Badges of Fury

Not that anyone's likely to see this on this board, but just in case you do, don't go expecting Jet Li to be in it much, or for this to be a credible actioner or even a humourous movie. It's none of those things. It's a silly attempt to be silly. It's really ridiculous, and I can only imagine it was made for ... 5 year olds.

Apart from the occasional cool shot, and the amazing and sexy breasts of Ada Liu, the movie is in the same vein as Jackie Chan's recent embarrassment, CZ12. The film has so many references to other Chinese movies, which was pretty cool, including a finale that was 80% a remake of Once Upon A Time In China II and 20% coming from the costume department of Enter the Dragon, but it's not enough to make this thinly conceived movie anything more than a waste of my time.

Don't be fooled by the poster, this is a Wen Zhang movie. He has 90% of the fights, 90% of the lines, all of the "comedy", and all of the attention. Jet Li is relegated to a supporting actor that has a stairwell fight in the beginning and a Bruce Lee-esque fight at the end, which totals around 8 mins of screentime. It was nice to see Li in a movie in his native language and all, but I follow Li (and Chan for that matter) because I want them to turn in a performance like they used to (Police Story 2, Kiss of the Dragon etc.), not this stupidity. There's a lot of gravity-defying stunts and wire-work involved, and not in the good way, it's ludicrous, and with face smirks and whistle sounds effects to appease the kids.



I'll give it this grade because it's harmless [and incredibly stupid] fun, and because I'm a sucker for Ada Liu's breasts. But really, I'm being generous. Still, I do love watching Chinese movies as well as US ones - there'd be no point being here if I was only going to watch Western movies.

C-