Carter (2022)

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Carter (2022)

Director Jung Byung-gil takes the frenetic ‘one shot’ approach he developed for the action sequences in 2017’s The Villainess and expands the concept into a full movie. As you can imagine, at over two hours, it is at times a challenging and bewildering watch; a story supposedly told in real-time with little to no breathing space from one mad action sequence to the next. The camera hyperactively moves from macro-level to expansive, high-flying drone footage, to disorientating transitional shots which zoom underneath moving trucks and helicopters, follow falling bodies to the ground, and so on. The action – of which …

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The Princess (2022)

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The Princess (2022)

This stretches a thin premise – The Raid meets Rapunzel – almost to the point of tedium, saved only by the skills of its principle cast and abundance of fight action. Teen star Joey King matures into a one woman killing machine in a post-modern twist on the archetypal ‘princess in the tower’ story (there’s a delicious irony to the film being made available on Disney’s streaming platform). She escapes an arranged marriage to a mad medieval usurper (Dominic Cooper) and is forced to fight her way out of a castle in a bid for freedom, smashing through countless burly …

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The Gambling Ghost (1991)

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The Gambling Ghost (1991)

Sammo Hung‘s early 90s output is a patchy collection of unbridled barnstormers (Pedicab Driver; Skinny Tiger, Fatty Dragon) and absolute howlers (Pantyhose Hero; Don’t Give a Damn), and his lack of consistency would see his star power fade. At times, this meandering supernatural comedy may test the patience of even his most hardened fans – it is essentially a series of slapstick routines pieced together – but, by and large, the broad comedy lands surprisingly well, aside from some jarring homophobia and sexism (although there are much worse examples in his extensive filmography). The comedy riffs on big Hong Kong …

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The Red Wolf (1995)

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The Red Wolf (1995)

Yuen Woo-ping‘s take on Under Siege (itself a riff on Die Hard). What this lacks in Seagal’s ponytail and culinary skills it more than makes up for in typically crazy Hong Kong action. There’s some really memorable moments; like at the end when dynamite is strapped to a little girl who is suspended in the air while a demonic Collin Chou wearing a sailor outfit plays the drums. Taiwanese TV star and singer Kenny Ho plays a security guard on board a cruise ship taken over by terrorists – played by Collin Chou and his femme fatale girlfriend, Elaine Lui – who …

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KFMG Podcast S07 Episode 83: Scott Adkins

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KFMG Podcast S07 Episode 83: Scott Adkins

“It’s not easy to make something so British, and yet so Hong Kong.”

Scott Adkins is in a good mood. The response to his latest martial arts movie, Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday – the sequel to his dream project, 2018’s Accident Man, based on a cherished British comic book he loved as a kid – has been incredibly positive, with many fans claiming it to be one of his best movies. In a gruelling 22-day shoot, Adkins – as producer, story developer, fight choreographer and lead actor – has managed to turn around another action-packed and entertaining indie which delivers way …

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Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday (2022)

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Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday (2022)

The somewhat inevitable return of beer-swilling, punch-throwing, bike-riding alpha-idiot Mike Fallon (Scott Adkins), an assassin who makes his kills look like accidents. Following his self-destructive escapades in the first film, Mike winds up in Malta for some R and R, only to return to his old tricks when he bumps into ‘Finicky Fred’ (Perry Benson). The two strike-up an unlikely bromance, cooking up new ways to accidentally kill their targets, mostly in increasingly bizarre and gruesome ways (one of the film’s many nods to the work of Edgar Wright, clearly a big influence on the film’s directors, the brothers George …

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Day Shift (2022)

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Day Shift (2022)

Hollywood stunt coordinator, J.J. Perry, makes his directorial debut with a Netflix action horror – the sort of popcorn movie that used to be shown in cinemas. The always-affable Jamie Foxx plays a vampire hunter disguised as a pool cleaner who rides his beaten-up truck around a woozy, sun-drenched and garish vision of Los Angeles, collecting fangs to pay the bills. When his estranged wife and daughter are strapped for cash, he decides to go straight and join the official vampire hunters union – a bureaucratic nightmare run like a government department full of jobsworths, protocol and paperwork. This glimpse …

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Section 8 (2022)

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Section 8 (2022)

True Blood actor Ryan Kwanten turns action hero for this mind-numbing exercise in B-movie box-ticking – a rough attempt at Bourne-meets-Expendables but on a small DTV budget. Kwanten plays an ex-Marine with PTSD living as a doting family man and mechanic in Mickey Rourke’s garage. This is another one of Rourke’s strange, meandering cameos which was clearly filmed on a deadline. When his family are killed by street thugs, Kwanten exacts his revenge and winds up in the slammer, only to be released by the dashing Dermot Mulroney who recruits him into ‘Section 8’ – an off-the-books group of mercenaries used …

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KFMG Podcast S07 Episode 82: Tribute to Jimmy Wang Yu

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KFMG Podcast S07 Episode 82: Tribute to Jimmy Wang Yu

“He was the first martial arts star – before Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan… and he was the first to combine different martial arts styles in his films.” Frank Djeng

When Jimmy Wang Yu died on 5 April 2022 at the age of 79, Jackie Chan took to his social media accounts to pay his respects, stating that, “the contributions you’ve made to kung fu movies and the support and wisdom you’ve given to the younger generations will always be remembered in the industry.” But Wang Yu’s legacy is a complicated one. Despite being a huge Hong Kong martial arts star in …

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One-Armed Boxer (1971)

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One-Armed Boxer (1971)

Jimmy Wang Yu throws everything at his first directorial effort after his controversial exit from Shaw Brothers, remixing his two most successful films during his tenure at his former studio, One-Armed Swordsman and The Chinese Boxer, to create One-Armed Boxer. It’s a bonkers, relentless rival schools story in which Wang Yu shows his penchant for the surreal, pitting his Chinese boxer against an array for foreign fighters, each more bizarre than the next. Fighters include a Tibetan monk who uses his qigong skills to inflate his entire body like a balloon; an Indian yogi who balances on his hands and spins …

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