Hong Kong cinema has suddenly found a keen liking for the sport of boxing. The tail-end of last year saw the release of Johnnie To's “Chasing Dream”, whereas this year already we have had “The Grand Grandmaster” and “Knockout” both represent the sport. First-time writers and directors Kwok Ka-hae and Ambrose Kwok also try their hand at the sub-genre with their Hong Kong-China co-production “Unleashed”.
“Unleashed” is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
Fok Kit (yes, really) is the reigning champion of the underground boxing scene in Hong Kong, but his mentor and trainer Dubble is struggling to make ends meet for his boxing gym. There's also the story arc of wannabe actress Effy Lam, a victim of casting couch offers and workplace prejucides, who joins the gym to learn a tricky routine for an audition and ends up falling for Kit. Meanwhile, the gym landlord's offer to either vacate the property or buy it outright also doesn't make things easier on Dubble. So, when an offer from ex-student, former addict and ex-convict Lok comes for Kit to fight Thai boxer Surat, rumoured to have killed a man in the ring, he hesitantly takes the fight, which ends with Kit defeated and hospitalised, paralysed in the legs.
If the boxer and actress angle reminds you of Johnnie To's “Chasing Dream”, you wouldn't be too far off the mark. In fact, you wouldn't be too wrong to think of a number of other productions because this whole feature feels like a rehash of past ideas done often and far better elsewhere. The title of the production may be “Unleashed” but the only thing that does get unleashed are genre cliches after genre cliches that bring nothing innovative to the table. It's a sad state of affairs when your lead story arc is overshadowed by the heroine's journey through the tumultuous world of filmmaking, which ends up being the more interesting element of the script. By the time we reach the final act, things have gotten so implausible that you just can't take the feature seriously anymore.
One would hope that the action sequences are well done and to be fair, the choreography by Chris Collins is stylish and pleasing to the eye, but is used too thriftily and is ultimately unimaginative and bogged down by some really shoddy editing. It helps that actors Sun Zheng-feng and Zheng Zi-ping, who play Kit and Surat respectively, themselves come from professional martial arts backgrounds, because the action sequences are their shining moments. The less said, however, about their dramatic performances, the better. That responsibility falls on Ken Lo, who plays Dubble, and Sam Lee, who's cast as Lok. It's also good to see Ken Lo participate in some of the action sequences, even at the expense of the storyline's logicality. Venus Wong also gets some scope to impress in the sequences where she get the brunt of the jilted director's wrath and the bathtub scene later on remains her best moment.
The feature does have some decent choreography going for it at least, brightly lit outdoors with muted colours are garnished with some fantastic aerial shots of Hong Kong apartment buildings. It starts off with this cool comic-book style title sequence that reminds of “Scott Pilgrim vs The World” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and one would've hoped that this visual style had continued further into the film. The music is, for the most part, pleasant and particularly effective in the solemn moments but does tend to get a bit too overbearing in the action sequences.
There's a strong necessity for a good action movie to come out of Hong Kong. The once-capital of martial arts film has since fallen down the pecking order compared to other ASEAN countries' cinema. Sadly, “Unleashed” isn't that, feeling like a very forgettable missed opportunity ultimately.
