The Bouncer (2018)

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The Bouncer (2018)

A French-Belgian action drama starring Jean-Claude Van Damme which offers all the usual tropes you would expect to find in a JCVD flick – fist fights, car chases, gun battles, European gangsters running strip-clubs, you know the sort of thing – but shot with an effective, gritty élan by Julien Leclercq. He approaches the subject with an indie sensibility, elevating what is essentially a B-movie with pretensions. His intimate, handheld approach to the action and use of long-takes make the film genuinely exciting, bolstered by some thudding, atmospheric, electronic soundscapes. The washed-out urban setting is also befitting of the mood of …

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KFMG Podcast S04 Episode 49: End of Year Show 2019 with Mike Fury

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KFMG Podcast S04 Episode 49: End of Year Show 2019 with Mike Fury

Welcome to our annual, festive End of Year Show for 2019, featuring the Life of Action author and fight movie expert, Mike Fury. It has been another action-packed and diverse year for martial arts movies, from off-beat indie comedies (The Art of Self-Defense) to big Hollywood franchise-based actioners (Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum), not to mention the return of the traditional Hong Kong kung fu movie (Master Z, Ip Man 4). Scott Adkins went ballistic in Avengement; the world’s biggest martial arts stars squared off in Triple Threat; and Veronica Ngo turned …

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Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019)

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Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019)

Despite claiming the third instalment would be his final outing as the Hong Kong Wing Chun teacher and Bruce Lee‘s sifu, Ip Man, there is a definite finality to Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip’s fourth instalment. The Ip Man series may have got more histrionic with every new sequel, but Donnie has remained excellent at the franchise’s stoic core, helping to anchor the turbulence around him. It is a role which may well define his career. The film version of Ip Man represents a beacon of controlled, virtuous, empathetic civility and understanding at a time when relations between Hong Kong, China …

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KFMG Podcast S04 Episode 48: Jude Poyer

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KFMG Podcast S04 Episode 48: Jude Poyer

“In the UK, stunt people generally are still regarded as grunts, which is a real shame. In Hong Kong, they are seen as filmmakers.”

On his very first day working on a Hong Kong action film set, Jude Poyer saw someone rushed to hospital when a stunt went badly wrong. Instead of seeing this as a bad omen, Jude – who had relocated to Hong Kong at the age of 18 to follow his dreams of working in martial arts movies – stayed in Hong Kong, where he would be based for the next eight years, working with some of the …

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The Guy with Secret Kung Fu (1981)

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The Guy with Secret Kung Fu (1981)

Law Chi follows up 1978’s The Invincible Kung Fu Trio with another run-out for Shaolin revolutionaries Hung Hei-kwan (Meng Fei) and Fong Sai-yuk (Li Chung-chien), with both leads reprising their roles only in a more supernatural setting. The Ming dynasty patriots fend off the full force of the Dragon gang, led by a kung fu madame (Sally Chen) firing poisonous darts from her sword, and a black-magic monk based in a fiery dungeon who possesses the mind of the rotund Cheng Fu-hung to carry out his killings. The boys spend the entire film fighting people and are not particularly secretive …

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KFMG Podcast S04 Episode 47: Chris Collins

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KFMG Podcast S04 Episode 47: Chris Collins

“Not only do I get to be a part of the Ip Man franchise, but I’m also part of the S.P.L. franchise. In terms of straight-up Hong Kong action, these two franchises are the biggest and best of what we have to offer.”

When ex-US Marine and martial arts instructor Chris Collins took his Wing Chun pupils to see the film Ip Man 3 in 2015, he joked that he would be appearing in the next film in the Ip Man series – if another sequel was ever made. Fast-forward several months and Chris is sitting in front of director Wilson Yip, who …

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Anna (2019)

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Anna (2019)

Confused spy film from writer-director Luc Besson which owes a huge debt to Atomic Blonde, devised as a showcase for Russian model Sasha Luss who makes her starring-role debut following an appearance in Besson’s earlier Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. As secret agent Anna operating in Moscow after the fall of the Soviet Union, Luss gets to wear many guises, not to mention costumes and hairstyles. She starts as an orphaned drug addict sporting a look of bedraggled ‘heroin chic’ before being picked up by Luke Evans to join a Russian intelligence agency where she is trained …

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Dark Phoenix (2019)

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Dark Phoenix (2019)

This empty spectacle marks an underwhelming end to 20th Century Fox’s association with the X-Men film franchise, following Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of the company in 2019. For all its CGI-laden thrashing and crashing, the film lacks the heart, humour and excitement of previous instalments, and feels more like a contractual obligation than an attempt to move the franchise forward. Its more female-centric storyline could be viewed as new territory for these films, but in a culture where Marvel’s Avengers movies and Disney’s Star Wars and live-action retellings of its classic fairy tales have already helped to pave the way for greater …

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We Die Young (2019)

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We Die Young (2019)

A 14-year-old boy, Lucas (Elijah Rodriguez), acts as a drug runner for the head honcho of a Hispanic drug cartel operating out of Washington D.C. – a mere 20-minute ride from the greatest seat of power in the land, but seemingly oblivious to the horrors going on in its own backyard. Gang life is robbing kids of their innocence, so when his younger brother is admitted into baseball camp, Lucas does everything he can to get the boy out of trouble. Slightly tangential to this is the character of Daniel (Van Damme), a mute war veteran with PTSD who is …

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Paradox (2017)

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Paradox (2017)

Glossy, sobering action film with a strong central performance from Louis Koo, who picked up Best Actor at the Golden Horse Awards for his efforts. It’s a Chinese Taken with Koo playing a single dad policeman whose daughter is nabbed while visiting a friend in Thailand. He buddies up with Wu Yue to investigate, who gets his own subplot involving his pregnant wife and police chief father-in-law, who is also involved in another subplot about the upcoming mayoral elections and a governmental aide who is trafficking organs through his gangster connections who also seems to be involved in the sex …

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