Badges of Fury (2013)

Best movie of this year hands down!

I wanted to but couldn't!

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

When a series of strange deaths occur the Hong Kong police suspect murder. Taken individually each looks like a tragic accident but each man died with a fixed smile on his face and each of their funerals was attended by the same woman. The case is taken by a trio of detectives; impulsive Wang Bu Er; older Huang Fei Hong, who is a master of kung-fu and Angela, their sergeant. Their first suspect is the woman at the funerals; actress Liu Jin Shui. She had dated each of the dead men and they had each left her. Her sister, Dai Yiyi, is suspected too; each of the men had moved on to her… indeed her feminine charms are noticed by just about every man who sets eyes on her. As the case progresses more suspects arise and there will be quite a few fights before the case is solved.Anybody watching this expecting lots of top quality martial arts action or realism is likely to be disappointed… especially as that is what the DVD cover promises… it may say 'Genre: action/martial arts' on the box but this is a comedy plain and simple. What martial arts we see is 'enhanced' with unbelievable CGI… we certainly don't get the stunning choreography of a Jackie Chan movie or the wire-work of wuxia films. Once one has got over that it is possible to enjoy this film as a slap stick comedy. Another surprise is that Jet Li isn't the lead actor; that is Wen Zhang. The cast do a decent enough job; although it is sometimes hard to tell overacting from part of the deliberate comedy. The case isn't the most gripping; it really just serves to link the series of comedy moments. These vary from laugh-out-loud funny to cringe inducing. As stated before the action features a fair amount of CGI and this is the films biggest let down; it doesn't look real enough… the opening which should grab the viewer's attention merely made me wonder why I was watching! Overall if you want a silly action comedy it is fun enough and it is probably suitable for anybody old enough to read the subtitles… although some viewers might find the camera's fascination with Dai Yiyi's impressive cleavage a bit too much!These comments are based on watching in Mandarin with English subtitles.

"Badges of Fury" is a short and fast paced action comedy movie which is certainly entertaining but overall disappointingly superficial. The movie has a clever marketing strategy and includes many cameos by famous Chinese stars which include not only actors but also sportsmen for example. The longest cameo includes Jet Li who appears from time to time in this movie but doesn't really play an important role as the trailers might suggest. Even when he's there, his acting is wooden and lifeless and this could be considered his worst movie ever and I'm saying this as a big fan who has watched almost all of his movies. The film is also a parody of several Hongkong blockbusters from the last thirty years. Some of the insinuations are funny, for example when the main characters coincidentally capture a fashion icon who is behind online piracy acts. Most jokes are though either silly in a very childish way when we get to hear weird cartoon noises during some action scenes and overacted reactions by some of the characters. These ridiculous noises that seem to be taken off some old Looney Tunes episodes are overused in the first half of the movie and get completely dropped in the second part. Other jokes are simply sexual innuendos as we get to see many close-ups of Liu Yan's big breasts which get a lot of attention from female and male characters throughout the entire film. In general, men are mostly portrayed as dumb and superficial machos while women are mostly portrayed as silly sexual objects. I'm someone who likes to laugh a lot and this includes dirty and slapstick humour but this kind of silly rehashed comedy is nothing but embarrassing.The action scenes are quite a mixed bag. Most of them are voluntarily exaggerated and feature massive CGI effects that kill any kind of charm that the parodied Hongkong classics have. Still, a few fighting scenes are well executed and filmed. They are filled with adrenaline and grace and use several interesting items as weapons. Even in his weakest movie, an elderly Jet Li can still show off his incredible talent and his acolyte Zhang Wen does a quite convincing job if one ignores the distracting slapstick moments during his fighting scenes. On the other side, the final fighting scene involving Jet Li is overlong and unspectacular.The plot of this movie is extremely odd. The film starts with three random slapstick murders where the victims all die with a strange smile on their faces. The main suspect of the movie is a shy actress with good manners in her late twenties who hasn't got her breakthrough yet and who was engaged to each victim over the past years. Her sister soon becomes another important suspect as the superficial beauty with bad manners stole each of her sister's fiancés and sold insurances to them that made her a wealthy woman when they died. The unpredictable final twist of the movie where a rabbit gets pulled out of a hat is though so absurd that it even feels misplaced in a slapstick comedy flick. In between the morbidly amusing opening and the forced twist followed by a stereotypical happy ending, a few more plot lines are introduced only to justify many pointless cameo appearances. None of the few potentially promising ideas such as the relationship between the two investigating officers or the meeting of the criminal gang at the beginning of the movie are pushed further. Any kind of character development is completely absent in this hollow movie.In the end, this movie is bearable because of a few gripping action scenes, a couple of acceptable jokes, a high number of cameos by famous actors and allusions to classics any Hongkong cinephile should know and the fact that one is impatiently waiting for the outcome of the story as the tension slightly increases even if the twist ends up being a huge letdown. Despite its obvious flaws, I was overall very well entertained by this dynamical movie for the reasons mentioned above. I would surely watch it again in a couple of years. Those who are mainly planning to watch this movie because they are expecting an explosive martial arts blockbuster with Jet Li should be careful though and rather rent the film for a reasonable price instead of buying it or going to the movies.

