Fistful of Vengeance (2022).
2/24/2022
Directed by Roel Reiné
Written by Cameron Litvack and Yalun Tu
Starring Iko Uwais, Lewis Tan, and Lawrence Kao
The Stage.
In Bangkok, Thailand, Kai, Lu Xin, and former triad member Tommy are on a new quest for revenge. Unfortunately, their journey intersects with the plans of Ku An Qi, a supernatural being trying to resurrect Pan Gu, the first man, and reshape the world in her own image.
The Review.
First, I should mention that I watched this with zero knowledge that it continued the events to the Netflix show Wu Assassins. I have not seen that show and can only assume that if you’re a fan, you’ll get more out of this movie. As such, I cannot comment on how the tone or style mirrors that of the show. I turned it on because Iko Uwais, the star of two of the 2010’s best action films (The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2) is featured on the poster. He’s one of my favorite action stars and I’ll pretty much watch anything he’s in.
The story here is about as thin as it gets. The plot is really only here to manufacture reasons for more action, and there is a lot of it. The first big fight scene starts in a hotel, careens into a parking garage, spills into a car chase which ends in a market, leading to another fight scene, and finally ends with a boat chase. If that sounds wild, it is, but it could have been so much better.
The fight scenes here feel like a mystical version of The Raid: Light, which unfortunately isn’t a compliment. Let’s take the first big fight scene, which splits our characters up in a hotel so that we can see the five of them use their unique talents. Iko’s character Kai finds himself up against a bunch of bad guys in a hotel hallway and uses some of the exact same moves that he uses in the hallway scene in The Raid, except without the force that The Raid put forth and definitely less pure violence. The fight scenes are cut to hell and the majority of the blood was added in post which feels really disappointing. There are endless streams of adversaries, who all wear black and remain faceless, nameless, and apparently talentless as they all have some kind of weapon and hit absolutely nothing. Whether they’re swinging machetes or firing machine guns, every single one of the underlings are completely inept, and due to the poor fight choreography, you often see people just standing around waiting for their turn to jump in while their friends are being obliterated. Because everyone seems so stupid, it definitely lessens the impact of the battle scenes.
Other than the fight scenes, there’s really not much else to dive into here.
The End.
There are a number of interesting things in play - the vampiric soul-sucking Shang Tsung villains seemed like a cool idea that are, I’m sure, carried over from the show, but their powers are only used when it’s convenient or something needs to look “showy”. Some of the camera work is interesting (including a drone shot that moves from the parking garage, over to the roof of the hotel, back down to the parking garage), but there are other times when more dynamic camera work would have hidden some of the cracks in the production value. Ultimately, there’s just not enough meat here to recommend this one, even for hardcore fight film enthusiasts.
