Fantasia Festival 2021 Film Review: Raging Fire
Benny Chan’s swan song is a straight shot of Hong Kong action
My 2021 Fantasia Festival coverage begins here! Hong Kong action maestro Benny Chan’s final film, Raging Fire, kicks things off with an injection of adrenaline. The tale of two men on opposite sides of the law barreling towards a bloody, knives-out confrontation, Chan’s swan song is a throwback to old-school action cinema - even its rote story and sleepy lead performance can’t stop the barrage of brutal, steel-fisted violence. Minor spoilers ahead…
In the heyday of Hong Kong cinema, the tiny 427 square mile island had a filmmaking footprint that rivaled Hollywood and Bollywood. Producing dramas, romcoms, and action movies - hundreds each year - the height of the Hong Kong film industry had an indelible impact on the global landscape of cinema for decades to come. In the thick of it was director Benny Chan, a prolific action maestro that delivered some of the era’s most iconic films - adrenaline fueled classics such as A Moment of Romance (1990), Jackie Chan’s Who Am I? (1998), mega-blockbuster Gen-X Cops (1999), and the gritty reboot New Police Story (2004). Raging Fire, Chan’s final directorial effort before his untimely death last year from nasopharyngeal cancer, is poised to set the genre alight again. Starring professional ass-kickers Donnie Yen and Nicholas Tse, the film is a throwback to the police capers and bare-knuckle brawlers of yore.
Centered around hard-nosed and honor-bound police officer Cheung Sung-pong (Donnie Yen) and his relationship with his disgraced ex-protegé Yau Kong-ngo (Nicholas Tse, chewing up all the scenery he can get his hands on), Raging Fire counts down to a bloody confrontation between cop and robber. Imprisoned for a heat-of-the-moment mistake and abandoned by his once-trusted colleagues, Ngo turns to a life of crime with a thirst for bloody retribution, putting him on a collision course with his old mentor. If all of this sounds trope-y and predictable, it is, and it’s probably by design: Chan, with his swan song, has crafted an ode to the “heroic bloodshed” genre of Hong Kong action cinema. A maelstrom of melodramatic concepts: redemption, brotherhood, duty, honor - and of course - copious amounts of bloodletting, this sub-genre was a blueprint for bevy of filmmaking legends. John Woo was a deft pioneer of “heroic bloodshed” with films such as A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), and Hard Boiled (1992); similarly, Ringo Lam’s City on Fire (1987) would go on to serve as inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 debut, Reservoir Dogs.
“If all of this sounds trope-y and predictable, it is, and it’s probably by design: Chan, with his swan song, has crafted an ode to the ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre of Hong Kong action cinema.”
Raging Fire leans heavily into the familiar. Your mileage will vary depending on how much you can stomach dated gangland clichés, but there’s no doubt that it’s done with aplomb. Its lengthy 126-minute runtime might seem bloated, but it’s Nicholas Tse’s formidable Ngo that makes the film so gripping. Turning on a dime amongst a whole bag of dimensions, Tse’s tragic antagonist flips from ruthless killer, to tortured soul, to Christmas ham with ease. As blood spills and the bodies start piling up, it’s easy to overlook Raging Fire’s predictable construction as Ngo’s gang of wronged cops rip through Hong Kong in a whirlwind of violence. As tired and uninspired as this might sound, Tse brings a brand of test-of-resilience anarchy and chaos not unlike Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. And Donnie Yen, who has always defied gravity in these gravel-fisted actioners, is in perfect physical form: At 58 years young, Yen is still running circles around stars half his age. His performance when things slow down, however, leaves something to be desired. He comes alive in Fire’s numerous set pieces, dodging steel and pummeling foes, but Tse steals almost all the thunder from Yen’s stoic stillness.
Disregarding its generic police melodrama, Raging Fire’s big draw is undoubtedly the action, and on that front, it delivers in spades. Knife-play, bone-crunching fisticuffs, and nail-biting hostage situations are just some of the thrills the film has to offer, and when the hand-to-hand starts flying, you’ll be quickly reminded why Donnie Yen is still the master of doling out beatings. And Nicholas Tse, a talented martial artist in his own right, more than holds his own, dishing a particularly ruthless brand of terrifying violence. Raging Fire is a powder keg, and Chan knows how to build a crescendo - it’s a brutal cascade that ends with a spectacular shootout that mashes together elements from Heat and Den of Thieves with a sprinkling from this year’s Guy Ritchie heist caper, Wrath of Man.
Raging Fire is the paragon of confident construction; Chan knows his way around the tropes of “heroic bloodshed,” and while he hits all the familiar beats of the genre, the predictability is cut from the cloth of homage rather than prostration. At the young age of 58, Benny Chan was taken from us much too soon, and given the pure shot of adrenaline that is Raging Fire, only one’s wild action movie fantasies can conjure what his second renaissance would have looked like.
