Well Go USA
Last year (in 2020), Hong Kong director Benny Chan passed away from cancer, but the dude was involved with quite a few movies, including a few from Jackie Chan and other luminaries of that world. That said, despite his bona fides, this movie, his last, is the only one I’ve actually seen. But I’ve certainly seen Donnie Yen in quite a few movies, but usually I prefer the purely wuxia (martial arts) films — this is a different sort, squarely in the realm of the crime genre.
Raging Fire is this final movie, starring Donnie Yen as a hard-nosed, supremely righteous detective named Shan who sees things in purely black and white. Nicholas Tse plays a former policeman named Ngo (short for Kong-ngo) who fell into a terrible situation and blames Shan, who was once his respected mentor and friend.
The movie jumps through the timeline, starting from a terrorist act revealed to be connected to Ngo, and eventually going through the backstory that drove Ngo to become the criminal he now is. This is one of those ‘dude wants revenge and ignore the rest’ sorts of motivations, but the movie spends a lot of time with Ngo and his gang, all other outcasts and problematic characters — although no one else is really as well thought out as Ngo.
Shan is actively trying to hunt down this mystery figure that we already know is his old friend, although the movie takes its time to reveal this little fact too, so for a while the connection between them is a bit vague and not entirely well defined. There are some inartful flashbacks that I found mostly confusing, and for a while, I was mostly waiting for something to happen.
Thankfully something does finally happen, and the movie heavily ramps up in the third act. There is an extended, absolutely killer car chase scene, a bunch of decent shootouts, and some opportunity to actually see these two actors finally beat the hell out of each other. It’s not a wuxia film, so the choreography is more brutal and more gritty, but I found the action to be overall pretty engaging and fun.
The weakness of the movie is the pacing, which doesn’t really explain the connections for a little too long, and the reveals feel a bit limp instead of shocking. Still, the film (for a director I’ve only just seen in his last movie) is well shot and considered, with the only real problem being the script. Writing a good crime thriller isn’t easy, and I feel that some of the real underlying ideas didn’t fully come out until near the end of the movie.
But for those familiar with Benny Chan or the Hong Kong crime genre, this is a decent enough entry in that world. I mean it’s no Hard Boiled but not many things even get close to that. Perhaps I should take a look at some of Benny Chan’s past movies, then maybe I will have a better appreciation for his work — even my ‘watchlist’ is already unreasonably big as it is. But it’s always great to see Donnie Yen kick ass, even when he’s using a firearm.
Raging Fire has a run time of 2 hours 6 minutes and is not rated.
Share this post
