Fatal Contact: Dragon Dynasty Two-Disc Ultimate Edition – DVD Review

Dragon Dynasty / 2006 / 106 Minutes / Unrated
Currently Available at Amazon.com

Director
Dennis Law

Cast
Wu Jing … Kong Ko
Ronald Cheng … Captain
Miki Yeung … Siu Tin
Theresa Fu … Chui Chi
Siu-Fai Cheung … Ma Ho-Keung
Ken Lo … Chan Sun
Andy On … Silver Dragon
Timmy Hung … Portland Street Fighter
Suet Lam … Soo
Yu Xing … King

The Movie:

It’s not a giant leap to say that on a lot of levels Martial Arts cinema is in trouble. For decades the genre has been able to maintain a certain level of quality by relying on a core group of stars that kept exploring new innovations in order to keep audiences excited. Unfortunately, many of those stars that have kept the movies going, such as Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Jackie Chan and others, are all getting on in years, and simply can’t keep up the pace that they used to. To compound the problem, the only real clear heir apparent to these Action stars is Tony Jaa, whose films have been entertaining and brutal, but alone he may not be able to keep Martial Arts cinema afloat. Thankfully, with Fatal Contact Western audiences will get to see the prowess of Wu Jing, a fighter who will hopefully have the opportunity to be able to show his stuff on screen for a long time to come. If we’re lucky, he may even get to do it in a much better movie.

Action-wise Fatal Contact has nearly everything you could want in a Kung Fu film. The film centers on Kong Ko (Jing), a member of both the Peking Opera and part of the National Kung fu team, who gets recruited by a local Triad gang as a fighter in an underground boxing ring. Mowing down his first opponent in about six seconds, Kong immediately takes to the competition like a fish to water, and skyrockets through the ranks, taking down giant brawlers and flamboyant kickboxing champions in wicked sequences showing off Wu Jing’s grace and power.

Director Dennis Law sets up some nice action scenes with Stunt Coordinator Nicky Li in order to present Wu Jing’s exceptional skills, often favoring long takes to more modern quick editing. This is very appreciated, as it keeps the action from feeling as if it’s more staged or trying to hide the weaknesses of its performers. Jing is able to take nearly full advantage of this, amazing us with lightning moves, such as a moment when he takes out three street thugs with nearly one motion. Adding to this, the action gets more and more vicious as we go along too, trying to further out expectations for the next fight scene and nearly meeting them each time.

Unfortunately, the movie set around these fight scenes is much less compelling. While he’s terrific while he’s kicking someone in face, Wu Jing doesn’t do much acting in this film. Most of the film he even seems like a simpleton, constantly being taken advantage of while others profit on his career. A love subplot between Kong and a young dancer named Siu Tin (Miki Yeung) is horribly predictable, with neither character coming off as any more likable as a result. Also not helping is the fact that none of the film’s villains, other than those that actually have to fight Kong in the boxing scenes, come off as menacing at all. Most are simply flashy or just laughable, which seriously takes away any tension this film might build up.

Lastly, the film features a horrifically pretentious ending that it never really earns up to that point. Honestly, for storytelling purposes, Fatal Contact pales in comparison with many recent martial arts productions, and not just Jet Li’s Fearless or Unleashed, but also the two recent outings by Tony Jaa, Ong-bak and The Protector. Outside the ring Fatal Contact comes nowhere close to matching their entertainment value, and even while fighting this film has none of the atmosphere of those flicks.

Overall, while the film has segments of great energy, its hard to categorize the movie as anything but a disappointment. The grace of its fight scenes simply get overwhelmed by the film maker’s apparent boredom when the fists aren’t flying. While I can see great potential in Wu Jing as an Action star, this is hardly the vehicle that will take him to where wants to be. While some may have proclaimed him to be the next Jet Li, he’s got a long way before he can go on to claim that mantle.

The DVD

The Video

The movie looks pretty decent here, but not spectacular. It doesn’t seem to be up to par with Dragon Dynasty’s release of Police Story 2, but it’s still quite good on this front. The picture is never too dark, and there’s little debris on the print. The film is present in Anamorphic Widescreen, with an aspect of 2.35:1.

The Audio

The movie also sounds pretty good. You get a crystal clear experience of listening to legs breaking and fist walloping on this Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.

The Supplements

Audio Commentary by Director Dennis Law and Hong Kong Cinema Expert Bey Logan – A fixture on these discs, Logan impresses with another terrific audio track, throwing in one tidbit after another, while keeping things very conversational with Director Law. There’s an fascinating section of the commentary where they discuss the sound used in the movie’s fight scenes and Law talks about how some of the effects are pure stock sounds used in several pictures, while other sounds were produced simply for this movie. I think its easy to forget just how important sound can be to a movie, and especially a Martial Arts film, and to hear a director talk about it is really unusual.

Dragon Rising: An Interview with Leading Man Wu Jing – This a terrific Featurette, with Wu Jing talking a lot about how he wanted to get into the role, so he visited a school in Beijing that taught Martial Arts. Training with these men, he would have to go through drills such as ones where he would have to stand against a wall and simply try to defend himself at full speed, but not be allowed to strike back. That’s a dedication to a craft that many actors simply don’t have.

The Ringmaster: An Interview with Director Dennis Law – This interview with Director Law goes nearly half an hour. Unfortunately, you can hear a little pretension with Law here as he talks about how the action of the film has to match the story as much as possible, when this really isn’t the case with the movie. I think Law really likes his cast, and speaks glowingly of all of his actors, going in depth about his character’s motivations.

Working Girl: An Interview with Co-Star Theresa Fu – Fu talks a lot about how much she enjoyed playing her character in this film, a young girl who keeps falling into worse relationships as the movie goes forward. She talks about how difficult certain scenes were, especially since she has little acting experience, but I think she does pretty well.

Young and Dangerous: An Interview with Co-Star Miki Yeung – I think Yeung considers this role a bit of a breakout for her compared to her other characters. This is a much darker character, and has more layers than her usual fair, and she seems happy to have gotten this opportunity. She also speaks well of her male co-stars in the film, saying how well they took care of her.

Life is a Contact Sport – This “making of” doc goes about 30 minutes and shows just how intensive the training for the film’s action really was. Wu Jing had to go through hours and hours of intensive training, and fortunately this really comes across in the film.

Trailers