Flash Point (2007)

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.

Miracle on 1st Street (2007)

As a small child, Myeong Ran (Ha Ji Won) was witness to a brutal beating of her father in the boxing ring. As a result, the former champion became a disabled wreck of a man. About a dozen years later, the small family lives in a slum area, and Myeong Ran works hard to become a boxer and win the championship. Alas, she isn't very good: of her five fights she lost four – and the other one ended as a draw.

One day the gangster Pil Jee (Lim Chang Jung) appears in the shanty town. He has orders to clear the slum, so that a new commercial complex can be built there. While he makes the rounds to convince the inhabitants to leave, he meets some colourful people: There is a young pair of brother and sister that live more or less on their own, because their grandfather is in a hospital; then there is Seon-yu, a young woman who is desperate to get out of her poor live and who has quit her factory job to join a pyramid scheme. And then there is this scowling, bratty girl named Myeong Ran, that wants to become a boxer.

As might be expected, while he settles down to stay for a couple of days, the tough gangster gradually falls under the charm of slum live. He bonds with the small pair of siblings (played heartbreakingly real and at the same time cute by two very gifted child actors whose names I couldn't find). And can it take long, before he falls in love with the would-be boxer Myeong Ran?

It can, in fact, because this isn't quite as generic and stereotypically a comedy as you might expect. It isn't a true comedy at all. Director Yoon Je Gyun takes a break from his all out fun filled farces like SEX IS ZERO or MY BOSS, MY HERO and tries his hand with a somewhat deeper movie. Comedy, drama, melodrama, a touch of action and a dash of fairy tale fantasy are mixed quite uniquely to a satisfying and entertaining whole.
Yoon Je Gyun succeeds for the most part to steer clear of romanticising the lives of his poor characters: He makes it clear, that the cute children have to live from things, other people throw away; he shows, that gangsters aren't funny buffoons or Robin Hoods but brutal thugs (well, with exception of Pil Jee obviously); and even his boxing-obsessed heroine isn't a Rocky-like underdog who beats all odds.
The director permanently undercuts and subverts attempts of his movie, to settle into a specific genre, by shifting from comedy to love story to melodrama and back again. My favorite "subversive" scene is, what would be the money shot in a typically sports drama: Myeong Ran's Big Fight. As part of an action movie it isn't shot very convincingly, and actress Ha Ji Won isn't Korea's next action hero (despite the fact that she was quite convincing in DUELIST). But Yoon intercuts it with a brutal attack of thugs on helpless slum inhabitants. This mixing of two different kinds of violence robs the box fight of its "glory" and evokes very mixed feelings in the audience.
Yoon's constant shifting of tone works very well until the climax. There the problem of tying the divers strands together nearly lets the movie falter. And only a miracle saves it from failing...

MIRACLE ON 1ST STREET is a movie, that makes you laugh and cry. It has interesting characters, a clever plot that veers from the well traveled roads of romances. Somewhere in the background, MY SASSY GIRL nods approvingly: The new film isn't as good as the classic movie from 2001, but it shows encouraging signs of freshness and oddness. And there is a decided taste of yupki-ness involved, that please me, obviously, quite a bit.