Director: Jacky Lee
Notable Cast: Jade Leung, Patrick Tam, Kristy Yang, Andrew
Yuen, Jeana Ho, Lin Min-Chen, Michael Tong, Elaine Tang, Rosanne Lui, Sharon
Luk
Nostalgia in cinema is not new. The 30-year window, where
films will often look back 30 years into the past for period settings or
cultural touchstones for current art, is real and relevant to most any time
frame. Anyone that has been partaking in the sheer amount of late 80s and now
90s focused genre cinema in the last five years can attest to its power. The
latest trailer for the upcoming Ghostbusters film uses it in all of the
worst ways possible, but I digress. I’m already off track and I’m only four
sentences into this piece.
This phenomenon is not just an American trend either. The
Fatal Raid, a love letter to the 1980s ‘girls with guns’ subgenre of Hong
Kong action cinema, reeks of a desperation to recapture the fun and flippancy
of the genre with a modern sense of style and look. It’s a film with tongue
often planted firmly in cheek, particularly with some of the secondary plot
lines, that wavers in tone and effectiveness. However, for those looking for a
fun and silly way to burn 90 minutes, The Fatal Raid is hardly a fatal
choice. It’s just not the best one, even for the genre, but with the right mindset
it suffices.
For those unfamiliar with the girls with guns movement, it
was a subgenre of the action and crime flicks that focused more heavily on
female action stars, usually as cops, spies, or freelance mercenaries that
lock, load, and kick two truckloads of ass in generic action plots. The girls
with guns genre runs the gamut of quality, but it often featured a) incredibly
capable and charismatic leads and b) some astoundingly fun action. You can
thank the genre from laying the groundwork to pave the way with some of the world’s
best action stars like Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Rothrock, Cythia Khan, and Moon Lee.
The story of The Fatal Raid focuses down on two cops,
Patrick Tam as the bureaucratic head of the special unit and Jade Leung the
lead of an all-woman’s special crime unit tasked with hunting down the worst
scum of Hong Kong. Their history together is complicated, particularly in the
wake of mission gone awry that lead to the death of fellow team member, but the
job needs to be done. When their mission takes them over to Macau to help out
the local law enforcement agency with a large potential threat, they find that
their investigation will dig up some secrets about their past.
As a side note, anyone purchasing the film for its US
release from Well Go USA wouldn’t know, but the film is ‘technically’ a sequel
to another girls with guns nostalgia trip, Special Female Force. Granted,
how much of a sequel is tenuous at best – but Hong Kong and Chinese cinema
loves to make thematic sequels, so anyone concerned with that shouldn’t be too
worried. It’s notable though just in case anyone wants to import the HK Blu Ray
to see it. It’s also very silly.
The Fatal Raid very intentionally aims to recreate
the tone and execution of the girls with guns films, albeit with a modern angle,
right down to its problematic flaws. Namely, as with many Hong Kong flicks, the
tonality is often running in two different directions and the balance between
the two (or more accurately – the bounding between the two from scene to scene)
is never as effective as it could be. Some of this is intentional, for example
in how a “romantic” subplot about a man obsessed with one of the police force
team members culminates in the last act as a Deus ex Machina, but most of it
tends to fall flat. The humor is so wildly hit or miss that it undercuts most
of the rest of the film and waters down any real dramatic heft.
While its tonality problems might stem from its attempts to
recreate the action-comedy tropes of some of the more popular 80s Hong Kong
flicks, the rest of the film is unable to catch itself either as it stumbles
around. The modern look of the film is a little flat cinematography wise and
the newer style of editing deters from the better portions of the film. Director
Jacky Lee really attempts to imbue the film with style, but that also feels more
surface level rather than substantive.
The performances are also hit or miss, ranging from a slightly more nuanced and layered performance from Jade Leung to broad stroke caricatures that represent the rest of the team who have ham-fisted internal arguments and deliver jokes that sometimes (maybe) land. Some of this is due to the more dramatic backstory, represented through flashbacks to the initial event that bleeds into the current mission, and that tone feels more fitting than the main through-line. It’s almost as if Jacky Lee and the cast were far more interested in making a heroic bloodshed film instead of a girls with guns flick and that certainly doesn’t bode well for the rest of the picture. The Fatal Raid needed to choose one focus, the main dramatic plot or the girl squad fun, and trying to balance the two makes for a muddled narrative.
Now, I did mention that The Fatal Raid that this film
is not a total loss at the beginning and that remains true. For a film with a
lot of missed marks and muddled tones, there is one thing that keeps its
audience hooked to the end: strangely effective action set pieces. Whether it’s
the massive gun battle in the street of the third act (that doesn’t touch the
finale of Raging Fire, but what does?) or some of the hand-to-hand
combat, including a fun undercover ops sequence of the opening that ends up in
a bedroom brawl, The Fatal Raid does its best to craft well shot and
choreographed action. Some of it might feel a tad over edited or very modern in
approach, but this is the one point where all of the influences and choices
directorially work together.
In an effort to recapture the magic of 80s Hong Kong cinema,
The Fatal Raid never quite catches that special blend of tone and lean,
mean action spectacle. It’s not a full misfire, thanks to a relatively interesting
heroic bloodshed angle for its flashbacks and some fun action sequences, but
the rest is a messy mixed bag. For HK fans or those who have already seen everything
the subgenre has to offer, it’s a fine way to burn an afternoon, but it’s on
par with some of the lesser films from the original era.
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