Typically gangster flicks deal with many characters. They usually have large families and a hierarchy of ranks and responsibilities within the enterprise. Fatal move is the story of a Chinese Triad gang led by ‘Big Bro’ Sammo Hung. It’s a solid gritty and violent movie, the plot is pretty standard for most of the film. Gang loses territory-has to take it back from rival gang-cops are onto them for gang type illegal activities-drug shipment raided by cops-gang divides and sub sections fuck each other over for money, That kind of stuff. But I couldn’t help but actually find myself slightly confused as to who was on whose side as the film came to a close, I think a second watch would make this clearer, but the double cross element of the movie ended up a little on the convoluted side. This isn’t usually a major problem I bump into when watching subtitled films, but once Sammo’s gang divided, all the names I’d associated with characters all of a sudden started to not match up to who I thought they were, this may not be a major flaw in the movie, it probably isn’t, I actually think it’s just one of the few problems with not understanding the language the film is performed in, subtitles are fine or pushing the story along, but having to deal with 20 or so Chinese names, putting them to faces, learning who they were with, who’s side these dudes eventually end up on, they (the subs) actually held me back a bit here. But it didn’t stop me from enjoying the movie.Sammo runs his enterprise with his wife in the accountant/advisor role. The beginning of the movie we are introduced to some of the characters at a ceremony celebrating the 1 month anniversary of Sammo's new baby (not with his wife though, as he’s a gangster its apparently ok for him to just find a younger woman to have a baby with), the cops arrive at this ceremony demanding to know what is going on. From here it’s quite clear that these Triads are watched by the cops waiting for them to fuck up. This eventually happens in the form of a major drug shipment getting busted by a pretty huge force of cops, followed by a intense action sequence. The gang are going through a tough period; times are hard in the drug trade. They are having to buy high and sell high, they got the cops on their back 24/7, rival gangs taking more and more territory, but a major turning point is when one of the gangs big players (one of sammo's ‘big bro’ type guys) gets arrested. Unfortunately this guy has a naive girlfriend who tries to bribe the gang out of millions of dollars for her guy (now in police custody) to not divulge the information of the gangs accounts, if this were happen it would expose their entire operation and their laundering businesses etc etc. Sammo finds out and orders the death of the two involved, the girlfriend is tortured in a pretty gruesome ‘teeth pulling’ scene, and her guy inside (who eventually we find out has nothing to do with this bribe, it’s his girlfriend and the guy she’s seeing behind his back who came up with the scam) is killed by the gang infiltrating the police station with the help of an insider, which make for a very cool ‘Hard Boiled’ style shoot out.
New plot angles are introduced frequently which continually emphasises the real crappy state of affairs this gang are in. Wing Ju (Jacky Wu – The Mummy Tomb of the dragon emperor) is the chief heavy loyal to his boss Lung (Sammo). He’s a pretty sick but talented dude that likes carving people up with his sharp as fuck sword. Wu Jing is one of the films main focuses where the action is concerned; he is spectacular to watch with his sword. All the films action is shot nicely and evenly placed throughout the movie, there's a good mix of intricate martial arts and sword play with the brute force of gun battles. So action events border on the edge of the absurd from time to time which in contrast to the portrayed harsh reality of the Chinese criminal underworld seems a little out of place. There's one scene where the Wu Jing character and his buddy jump from a window of the police station, now these guys are about 10 stories up, they're fucking high up and no human could land from this height with snapping a bone or two, but no, cuts to a perfect landing on their feet, then back to the gunfight.
I don’t usually have a problem with the use of CGI blood, it’s ok. Used sparingly and in the right place I don’t mind it. But the CGI blood in this one looks really crappy. It’s too cartoony and far from realistic, I think I spotted a few quickly cut alleged limb severs which were clearly semi contact with CGI blood, but the next shot would see a guys fingers all sliced off. They must have saved all the gore for post production because the consistency between carefully choreographed sequences and mutilations with that of random swipes of the sword complete with sprays of CGI blood seems wild and unplanned, just my opinion.
The Climax see’s a the final straw in the downfall of this gang of Triads, Sammo’s wife is now fucking him over for money with another of sammos ex high up henchman, (I do have to admit, there were that many of them, henchmen, I had forgotten the details of their specific relationship prior to this) but they were both fucking him over none the less. I’m not going to explain the whole setup with this double cross as this is the section of the movie that although makes sense of the whole, has one or two confusing elements surrounding it, namely who was on whose side now (see paragraph number 1!)
It was awesome to see Sammo play a gang boss, it’s different from the roles I usually see him play, but there are still an awful lot of Sammo's films that I haven’t seen. He doesn’t really do much on the violence front anyhow; he doesn’t use his martial arts skills until he has an honourable showdown with his psycho loyalist Wu Jing at the end of the movie. Sammo manages to beat him with a metal pipe, Wu Jing has his sharp as fuck sword. It’s a good fight, wires are used to some effect but it’s well shot and a great action scene to end the movie.
I think I’ll watch this again sometime, I saw it on DVD but maybe I’ll pickup a bluray release if it gets one in the future. The performances are fantastic. Suave rich violent arrogant gangsters are aplenty, the movie also has a few characters set up for death, one of the cops with 3 daughters asks his boss for a transfer from the gang squad or whatever they call it, so he can spend more time with his daughters, well he’s dead! Rival gang leader with big mouth, he’s dead (or mutilated). Cheating girlfriend with blackmailing partner hiding in closet when Triad dude returns home, they’re dead!
The movie is directed by Dennis Law, according to imdb he’s heavily involved in the hong kong action scene in the director/producer/writer capacity, but this is the only film I have seen by him. I don’t recognise any of the others from his filmography but back in 2006, he directed a movie called ‘fatal contact’ which stars Jacky Wu (Wu Jing) as a kung fu champion, I will be picking this one up for sure.
