen seems to
like, and quite a bit of groundwork fighting as well. While not great, the
fighting in SPL is still good.
That just leaves the crime thriller side of things, and that by far is
where SPL places itself on the shelves of the mediocre.
Everything about it is cliched, standard cops and gangs stuff. The cops want
the gang boss in jail, he eludes them for so long that they start to bend
the law to get what they want, and in the end break it. Good intentions
lead to desperation, and everything is so predictable about it that I
found myself tempted to hit the fast-forward button when between fights.
EVeryone's acting is so-so, but nothing more can really be expected
when the actors have all been given such typical, stereotyped characters.
Hung's character is maybe given a bit more depth than the others as as
well as his triad boss side, we see his fatherly and husband side. This
small amount of character development isn't enough, however, to raise
any element of the plot threads above typical average fare.
Overall I was disappointed with SPL as on paper it promised so
much. The action was entertaining in places, delivering brutality and
quite a few good moves, but there just wasn't enough of it to make this a
memorable martial arts film, but the story dragged the film down a few
levels. Due to this, I can't recommend SPL to people, except
that it probably is one of the better martial arts films to come out of
Hong Kong in the past while, which is as depressing a statement as you
can really get, thinking about where Hong Kong used to be.
