Reviewed by Michael Edwards
Stars Jacky Wu, Ronald Cheng, Miki Yeung, Theresa Fu, Siu-Fai Cheung, Ken Lo,
Andy On, Timmy Hung, Suet Lam, Yu Xing, Yu Gu, Tats Lau | Written by Dennis Law
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £15.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 110 minutes | Directed by Dennis Law
Sometimes nothing hits the spot like a bit of low budget Kung Fu from Hong Kong. Replete with a plethora of wire based stunts, buckets of strangely fluorescent fake blood and some crazy ideas, Fatal Contact is everything you'd expect from the genre with a few extra surprises in store for good measure.
The plot is refreshingly simple, a poor kid from the slums of Hong Kong is working in a circus as a cross between a clown and an acrobat. One evening someone in the crowd spots his nimble moves and instantly recognises the movements of a man well versed in Kung Fu, but this isn't an ordinary circus attendee but a man who organises gambling rings centred on the illegal world of underground fist fighting. As expected the naive young chap, good hearted though he is, is eventually lured into this dark and dangerous world by a combination of money, women and the desire to succeed. Friends are made, battles won and lost, friends made and lessons learnt.
The fight sequences themselves, (and let's face it, that's all we really want to see), are pretty awesome. Rapid fire flaming fists, a variety of fighting styles and a bunch of special stunts like chopping a pencil in half in mid air, roundhouse kicking a big guy across the room and making someone bleed from his eyes are all on display here, courtesy of a few wires and some nifty camera work. It's all pleasing to the eye if a little unoriginal. What makes viewing a little more fun though is the character of Captain whose constant cheekiness, random tangents and never say die attitude do much to counterbalance the slightly over the top stunts and occasionally clunky and frustrating spiritual and moral subplots that revolve around the female lead of the film, Tin.
All in all a fun movie and not a bad genre film. The lads out there could definitely do a lot worse for a night in with a few beers and some mates.
EXTRAS * A 'Making of' that's just pointless because there's not even narration, someone just filmed the filming! Weird. You get a lot of views of the wires and some of the intense work involved in the jam-packed action sequences, but at the end of the day it's a bit like watching those wire mesh pre-animation things you get with cartoon films. There's also outtakes which suffer from similar problems and really aren't funny, although they do illustrate how difficult some kung fun moves are. As if we needed telling. And of course there are the obligatory trailers too.