Not so very long ago, I used to call Donnie Yen the "unsung Hero of Martial Arts movies". While this wasn't really true then, it happily has radically changed in the last couple of years, and now Yen is one of the most respected action choreographers and screen fighters since the glory days of Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan. He reached his apex 2005 in the rightly highly praised SPL where he co-starred with Sammo and Simon Yam. And so it isn't very surprising that he returns to that gritty world of cops, robbers and lethal fighters.
Original planned as a sequel or prequel to SPL, FLASH POINT tells the story of Hong Kong cop Ma Kwan (Yen) who is a loose cannon in the Lethal-Weapon-tradition and doesn't bother how much heads he has to bust to solve a case or catch a criminal. He is on the trail of a vietnamese gang and his colleague and friend Wilson (Louis Koo) was able to infiltrate the organisation as a mole. Finally a raid is maid and gang boss Archer can be arrested, while his two brothers Tony and Tiger escape.
To prevent, that their older brother will be convicted, they go to great lengths – and that means, they kill all witnesses for the prosecution. And one of the people on their hit-list is police mole Wilson.
The plot is an old and proven one – or in other words: we have seen this dozens of times before. The characters are quite clichéd, the storyline has nearly none surprises in store and the acting is adequate but nothing special either. So: Why bother? Well, for the same reason, Donnie Yen wanted to make this movie: to watch our hero to kick some serious ass in ways you haven't seen before. Yen turns away from traditional Kung Fu and embraces, what he calls "Mixed Martial Arts" and what I would call free form brawling. Kicks, elbows, Jiu-Jitsu, grappling, wrestling - everything that can be used in a fight is used. This isn't realistic (for what street fighter knows all these techniques and can use them in a fight?) but it looks authentic and makes for some very gritty and exciting action sequences.
The down side to this is that there is not nearly enough action and it comes too late. Director Wilson Yip (who directed SPL and the disappointing TIGER DRAGON GATE with Yen) uses more than half of the running time to get into the characters. since he borrows heavily from INFERNAL AFFAIRS, Louis Koo's police spy is the main character in this part of the movie, and he does a good job with a a variation of Tony Leung's character from IA. Sadly this whole undercover drama with the angst ridden cop is mostly quite boring and not very original. There are only one or two very skillfuly delivered suspenseful moments: one is, when Wilson's identity is discovered, while the other is a nearly Hitchcockian scene concerning a bomb, that is hidden inside a roasted duck. But aside from these scenes it is a relief when the violence of the last act breaks loose. And as soon as Donnie Yen starts his one-man war against the gang, it is nonstop action right until the end.
The last 20 minutes or so, are a brutal hand to hand fight between Ma Kwan and his nemesis Tony (Collin Chou). Those two give no quarter and you'll be on the edge of your seat for the whole sequence, while they knock each other against walls and over balustrades, inflict bone crushing and limb tearing violence and just want to kill each other!
This last part of the movie is completely satisfactory (if you can swallow the revenge and vigilante motive) and shows Donnie Yen at his best: innovative, ferocious and passionate about his art. Sadly by all his passion for showing new and innovative means to fight onscreen, he ands director Yip forgot, that a movie is more than a climactic fight. I hope with their next movie they will be able to deliver a more compelling story as a background for Donnie's action sequences.
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