Don’t dwell on its generic-sounding title and its familiar Dirty Harry-like protagonist:  once the action starts in this crime thriller, you’ll forget about everything else.  Your heart will pound, your eyes may water, and by the time you leave the theater you’ll feel alive in a way that only classic HK popcorn flicks can make you feel...

Yes, the old school vibe is tangible here and largely intentional, with the setting a pre-handover ‘96 Hong Kong.  But Flash Point represents the new as well—with rousing MMA featured throughout and even a brief nod at free running, which was popularized by District 13 (2004) and Casino Royale (2006).   Director Wilson Yip’s style is deceptively unstylish but accomplishes what it needs to time and again.  He keeps things appropriately kinetic without making them dizzying or exhausting; sure, the camera moves, but really only when it makes sense for it to.  Near the end of Flash Point, in a stunningly executed set piece that takes place in a field of high grass, Yip treats us to an eye-popping crane shot—it’s both exhilarating and completely appropriate given the choreography of the action.

Speaking of which, Flash Point features the kind of action scenes that, when they finally wind down, you realize that your whole body has been tensed up for the past few minutes.  The firefights are staged as if they were hand-to-hand, with precision and skill, and the stunt work is cutting-edge—very exciting and very, very real.  More impressive still, Yip uses both long takes and long shots masterfully:  we always see what we want most to see.  And the terrific, driving score by Kwong Wing Chan blasts everything up an extra notch or two.

Oh, so you want to know about the story…?

As the hero, Donnie Yen is right out of the bad-boy-cop playbook—don’t expect new ground to be broken here.  To its credit, the script keeps his character an archetype without going off the deep end and making him an outright cliché.  Yen delivers a mostly physical performance, and seems to have only two or three facial expressions, all variations on a scowl, but they are enough for the movie to get by on.  That’s largely because the more soulful of the two leads, Louis Koo, provides the necessary balance—his character is the one with the love interest and the sensitive side.  Showing a very different persona than in his role as Jimmy in the Election films, Koo handles the part’s range well.  I don’t want to get into the relationship between him and Yen too much because I’ll very quickly be in spoiler territory.

Regarding the characterization of the bad guys, it’s interesting to note the director’s observation in the press notes that his movie’s “world is no longer a clear-cut world of black and white… [and that] the intertwined relationship between the cops and the robbers blurs the line between right and wrong.”  Such comments make it seem like we’re dealing with L.A. Confidential (1997) here whereas the opposite is true.  Collin Chou, who plays the main gangster, does a solid job of portraying unrelenting malevolence—with absolutely no shades of gray.  Sure, he values loyalty, but that hardly makes him virtuous:  he doesn’t want other crooks ratting him out.  Xing Xu, the real-life Shaolin monk who is perhaps best known for his work in Kung Fu Hustle (2004), plays a character even more ferocious.  As for the rest of the cast, Bingbing Fan plays the obligatory girlfriend-in-distress and Kent Chung portrays an aging police inspector.  With these kinds of stock characters, do I really need to recap the plot?  Suffice it to say that it involves the typical irresistible-force-meets-immovable-object dynamic, with events and emotions escalating in back-and-forth manner until the final showdown.

And what a showdown it is.  The audience that I was part of was often gasping and laughing out loud.  In short, Flash Point concludes with one of the best one-on-one fight scenes I’ve ever witnessed.  Writing these words a couple of days later, I’m still getting a mini-surge of adrenaline just thinking about it.

My one gripe about Flash Point is that Yen actually was too good at incorporating grappling into the standard repertoire of kicks and punches:  I was often puzzled by how those he had trapped got out of his holds—it seemed like they were relying more on assistance from the editor and director than on their own skills.  But that’s a minor quibble.  Flash Point lulls you with quiet sections before erupting into bloody violence; it brings on the grim and sentimental themes you expect from the genre, and then nudges you with surprising humor.  Most of all, in terms of sheer action, I can guarantee that some of this stuff you’ve never seen before.  It’s a summer movie opening in March, and if you can catch it in its limited theatrical release, I recommend that you do so and take a quick side trip to July.

Bonus DVD Review…