Fatal Contact review is online
I just put the final touches on my review of Fatal Contact. In case I wasn’t clear enough, let me re-emphasize that I did enjoy the movie… if it weren’t for the ending, it might have gotten a 4th star based on the action alone. Jacky Wu Jing has some serious moves, it’s a lot of fun watching his fighting style.
One thing I can’t help but bring up though is the copy on the back of the DVD case. We all know this stuff is written by marketers and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but this time.. there’s some real problems.
The following may or may not contain spoilers, depending on your point of view. Consider this a warning.
Let me break down the copy for you:
Hailed as the next Jet Li, rising martial arts star Jacky Wu Jing
Really? I’ve never heard of Jacky up to this point, who’s doing the hailing?
explodes off the screen in his first lead role as Kong, a kung fu Olympian recruited to compete on Hong Kong’s most dangerous underground fighting circuit.
Competing is optional, and they are paid very well. I’d think the “most dangerous” fighting circuit would always be to the death, with a bunch of weapons and be run by people who blackmailed you into all your fights and then didn’t pay you. Heck, even when there is a bit of blackmail in Fatal Contact, Kong is still paid.. in cash.
As the stakes rise, he develops into an unstoppable fighting machine, built to destroy everything in his path, but can he win his freedom from a deadly criminal underworld?
Oh come on! He didn’t develop that much, he was already better than anyone he met. Destroy everything in his path? Up to the end he was always Mr. “Please and thank you”, wanting to shake hands with his opponents and everything. Deadly criminal underworld? Yeah, one guy gets killed, but Kong is unaware of it, and he’s certainly never fighting for his freedom.
… Fatal Contact features some of the year’s best fighting sequences and a shocking final showdown.
They are good fights, I’ll give them that much. But that shocking final showdown.. er.. no. The actual final fight isn’t that big of a deal, and the final “fighting” is more of a beat down. The shocking part is that the ending is there at all, it didn’t match the rest of the story and was obviously just there for “drama”.
But, it reads good so who cares about it being accurate, right?
Fatal Contact is inbound
A review copy of Fatal Contact is on the way to us, expect a full review one day next week. What is Fatal Contact? From the press info:
A naive young athlete joins an underground prizefighting circuit to earn a little extra money to support his girlfriend. Surrounded by greed and ruthlessness, he is hardened into a brutal fighting machine, defeating opponent after opponent in a series of vicious battles, until he reaches the ultimate showdown where both his life and his soul hang in the balance.
So it sounds like a typical beat-em-up-cause-I-have-to until such time as I-realize-I’ve-been-wrong kind of movie. If the action is good enough, it could be fun. And hey, it’s “unrated” so it’s gotta be good, right?!
More pictures after the break.