What bothers me most about Netflix's "Fistful of Vengeance" isn't that it's based on their show "Wu Assassins," it's that it didn't tell me that. I don't necessarily have a problem with film adaptions, but when the viewer is thrown into the plot without any idea who anyone is or why they're doing what they're doing, it creates an unfair viewing experience. Maybe had I been notified to read-up on the franchise before pressing the play button, I'd have a completely different opinion. Of course, they could have just made a film that didn't require any homework.
This left me with one of two options: A) suspend my viewing and start with the one season of "Wu Assassins," or B) just ignore logic and observe lots of very violent vignettes vaguely strung together by moronic dialogue. Actually I'm sure if it's moronic, I just didn't understand what they were ever talking about. In case you haven't figured by now, I chose B.
Eventually, you start to make sense of what's happening (even if you don't understand the why or how), so let's get the narrative out of the way: Kai Jin (Iko Uwais), a Wu Assassin, Lu Xin Lee (Lewis Tan, in full "Ryan Reynolds" mode) not a Wu Assassin, and Tommy Wah (Lawrence Kao), also not a Wu Assassin, try to track down who killed the latter's sister Jenny. It's of course a whole lot more complicated, involving an evil god, double-crossing billionaires, double-crossing acquaintances, double-crossing baddies, and a whole lot of hand-gestures.
OK I'll be serious here and tell you what you need to know; William Pan (Jason Tobin) and Ku An Qi (Rhatha Phongam) are bad, trying to resurrect Pangu of Chinese mythology who will wipe out the world as we know it. At least that's what I remember- it was mentioned so early in the runtime when I was still trying to figure out who was who.
They can't just kill Kai of course, because of plot. "Take them to me," or something like that, yells Ku at one point to her troops, who have managed to trap our heroes in a van; they're completely surrounded. "Don't fire," hollers one nameless henchman to another, so the enemies use gas tanks to blow the vehicle sideways, and then toss bottles of booze so it catches fire. Sigh, good help is so hard to come by these days.
Because the film doesn't play by the rules and respect the viewer's time, what we're left is a lot of combat without purpose outside of primal entertainment. Fortunately director Roel Reiné handles these myriad of fights with finesse, cleanly shot where you can easily tell the location of the good guys relative to the bad guys. Shame its score is full of awful hip hop and rap- each scene sounds like I walked into a high school prom.
"But Mr. Critic," you interject, "what exactly is a Wu Assassin?" Great question reader, but I'm afraid it doesn't really mean much. They have "special abilities," which I observed as the ability to sort of push the space directly in front of their hands. They can block punches or use it to supercharge their punches, or in one moment, stop themselves from falling to their doom. The problem is that this "power" is completely underwhelming; the non-Wu Assassin protagonists frequently hold their own against the Wu Assassin antagonists, so what's the point? I guess it looks good in ads.
It doesn't help that it's so poorly explained. Why wouldn't these extraordinary eliminators use this ability with every blow they inflict? Maybe it's that they just get tired. What about stopping a bullet? I guess not, because Kai always ducks from gunfire, so, then, why do so many henchmen insist on fighting hand-to-hand? Not that the ones with guns live much longer, but I dunno, I thought it was a good question.
I wish I could have put blinders onto the world of reason and simply gone along for the ride, but I couldn't. It's settles on genre clichés instead of transcending them. Take a scene when where our heroes happen to find an unlocked Mercedes with the keys inside (in just the nick of time of course). What happens next? They drive down a parking garage while being pursued on foot. They didn't have the audacity to have someone quip "must be my luc-key day" or something.
I'm giving "Fistful of Vengeance" two stars because I didn't hate it. I could end this review right now, but lemme get in one final random waffle. It's a bit of an odd one, a single point in the film where I had to rewind just to make sure I understood it. A sex scene, between characters I will not name in respect of spoilers, it should have been titillating and exciting as you saw exposed breasts. But then it cuts, and she has her top back on. It cuts again and we see the guy biting it off. It cuts again, and her breasts are covered! I shouldn't be forced to apply continuity to a sex scene, but here we are.
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