FANTASIA 2021 Review - RAGING FIRE

The legends of cinematic martial arts luminaries is a long, storied list, but the real prominent, go to now is Donnie Yen. He's always the name I think of, and now he may finally (hopefully) get his well deserved Hollywood break in John Wick 4. Yes, he's been a part of a good handful of major stateside productions, but nothing seems to catapult him into the level of megastar that contemporaries like Jackie Chan and Jet Li. He's also never been the lead, something which he's extremely adept at doing now. Yen has been putting out some solid output in Hong Kong for quite a while now, the latest of which is the late Benny Chan's final film, a cops n' robbers throwdown called Raging Fire that's not quite as action packed as one might imagine.

Yen stars as Cheung Chung-Bong, a highly decorated and respected cop and husband, who's challenged with a gang of thieves and murderers, hell bent on revenge for reasons unknown. After a high number of police are killed during a leaked raid, Bong and his team are on the hunt for what's revealed to be disgraced former cops who he testified against, led by the dangerous Yau Kong-Ngo (Nicholas Tse). Action and spectacle ensues!

This movie is a bit of a mixed bag for me. Let's get some good stuff here first. I really enjoyed Nicholas Tse's charismatic performance as a character who is most certainly the villain, but remains someone that you understand. His motives are misguided, and he's a criminal now, but the inciting incident is morally ambiguous. His scenes with Yen are all great, and he brings Donnie up to his level in those moments of tension. Their climactic fight is a masterwork of Yen's lighting-fast and intricate choreography and action direction, easily one of the top action sequences this year.

There is an obvious amount of Michael Mann's Heat influencing the proceedings, right down to an interrogation that feels oddly similar to the coffee shop moment between Pacino and DeNiro, and a no holds barred, street shoot out following a heist. This is in no way inherently bad, but director Benny Chan, who passed away during post-production, doesn't quite have the same grip on coherent, clear action that Mann did in that film. Like that old saying, if you're going to try to take out the king...you best not miss. The relationship between Bong and his wife felt tacked on and forced as an afterthought to add some more stakes to the conflict between Bong and Ngo, which were already high enough. There also seems to be a very large gap in the middle of the film where things slow down to a halt and drama takes center stage, leaving it feeling out of pace and a bit disjointed.

Raging Fire isn't a classic, nor is it an original story. Everything has been played before, and the numbers are followed here. But when it hits, it hits. There are two major action sequences that are fairly spectacular, and the final fight is one for the books. Tse and Yen are electric together, and carries the more tired tropes along and makes them shine a bit brighter. 

In addition to playing Fantasia 2021, Raging Fire is currently in theaters from Well Go USA!