Fatal Contact

From the unreadable opening credits (you’d have probably been hard pushed to see them in the cinema let alone at home!) to the surprisingly nihilistic ending, this unashamed vehicle for Wushu champion Jacky Wu Jing very nearly breaks new ground in the well trodden boxing epic.

Bred from the same Martial Art collective as Jet Li and Donnie Yen, Jacky currently has little of the cross-over appeal and acting chops of the aforementioned but tries his hardest to excel in this sleight tale of a gun-for-hire underground boxing mercenary, allowing for many scenes of impressive physical feats intercut with the usual girlfriend problems that have always beset such pugilists from Rocky to Raging Bull.

The fighting style is more Sanda than Thai Boxing and the action scenes are fluently filmed and impressively choreographed, none more so than a quick and rough subway fight quite early one which zips along with old school enthusiasm and doesn’t cop out with obvious wirework. Wu Jing has an impressive brutalness to his moves that make for an ever more convincing descent into the shady world of elicit match fixing.

The fights themselves are all the more real for taking place in matter-of-fact places and eschewing the typical cavernous warehouses and dock battles that bigger budget ventures would use, though the lack of audience and therefore potential punters does make you wonder just who is making the money from such trysts. The ending is a bone of contention with many viewers, but this is where I actually respected the film for trying to achieve something different and, whilst it can hardly be called predictable, it is certainly brave.

Unfortunately this Cine-Asia release is stripped of the ever-entertaining Bey Logan and his legendary commentary skills and the subsequent plethora of extras found on the two-disc Region 1 release, though the Making Of is at relatively informative.

Extras: Blood and Bruises - The Making of Fatal Contact, outtakes and trailer gallery.

Released on 21st July 2008 by Cine-Asia.

Written by Simon Cole.