Flash Point (2007)
Directed by: Wilson Kip
Written by: Kam-Yuen Szeto, Lik-Kei Tang
Starring: Collin Chou, Donnie Yen, Louis Koo, Ray Lui
HCF may be one of the newest voices on the web for all things Horror and Cult, and while our aim is to bring you our best opinion of all the new and strange that hits the market, we still cannot forget about our old loves, the films that made us want to create the website to spread the word. So, now and again our official critics at the HCF headquarters have an urge to throw aside their new required copies of the week and dust down their old collection and bring them to the fore…. our aim, to make sure that you may have not missed the films that should be stood proud in your collection.
Here on Rewind, for a change, is a fairly recent movie, a police thriller/martial arts movie starring one of Hong Kong’s most underrated fighting stars, Donnie Yen.
HCF REWIND NO.51. FLASH POINT AKA DOU FOU SIN [2007]
AVAILABLE ON DVD and Blu Ray
DIRECTED BY: Wilson Kip
WRITTEN BY: Kam-Yuen Szeto, Lik-Kei Tang
STARRING: Donnie Yen, Louis Koo, Collin Chou, Ray Lui
RUNNING TIME: 88 mins
REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera, Official HCF Critic
Hong Kong 1997, just before the handover back to China. Brothers Archer, Tony and Tiger are negotiating a drug deal with rival gang leader Sam when detective Ma Jun raids the nightclub for investigation and find himself fighting against his partner, Wilson, who has been planted as a mole. War breaks out between the brothers and Sam over late arrival of the drugs and Tiger is assigned to kill Sam in public but is stopped by Wilson. While in hospital, the injured Sam agrees to testify in court against the three brothers, who are determined to kill him and all witnesses, and who also discover that Wilson is a mole. Ma Jun just wants to bring down all gangsters, whatever side they are on…….On the night of their mother’s birthday, the brothers plan to recover their drug money, but as the heist is being performed, Archer is arrested by Hong Kong police, while Tony and Tiger discover that Wilson is a mole and Ma just wants to bring down all the gangsters with action, not words…….
The back of Cine Asia’s UK DVD of Flash Point says that this film is, and I quote:”packed with real contact fighting, manic John Woo style gun play and incredible martial arts action including a breathtaking 20 minute finale”. Well, that is certainly stretching things, as in actual fact only the last statement about ”a breathtaking 20 minute finale” is really true. While it still moves like a bullet and there is plenty going throughout, most of the expected brawling and shooting is in the final third. So what we have really is a reasonable gangster thriller that only towards the end takes advantage of the incredible martial arts talents of star Donnie Yen. A major player in Hong Kong movies since the 80s, he has never quite broken into international stardom like Jackie Chan and Jet Li though his movies have been at the top of the Hong Kong box office charts for several years now and he is reputed to have turned down several major Hollywood roles. Flash Point began life as a prequel to the 2005 Yen movie Kill Zone, but the connections got obscured as production developed. The small amount of fighting in the film may have been partly because the film was going over budget and one major planned fight scene in a driving range was cut down to almost nothing, though they were still able to reshoot the ending which originally had Yen’s character die.
Flash Point opens in surprisingly moody fashion with Ma talking to himself/the audience about himself and his job, but this soon switches to the drug meeting in the club. A major flaw of this movie is that that it’s hard to tell exactly who is who and what is going on in the early scenes, because what exposition there is, is over before you know. Of course not all stories require much exposition, but a complex one full of double-dealing and shifting loyalties does usually benefit from it. The first two thirds of Flash Point doesn’t offer more than a couple of brief scuffles and shootings and a car chase in turns of action, but the lightning fast pace almost atones for that and the film is certainly not boring. The trouble is, events rush by so quickly it’s hard to take everything in. Disappointingly, Yen is absent for huge stretches of the film, which often concentrates more on the gangsters and Wilson the mole, whom we get to know far more than Ma. Ma is just your typical tough cop, but one who just isn’t given enough to do.
Anyway, eventually he is let loose and we are treated to a decent foot chase leading to a fight in a cafe which is well staged but lacks excitement because Yen is constantly having the better of his opponent, a rather implausible gun fight and a terrific ten minute fight between Yen and Colin Chou, probably best known to western viewers as Seraph in the Matrix movies. It really is a thrilling brawl. Yen’s thing is mainly MMA [mixed martial arts, which in a sense continues what Bruce Lee did], albeit with special emphasis on Wing Chun, but this battle brings in elements of street brawling too, giving it a rough realism throughout. The movie is actually pretty brutal throughout, with Ma not thinking twice of shooting one guy [who is a prisoner of his!] in the ear and breaking another guy’s arm, though the most vicious bit is a really rather shocking moment when a villain Ma is chasing grabs a young girl and, holding her upside down by her legs, threatens to drop her unless Ma puts down his gun. Ma complies, whereupon the baddie throws the girl aside several feet so she smashes bloodily onto the pavement. I will say though that there is also a lot of brutal stuff that we don’t see, and the quality of the blood varies in quality, some of it looking realistic, some of it looking laughably fake.
Yen, at 46 [he has recently said he will retire when he’s 50], is in incredible physical condition and actually looks about ten years younger than he actually is. He is convincing as the hard-boiled hero and Louis Koo also does very well as the terminally unlucky Wilson [though he does display superhuman powers of survival], something that is just as well since he has to act a wider range than Yen’s character. Ping Ha has some touching moments as the mother of Tony, who doesn’t seem to know what is going on [or does she?], though it was a good idea to remove a bit of her trying to stop Tony and Ma fighting, something which still remains in some prints of the film and is an annoying interruption to the action. Chan Kwong Wing’s techno-style score is overly repetitious but helps keep the film rushing along. Flash Point is nothing special really and feels like much of it was made in a rush, but its raw energy is infectious and the final ‘chopsocky’ is well worth the long wait.
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