Not every film has to be the greatest story ever told, some can just state their goal and accomplish their objectives with style.Fistful of Vengeancemight not be remembered a year from now, but it fulfills its purpose with plenty of fun martial arts action.Fistful of Vengeancewas directed by Dutch filmmaker Roel Reiné, whose output is mostly packed with sequels to filmsthat were immediately forgotten. The film serves as a follow-up to the 2019 Netflix seriesWu Assassins, though aside from the cast, almost no one who worked on that show stayed on for the film.
For those who didn’t catch season one ofWu Assassins, the film helpfully recaps nearly every important event of the ten-episode series in the first two or three lines of dialogue. Iko Uwais stars as Kai, a chef who discovers a hidden mystical destiny that grants him supernatural powers. Kai is tasked with defeating enemies who typically boil down to some combination of organized crime lord and half-recalled Chinese mythical figure.
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Kai is joined on his many adventures by his best friend Lu Xin Lee, portrayed by Lewis Tan, starof 2021’sMortal Kombat. Also, along for the ride is street smart former Triad member Tommy, portrayed byWalking Deadstar Lawrence Kao. Tommy’s sister Jenny is a friend of the trio’s, and, after her murder in the series, the subject of the eponymous vengeance. Kai, Lu, and Tommy travel to Bangkok, Thailand to continue investigating Jenny’s murder and defeating evil figures throughout the world.
The trioof martial arts heroesare pretty generic characters all told, each makes plenty of reference to their past deeds to fill the audience in on previous narrative weight. Tommy and Lu each get a love interest in the form of a local girl and an Interpol agent respectively. Both get vanishingly little time to establish their own personalities or motivations, almost no character in the film is fleshed out. The acting isn’t the problem, everyone acquits themselves well enough. Iko Uwais is understated but effective as usual. Lewis Tan pulls off overconfidence without being unlikable. Lewis Tan is a fun sleazy social operator. Jason Tobin ofHBO Max seriesWarriorhas a decent performance as the villain, William Pan, but he’s stuck spending most of his dialogue on exposition.
The cast is fine, but they’re stuck delivering largely perfunctory dialogue. It’s divided fairly evenly between weirdly casual chats, over-indulgent lore, and pointless swearing. Tan and Kao give the same speech to Uwais about treating them as useless three or four times. The writing as a whole is very weak. None of the jokes really land, characters are saying nothing half the time they speak, characters occasionally make wildly out-of-place pop culture references. The film keeps telling the audience that the character’s actions will determine the fate of the world, but the stakes feel drastically lower. The actual events on-screen say gangland dispute or maybe street-level superhero, even as the dialogue says the battle between gods. It would be improved substantially witha more personal story.
The action is the draw, and it is pretty solid overall. It’s notThe Raid: Redemptiongood and it’s notJohn Wickgood, but it’s not really trying to be.Fistful of Vengeanceis shooting for a sillier tone overall, somewhat splitting the difference between the gruesome violence of Uwais' earlier work and the slapstick ofa Jackie Chan vehicle. It earns its place in the martial arts movie pantheon, but it won’t be any fan of the genre’s new favorite. In most action scenes, the cinematography feels grounded and frenetic. Perhaps the best moment comes fairly early on, as the visuals must swing wildly between a one-on-one on a rooftop and a fast-paced car chase in the building’s parking garage. Later scenes are occasionally weakened by a sloppy visual effect that speeds up the performers. The fight scenes are varied and fun, and that’s all anyone’s coming to a film calledFistful of Vengeancefor anyway. Even if Uwais is still doinghis best work elsewhere.
There are a thousand better martial arts movies out there thanFistful of Vengeance, but that doesn’t make the film worthless. Iko Uwais is still a legend of the martial arts movie genre, so if fans are still seeking out his projects asAmerica prepares to ruinThe Raid, this is a decent showcase for him. Fans ofWu Assassinswill find this film up to the same standard of the show, for whatever that’s worth. Viewers who are just looking for a solid action film to kill ninety minutes and show off some solid fight choreography could do a lot worse thanFistful of Vengeance. Just don’t go in expecting an intelligent story, dynamic characters, any full understanding of what’s going on, or to remember it more than a day or two later.
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