Cynical Cinema

          When Fatal Contact opens, Jacky Wu Jing, touted as the next big thing in Asian kung-fu movies, is performing with a painted face in a sort of Chinese Cirque Du Soleil stage show.  He is Hong Kong’s Kung Fu champion, but must make ends meet during the off-season.  When he is approached by some gangsters to fight in an underground-boxing gambling racket, he turns them down.  He doesn’t want to participate in anything illegal, and he doesn’t want to fight anyone he doesn’t have to.  But he is starting a relationship with a girl performing in the stage company with him, and she manages to convince him, remarkably easily, to show up at this underground fight and join up.  There is a lot of money to be made, see, and right away we know this girl is the femme fatale that will lead him down the garden path to destruction. 

          The thing is, I don’t think we’re supposed to know that.  I think we are supposed to be surprised when, later in the film, we discover her true motives.  So I think in this case it is just bad handling on the part of the director, telegraphing the final act in the first one.  The main portion of the movie takes place in this free-for-all illegal fighting operation, one we have seen many times in many similar movies.  Ong-Bak, Unleashed, Bloodsport, the list goes on and on.  And in every one of these movies, the set-up, denouement, and payoff are virtually identical.  Except in Fatal Contact.  The ending is rather surprising.  But I’ll get to that in a minute.  The bulk of the action is taken up with this fighting in the ring.  And although it’s pretty good fighting, it doesn’t really leap off the screen and grab you by the stones the way it does in Ong-Bak, or even Cradle 2 The Grave.  It’s just well-done, decent one-on-one kung-fu. 

          There are two things that are very good about the middle part of Fatal Contact.  First of all, Jackie Wu Jing looks like a nine-year-old.  Which means that we are constantly identifying with him as a kung-fu expert who is still somehow out of his element.  And secondly, this isn’t one of those contrived, cage-with-spikes modern-gladiator fight-to-the-death type illegal fighting operation.  It’s more like one of these would really look, just a space cleared on a floor above a bar, with wooden chairs pushed aside and a guy at a desk with a calculator and ledger book taking bets.  It gives this operation more of an air of authenticity than any other similar operation in other movies.  Most of which look like they are channeling the spirit of Mad Max and the Thunderdome. 

          Also, the other fighters.  Wu Jing doesn’t have to fight bigger and bigger guys as time goes on, or meaner and meaner fighters.  And there is no final, in-the-ring showdown with the bad guy of the piece.  Which is a refreshing ending to a movie like this.  However, the ending doesn’t really work.  I don’t want to give it away, because Fatal Contact is worth watching, but the ending to this movie is remarkably incongruous with the rest of the film.  It’s like in the middle of a Dean Koontz book, the story takes a 90 degree turn and becomes a Shakespearean tragedy.  What?  And to be fair, the end IS surprisingly moving, given how badly it jars with the rest of the film.  And more than that, at least it isn’t expected and obvious.  There’s a greenhouse roof there - I wonder if that guy’s going to go through it and die…oh.  He doesn’t?  Really?  Hm.  How unexpected. 

          There are two other major problems with Fatal Contact.  First, there is a character played by Ronald Cheng (a Hong Kong pop singer).  He is Wu Jing’s friend and confidante, and his character seems to be growing through the whole movie.  We learn halfway through that he is in fact an incredible kung-fu master, maybe even as good as his friend.  But then…nothing is done with it.  When his character departs the scene, toward the end, we wonder why he was ever in the movie at all!  And the resolution at the end of the movie takes SO long to happen!  We already know what they reveal really slowly, and a lot of it, as I said earlier, was telegraphed from the first scene in the movie! 

          All in all, Fatal Contact is fairly decent, and any serious fans of Hong Kong Kung-Fu cinema will not be disappointed.  It does have a surprising (and surprisingly powerful) ending, some good fight scenes, and a pretty cool star in Jacky Wu Jing.  Wu Jing is being labeled the “next Jet Li” (at least by Dragon Dynasty, the Hong Kong distributors of the DVD), and in fact he actually makes specific reference to that during the film.  But for casual martial arts fans and action movie lovers alike, this one can be skipped.  You’re better off with some other Dragon Dynasty titles, like Flash Point, Hard Boiled, Dog Bite Dog, or The City Of Violence.  Fatal Contact comes out in Canada courtesy of Alliance Films tomorrow, June 10th.