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It really highlighted that Donnie Yen was ready to take that next step in the HK martial arts film roster to have his name alongside Jackie Chan and Jet Li, thanks to a terrific fight he had in that movie with Wu Jing and Sammo Hung. I think that Yip Wilson is more than a good camera man for capturing martial arts moves, so of course they would join forces once more. The question was, could they even get there again.
There is something many may not be privy to the film, which is in some respects it is something like a prequel to Killzone. What happened was that Sammo Hung had a concept of what he wanted it to be and Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip had a different assumption. Sammo took his idea and made Fatal Move while Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen took their idea and with it we have Flashpoint.
The movie shows Detective Ma (Yen) and his team trying to take down a drug and weapon trafficking gang managed by Tony (Chou), his sibling, and their psychotic goon, Tiger (Yu). An interesting twist is that Ma’s partner in crime, Wilson (Koo), is secretly a cop and works undercover. The reason he wants to bail out is because he is at odds with his actions and Tony’s revenge on his former business partner makes his life a lot more complicated. Tony’s sibling gets detained, leading to Tony’s growing paranoia about a mole in the gang, which is true. Wilson manages to escape, but at the cost of his identity becoming exposed. Now Tony is determined to make Wilson help clear his brother’s name in the trial, forcing him to use every weapon in his arsenal. Ma’s war to protect Wilson, his remaining joy and his girlfriend, Julie (Bing bing) from Tony’s wrath means taking out the cops that put him behind bars. Now that Wilson has lost everything, Ma is out of options…
Like all incredible movies, Flashpoint too tackles the ‘kung fu cops’ theme, but here the focus is shifted on the murder cop, sole-survivor of the squad. The viewer is sucked into the constant feeling of anxiety by the writer subjecting them to both Wilson’s and Ma’s predicaments.
Donnie Yen interprets Ma in pretty much the same way as he interprets Ma in Killzone, as in Ma does not have much of a personality other than a red tape crippled passionate cop, but that’s fine, as Wilson is what Louis Koo truly brings to life in the movie. He portrays him as an ideal actor for a character who is professionally skeptical for an extended period of time, and is forced into an undercover role. One glimpse at Koo’s expressions and you can absolutely feel how the danger is virtually closing in on Wilson just as he believes it to be. Collin Chou is the one who, for the audience, makes that danger plausible. By the time he is finished with the Tony character, a mixture of fearless nut job and criminal genius who is singlehandedly responsible for danger being present whenever he is on screen. It drives me mad that all Hollywood had to offer Collin Chou was the role of Seraph in the Matrix films (Although I think he would have made a great Neo, or, even better, an Agent Smith). Xing Yu makes an equally convincing Tiger who is Tony’s crazy sidekick who terrorizes anyone, even cops, or children, for personal gain.
The stunts and fight choreography seem to be a continuation of everything Donnie Yen started with Killzone, which to consider the popular movements of the time, which now happen to be mixed martial arts and Parkour, and fuse them into kung fu fight choreography, and in this film it works brilliantly, especially the final fight between Chou and Yen that is well choreographed. It looks better and more brutal than most HK kung fu films you would find today. This scene, without a doubt, is arguably one of the greatest martial arts fight scenes ever captured on film. Yip does an excellent job once more, of ensuring that the camera is positioned in the right places to witness the fights, while the editing stitched it together perfectly.
Flashpoint is a fun cops and robbers film that Donald Yen fans should enjoy, and the acting together with amazing production values blended with the fantastic final fight, makes this martial arts film that will have you rewinding the fight scenes over and over.
The greater share of the mark in this case goes to the final combat scene that was flawlessly executed by Chou and Yen. You’d turn your DVD player to the repeat mode once you see this scene. Yen has successfully fused Mongolian karate with kung fu on screen. Great work done here by all involved, and Donnie Yen also pulled off some good parkour sequences.
The star of the show has certainly soared into the stratosphere, and Collin Chou is also rising whilst Louis Koo and Fan Bing Bing carry the emotional weight of the film. Xing Yu continues to dazzle the way he did in Kung Fu Hustle and Ip Man. A wonderful movie that keeps portraying Donnie Yen’s superb fight choreography and moves, and all the actors perform superbly in a snap cracker of a crime film. A must-have.
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