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A cop who is on the verge of retirement and his squad are, at all costs, set on putting an end to a crime lord while contending with the unwelcome inspection from a new security officer. At the same time, the crime lord deploys his best hitman against the cops.
In the action genre, SPL or Kill Zone is among the highly acclaimed films, and frankly speaking, I have never had a reason as to why this is the case. I would usually find it very slow in the early half, but after watching it again recently, I have come to appreciate just how brilliant it is.
I enjoyed the Father’s Day theme of the story where every single character is grappling with family issues, including Sammo Hung, the mob boss. It enriched the proceedings and appeared to make him more human rather than a caricature villain.
About the plot, it feels like so many other films, and we have all seen this; it reminded me a bit of John Woo’s earlier work, and the freeze frames were definitely Woo-esque. Actually, I think the dubbing was for once, not bad, and I imagine the voice actors were decent, but if you can watch the subtitled version, I would always go for that.
I mean, Yen is super awesome in this movie, and it doesn’t really get going for me until he rolls in. I can also say that he has a pretty cool costume too, his character Ma Kwun is a good cop who is always trying to do the right thing, but when he starts working with Chan Kwok-Chung (Simon Yam) things begin to go a little pear-shaped.
Chan Kwok-Chung has always tried to be a good cop and has spent years looking for gangster Wong Po (Sammo Hung). He and his team eventually decide to edit a video that was taken from the crime scene where an undercover cop was killed. They made it look like Po was the one who did it, but this all goes wrong very quickly, and Kwun, knowing what they did and why they did it, tries to help his fellow officers out.
When these men kill the true perpetrator with such ferocity, it is clear they are only one step further from seeking the imaginary line of cruelty that none of them will be able to cross back over. It’s in these final half an hour where the film really gains pace single handedly and proves why Donnie Yen is considered one of the greatest warriors of the modern martial arts movie world.
There are two standout fights. The first one that drew my attention was with Yen versus Jack, but it was an amazing fight choreography without regard to batons and knives. That fight should be watched in slow mo in any case, and the impressive thing was how they include no special effects or shaky cam in the sequence shot.
The last memorable fight is that of Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung in which both fighters actively engage each other in an outstandingly brutal fashion. It is devoid of grace because they are throwing each other through bars and tables, and in the process, trying to defeat each other in imagination, where the battle for life is one of the most devastating. This is definitely the best scene of the movie.
At the moment that you’d assume Yen has figured things out, there comes a wildcard that places the movie ending on a low note. I wouldn’t want to spoil it in case you haven’t watched the movie, but I can tell I said out loud “Holy shit!” Overall, SPL does have amazing fighting sequences in the second half but frankly, it takes quite some time to start. It surely is a movie worth watching because of Sammo Hung’s superb portrayal of the villain and the charm and brilliance that Yen brings to the movie.
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