Having Jet Li headlining the cast will really set high expectations. However, in the first few scenes of this particular film, you will know that you need to tone these expectations down.There is a series of mysterious murders in the city. The victims were all young men who strangely die with a silly grin on their faces. The policemen who get assigned to this case were unlikely partners, the young bumbling Wang Bu Er (Zhang Wen) and grizzled veteran Huang (Jet Li), under their lady boss Angela (Michelle Chen). Investigation lead them to a young actress Liu Jin Shui (Lui Shishi), who was the girlfriend of all these victims. Zhang Wen plays the slapstick comic lead in this action/comedy. He is shameless in some really embarrassing scenes and stupid situations. He does have fight and chase scenes, but will usually end up bungling everything. Jet Li plays straight man to Zhang here, but Li of course figures in some exciting though exaggerated martial arts fight scenes. Michelle Chen is quite funny in her cute little way, though she was not entirely believable as a police chief at all. This film is shallow and light-hearted, not to be taken seriously. There will be scenes that you cannot help but laugh out loud in their craziness. The investigation of the murders has its own nifty twists and turns which can puzzle you. It can be a fun way to spend a lazy hour and a half, if you do not expect too much.

As a long time Jet Li fan (regardless of the genre), I always look forward to films in which he appears.Promoted as an "Action/Adventure" film, 'Badges of Fury' is actually an "Action/Comedy" in the 'Beverly Hills Cop' vein via master filmmaker Stephen Chow... except that the action is totally embarrassing and the film is completely devoid of any comedy (unless you are 2 years old... which is actually an insult to 2-year-olds).Where to begin with this unmitigated disaster?Of the lead cast, Jet Li comes off best as the grizzled veteran cop. Regrettably, his comedic skills (and action talents) are sorely under-utilized. Michelle Chen struggles with a role that no one could possibly make believable (even for a supposed OTT comedy). Meanwhile, Zhang Wen mugs to the camera ad nauseum... to the point where you want someone... anyone... to shoot him and put the audience out of their collective misery. Action maestro Corey Yuen tries what he can with the fight scenes. Wire-fu is intentionally bad. The problem is that it never achieves the "it's so bad that it's good" level. Instead, it settles for just being bad... with even worse CGI work. The only stand-out is a brief sequence where a duel is fought on a round table embedded in a wall. But this is still not reason enough to sit through 94 minutes of agony.Things are certainly not helped by screenwriter Tan Cheung's lackluster, unfunny script. Logic, subtext and actual comedy are thrown by the wayside for... well, I'm not exactly sure. There are some interesting ideas here. But they remain undeveloped. With the exception of only a few actually laughs, the screenplay derives it's "humour" by aiming for the lowest, juvenile approach imaginable... something I didn't think possible until I saw this travesty.But ultimate blame lands at the feet of director Tsz Ming Wong. The key to any action flick or comedy film is timing; an artistic sense that Tsz Ming Wong is completely lacking. Scenes are painfully off-key, strained or just plain poor. He commands no sense of storytelling... instead, preferring to jump from one pointless scene to another. Logic is a foreign concept. Things happen because the director (and the script) wants them to happen. This might be fine if it all came together. Instead it just sits there. Unfunny. Bad. And painfully dull. In other words, avoid this movie at all costs.