Brief Story Line
Patrick Walker (Tom Hardy - Venom: The Last Dance, Dunkirk etc) was a dirty homicide detective who was working with his new partner, rookie police Ellie (Jessi Mei Li - Shadow and Bone TV series etc) on Christmas eve when they were called to investigate a case involving the killing of Triad leader. The suspects Charlie (Justin Cornwell - The InBetween TV series, Jingle Jangle etc) and his girlfriend Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) managed to escape but were caught on camera.
Things became complicated when Narcotics squad led by Vincent (Timothy Olyphant - Amsterdam, Justified TV series etc) were trying to capture Charlie as they were involved in a separate case earlier, while the Triad's boss nicknamed Mother (Yeo Yann Yann - The King of Musang KIng etc) were also chasing them for revenge. Meanwhile Walker was getting pressure from Mayor candidate Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker - Arrival, Platoon etc) to help him do something which relate to the current case.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
This film seemed to be getting some hype before it was released, I think it was said to be super violent or something (cause I did not read in details). Anyway as I started watching, the earlier part of the movie did not exactly impress me since the car chase and all the surrounding environment look obviously done by computer. Not sure why but the CGI quality seemed poor and the car chase did not really satisfy me. As the story progressed, the movie became slightly more interesting with the introduction of lead characters Walker and Ellie.
After brief investigation, the story became more exciting with some truly brutal and violent fight scenes on the street and particularly the one in the club. However, I could not help feeling a bit of familiarity with Indonesian's recent action movies or Hong Kong's 80s/90s action films. Then came the finale which was chaotic, crazy and completely savage with surprisingly various fights involving Walker. However, there were times where I thought the never ending bullets were not properly addressed (except few times but still not logical enough). Regardless of that, I thought it was pretty enjoyable, even though the CGI did not get any better.
During the closing credits, I just saw that it was directed by Gareth Evans which explained that familiarity feeling for me cause he was the director of the highly rated Indonesian martial arts movie The Raid and its less favorable sequel (for me). Evans was known for his high octane fight sequence style of directing, including when he made the TV series Gangs of London. Btw, I read that this movie was made entirely in Cardiff, Wales (Evans' home country) and became the largest production ever done there. Thing is, for Evan's quality I thought it would have been a much more entertaining movie. I read there were reshoots done which delayed the release of the film (finished in 2021) but I truly fail to see the improvement.
The movie had a pretty large cast. In addition to some of the well known names above, there were also support actors/actresses such as Luis Guzmán (Wednesday TV series, Snake Eyes etc) as Mia's uncle Raul, UFC fighter Michelle Waterson as Triad's assassin, Sunny Pang (Headshot etc) as Triad's lieutenant Ching and several others. But it was obvious that the main attraction was Tom Hardy and Gareth Evans at the helm. It has duration of 1 hour 47 minutes which included closing credits but without mid or post end credit scenes.
Overall despite some of its quite enjoyable, over the top hyper violent, gory fight scenes, I was a little bit disappointed with the quality of the CGI and some of the rather illogical never ending bullets in most cases. There was nothing special on the plot but at least the story telling was not bad and did not make us bored. The sound effects were pretty good and I thought was decent enough even while watching it on TV. So if you are fans of Gareth Evans works, I think you might find some of his trademark violent action sequence here, but some people might feel they were a bit exaggerated. For me though, The Raid is still Evan's best to date.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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