Full Contact

Title: Full Contact
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Action
Starring: Chow Yun Fat
Language: Chinese (Mandarin)
Director: John Woo

“Well! Masturbate in hell!”

Another triumphant action film from the Hong Kong equivalent of Schwarzeneggar, with his ever entrancing combination of Jackie Chan like martial arts, hit-them-til-they-stop-moving brutality and ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get their shotgun,’ attitude the action is in the expected ‘gun-fu’ style, with none of this confusing rapidly changing camera nonsense, providing plenty of raw and hard-hitting punch ups, quick thinking shooting and explosions galore, the action is everything I could ask for. Instead what really lets this down is the plot, perhaps less confusing in the original Chinese, the audio severely hampers the manner in which things unfold.

Now don’t get me wrong, ordinarily I hate dubbing, much preferring the subtitles over the use of actors who seem barely capable of reading, but here – possibly the only time you will hear be utter these words – watch the dubbed version. The subtitles are abysmal, making little to no sense it will cause the plot to seem rather more bizarre than it really is. Couple this with the fact that the dubbing, in a true break from the norm, isn’t actually bad. Sure, they changed the hero’s name from ‘Gao Fei’ to ‘Geoffrey,’ and he is the only member of the cast to sport an English accent, but in terms of events, it actually allows the story to make sense.

And the story, when it comes down to it, really isn’t that complex. Gao Fei and his friends are in debt, and need money fast. In comes his friend’s cousin with a scheme to steal a lot of money. Reluctantly he agrees to help, only to be double crossed. Shot by his friend and left for dead, he swears vengeance on those who did this to him. Bloody vengeance as it would so happen. The characters are oddly fairly well fleshed out, feeling unique rather than ‘another big bad guy,’ from the slutty one to the big dumb oaf, the insane yet smart one (exceptionally well performed by “Simon Yam") to Yun Fat himself. The really pissed off one. They all have their roles to play, and conflict amongst the two groups of friends is common, and it’s this that separates itself somewhat from other films in this vein.

I usually hold that if the action is good, then the plot becomes irrelevant. This is only partly true here, as it’s not so much the plot itself bringing it down, rather the convoluted way it comes across. Despite this, it is a relatively minor annoyance, after all, many characters either don’t live long enough to talk, or are distracted by the bullets whizzing past them. If you can forgive this oversight, the variety of car chases, punch ups, shoot outs, frequent explosions and unpredictability of some of the more evil characters makes this – whilst no ‘Hard Boiled’ – certainly worth a watch.