by Dave Roberts
Donnie Yen is one of those actors that not only seemed to come out’ve nowhere, but in doing so, showed that he had been there the whole time. Here I review Kung fu Killer by Donnie Yen.
Balls Deep in Wing Chun
When I first saw Ip Man I was balls deep in a Wing Chun obsession and couldn’t believe what I was watching. Turns out, he had about forty five previous acting credits including in films I’d already seen like Blade II, for example. Since then he’s been chain-punching them out as readily as he can muster the strength and winning awards for choreography all over the place. I decided to pick one at random for this review and ended up on 2014s Kung Fu Killer / Kung Fu Jungle (depending on your location).
Kung fu Killer
Kung Fu Killer is like a throwaway episode of CSI or some other procedural drama. Hahou Mo (Yen) hands himself in for murdering some unknown gentleman and after watching the news realises he is the only person who can solve a new serial killer case. This isn’t true because all he brings to the case is carefully predicting who the next victim is going to be, or more commonly, has already been. Anyone can predict the past Donnie, that’s called remembering things.
Learning Boxing, Kicking, Grappling, Weapons and Qi
He senses a pattern in the killings, the men considered to be the best masters in different kung fu disciplines are dying in the order one learns in kung fu: Boxing, Kicking, Grappling, Weapons, and Inner Energy or Qi. It’s similar to Game of Death or other traditional Kung-Fu movies where a hero has to learn and adapt to increasingly different styles to fight a mob boss or in this case a serial killer.
Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for us, he has so much trouble convincing the Hong Kong police that he should be let out to help them, that he stages a massive prison fight, which telegraphs the quality of the choreography in a scene reminiscent of the Karate scene in Ip Man. Ultimately he tricks the Hong Kong Police into thinking that they need him to go with him, despite the fact that everything he brings to the table could easily be conveyed by a text message.
The curse of over production
I find in a lot of Donnie Yen films, even the Ip Man movies, the choreography suffers a little from over production, but over all the focus on different styles makes for very interesting fights in what is a lacklustre but Kung Fu Killer 2 interesting attempt at a plot. The use of actual kung fu/ Chinese philosophy and culture as a plot device is actually quite satisfying after living there for a while and it feels like you’re watching a REAL Chinese movie. It’s fun certainly, but is it good? I don’t know.
