During Hong Kong action
cinema's mid-'80s to early-'90s heyday, directors and stars like John Woo,
Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Tsui Hark reinvested the clichés of American cop
movies and Westerns with earnest meaning, amid ridiculously amped-up fight
scenes and shootouts. Contemporary HK action star Donnie Yen and director
Wilson Yip were young, powerless hangers-on in those days, but over the last
several years, they've been trying to revive the attitude and content of HK
Classic, first with the policier SPL (a.k.a. Kill Zone) and then with the
martial-arts melodrama Dragon Tiger Gate. Their third collaboration is Flash
Point, in
which Yen plays a detective trying to bring down a Vietnamese gang alongside
his undercover partner, Louis Koo.
But the problem with Yen
and Yip's retro exercises—at least so far—is that they only show a
superficial understanding of what made films like Hard Boiled and Once Upon A Time
In China
great. It's cool that Yen and Yip are backing away from postmodernism and arthouse
expressionism in order to make movies that un-ironically kick ass, but Flash
Point
could easily stand just a little ambition. Without any moves toward psychological
exploration, spiritual torment, or historical grounding, the audience is left
with yet another dimwitted cops-and-robbers flick, populated by gruff commanding
officers saying things like "You're a loose cannon and you've pissed off too
many of the wrong people!"
Which is unfortunate,
because with the subtitles disabled, Flash Point plays a lot better. Yip
isn't much of an artist, but he's a terrific stylist, and the film's brightness
and vivid color offer a modern alternative to the flat, shadowy look of the
older HK action fare. And Yen is an excellent action choreographer, employing
mixed martial arts techniques to give fight scenes a real kineticism,
manifested in a lot of shots of people taking hard elbows to the neck and back.
This is a partnership clearly capable of greatness, if only they can find a
screenwriter to make their stories land as hard as the punches.
Key features: A set of blandly conventional making-of
featurettes, plus a chummy commentary track by Yen and professional HK expert
Bey Logan, the latter of whom calls Flash Point "a modern martial-arts
masterpiece," although his friendship with Yen and Yip might call his
objectivity into question.