The Z-Team, four Shaolin-forged martial artists has just won the top award at a Film Festival. FABIEN, LOHAN, DIDIER, and JESS immediately set their sights for Hollywood, but from within the shadows emerges a new challenge: the four find themselves in front of the seemingly inescapable eye of a mysterious DIRECTOR who forces them to “act” in his own brutal reality film, with the lives of their loved ones at stake. Their every move watched through hidden cameras like mice in a maze, the Z-Team are forced to run a gamut through the seedy underbelly of LA – from robbing an armored truck, encountering a Drug Lord, breaking an entire dojo of BLACKBELTS, evading a SWAT team, surviving a blazing gunfight…and it’s all a part of the Director’s script. A dark filmmaker’s game culminating into a shocking ending which reveals just how high the price of success is.
REVIEW:
I’m at a loss for words sometimes right after I watch action movies. I guess it comes from a state of absorption and recovery from the overall general buzz of being entertained by something cool I’ve just spent under two hours watching. But for the sake of providing a substantive review here, I’ll just let my thoughts run a bit…
Some films are definitely more entertaining than others, while very few manage to achieve that edge-of-your-seat feeling that I often look forward to, especally when it comes to martial arts flicks. With that in mind, as of this write-up, I have just finished screening Fabien Garcia‘s directorial debut, Die Fighting, and by the time the film was over, not only was I on the edge of my seat, but I was also left a little haunted too…but in a good way!
Die Fighting is the first feature-length film to come from Fabien and his team, martial arts film and stunt troupe, Z-Team, now based in Los Angeles as Z-Team Films. The film stars three of the team’s principle members, actors Fabien, and brothers Lohan and Didier Buson, and one non-affilated member, actor Jess Allen; Together, they round off the four main protagonists of the film as a team of their own on the verge of coming into themselves as film stars while still entrenched in their own struggles and endeavors. Little do they know, a video voyeur looms nearby stalking the team’s every move and conversation, and it is not long before things take a terrorizing turn for the worse.
In a matter of one phone call and mere seconds, the team is swept into danger by their captor, known only as “The Director”, who has also kidnapped Fabien‘s girlfriend. Against their will and with cameras now strategically placed throughout the city’s select streets and buildings, he aims to capture every moment on screen, forcing Fabien and his friends to scatter throughout the city and into perilous situations where they have no choice but to fight their way out, or witness the death of their loved ones. With each passing moment, the fights become more brutal and deadly, with the team showcasing immense physicality in their respective battles. Nontheless, as much as it is a film for the “director”, the danger is equally real for its “actors”. Blood will spill, lives will be lost, and when it is all over, a more sinster plot will have already unfolded.
There’s a lot to be said about stuntmen and martial artists who either become actors, or are already actors in their own right, and there are plenty of them who do manage to find their range in that category. With this in mind, the Z-Team portion of the cast – Fabien, Lohan and Didier, did an adequate job throughout the film in terms of the acting; The team members themselves have very thick accents as they hail originally from France, but it doesn’t infringe too much on their overall believability and chemistry together on screen. Moreover, the film was also my intoduction to Allen as an actor, and while his action sequences are mostly prolific in the film’s gun battles and not so much in martial arts, he was still great to see with the cast and it felt refreshing.
We also get a small line-up of notable villains, with memorable action performances from actors, stuntman Gray Michael Sallies and action actor Xin Sarith Wuku to name a few. On the dramatic side of this, the lion’s share of the film’s villainous presence goes to actor Dave Vescio plays the “director”, spending most of the film in the shadows behind a wall of monitors with a phone and a multifunctional workstation to control each of his cameras recording the “film”, and while his face and voice are disguised for the most of the movie, we eventually learn a little more about him by the end.
While I could go on a little more about the acting, the action here is what counts for most fanboys of the genre, in which case, if this were a different universe, I might sum it all up in one sentence that might read: THERE IS NOTHING I COULD SAY HERE THAT WOULD DO JUSTICE FOR HOW FUCKING AWESOME THESE FIGHT SCENES ARE!!!… But, in the course of trying to stay an intellectual, I digress. The Z-Team’s kinetic and high-caliber performability here as martial artists are nothing to be minor about, with each main actor getting their moment to shine. The techniques are solid and tight, and you can tell that plenty of the hits taken and given in this film were done with full contact. That goes to the heart these guys carry in doing what they do, and you can never give them enough credit for the risks they take in this regard.
The choreography and coordination are stylish and superb, and Tarina Reed’s substantive style of cinematography was exactly what this film needed in not only preserving the ample quality of the film’s fight sequences, but maintaining the “found-footage” nature for which Fabien‘s script intended; His script is surprisingly tooled more as an action horror than anything, and I don’t normally watch horror movies. In lieu of this, what I really love about this film is how it tows the line between genres and delivers a solid and intense action thriller without losing its identity. And to top it all off, Fabien channels his most visceral and strongest performance yet as an actor.
If I were to compare films for the sake of suggesting what you might expect, I might throw in a mixed-bag of titles crossing anywhere between The Hunger Games, John Herzfeld’s 15 Minutes and the late Panna Rittikrai’s Bangkok Knockout – I’d say that’s a good summary. Other than that, all I can really say beyond this at the risk of sounding unjustifiably bland for lack of other adjectives to use, is that you really will enjoy Die Fighting.
At its core, it’s a kind of love letter to the art of, and passion for film in its own sick, twisted and gut-wrenching sort of way, which makes it all the more enjoyable by the end. Loaded with raw and genuine martial arts talent, a dash of suspense and immensely dark satire, Die Fighting is exemplary action filmmaking, and the embodiment of what it means to have an idea and achieve it with the right people in your corner. And after all these years of watching and observing their online work in the past decade or more, I am proud of what the Z-Team has accomplished in going out of their way to become entertainers. In this economic climate, it really is difficult for artists like these guys to get their films and their ideas to the mainstream, and it shows in the length in waiting period it often takes for films like this. And, I humbly thank them and their crew for bringing this movie to life.
Die Fighting is a fully-fledged martial arts thriller with virtually all the trimmings. It will keep you excited for most of the way through and above all else, the action never misses a beat, and so I wholeheartedly recommend this film.
You can pre-order the film right now on iTunes, or if you want to learn more about its availability, feel free to visit the official website, or subscribing to the official Facebook page for more info.