STRIKING RESCUE Review: Tony Jaa Brings The Pain In Cheng Siyu’s Serviceable Revenge Thriller
Striking Rescue opens in select theaters on December 6 from Well Go USA Entertainment.
Thai action star Tony Jaa continues to grow his cinematic workspace. Reasonably, this sort of feat might have seemed far from reachable in the earlier years of Jaa’s progression as a stuntman and a burgeoning film actor, at least until the breakout success of 2003’s Ong Bak with Jaa lending his success to trademark bone-crushing Muay Thai fight action, and stunt feats the likes of which have all but grabbed firmly the attention of action fans eyeing the same high caliber showmanship seen in Jackie Chan films.
To add, Jaa’s image also garnered more of an upright appeal in the roles he played, something that even remained inescapable with his villainous turn in James Wan’s Furious Seven. For what it’s worth, that changes a little bit more this time with his most recent role showing us a tangibly darker, more stoic side to his acting arsenal in Striking Rescue, directed by Cheng Siyu and one of the latest releases on Chinese streamer Youku, now making its way to the U.S. for a limited theatrical run via Well Go USA as of this week.
The film’s fictional setting is established to Jaa’s benefit as he’s surrounded by a predominately Mandarin-speaking cast. The only thing baffling here is that the film’s script is keen on bludgeoning the film’s Western appeal into our ears with spells of English throughout, delivered with more vocal misses than hits from time to time. The intent here, though, is clear with Cheng taking the mantle of returning Jaa to audiences in a role billed in the PR as a return to form for fans as far back as Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong.
To start, Jaa takes the lead as An Bai, a Muay Thai expert pounding away at tires and a wooden pole of melons on which he unloads an arsenal of fists, elbows and knees with unbridled fury. Less than five minutes in, we learn that our hero is on a mission of vengeance, seeking those responsible for the murder of his wife and daughter. His first stop in the film brings him to an outpost at a marketplace, laying waste to a handful of gangsters before learning of its connection to He Yinghao (Philip Keung), a logistics and warehousing magnate whose vigilance has upticked in the years since the rise of drug crime activity in the city of Jiati, eager to keep his hands clean.
Actress Chen Duoyi plays Ting, Yinghao’s troubled daughter who suddenly finds herself at the center of an explosive conspiracy that ensues when her father’s motorcade is hit by vicious gangsters looking to kidnap Yinghao. With Ting’s life suddenly in danger, her father missing, and their bodyguard Wu Zheng (Hong Junjia) swarmed and left in the wind, An zeroes in on the young girl with no choice but to protect the closest thing to a lead he now has to exacting his vengeance, whilst buried in a raft of mounting questions. The answers that come ultimately arrive in the form of increasing attacks by cartel hitmen, led by enforcer Long Tai (Shi Yanneng), as An and Ting sleuth their way through the city with our hero fending off one armed foe after another.
The film’s interlingual clumsimess is otherwise forgiveable, thanks to performances to help carry the film’s tonal consistency throughout. Cheng presents a largely dark action adventure with just a few spells of comedy to lighten the mood in the film’s runtime, and Jaa taking on a role that invariably grants viewers some of the crowdpleasing fight heavy moments they invest in. A handful of the Mando/English dialogue moments hit pretty well at times, and it helps that this is characteristic of most of the characters where some bilinguality comes in hand between the comedy and heavy drama.
The action is a requisite packaging that does the trick, courtesy of action choreographers Li Zun and Zhang Qiang, and action director Guo Yulong, and both Jaa and co-star Hong both share some screentime with the fisticuffs among a few of the co-stars involved. While the action nowhere outweighs Jaa’s big scale on-brand Muay Thai goods since etched into history by the late Panna Rittikrai in their previous work, the action suffices with energizing performances and camerawork, topped off with a fight finally between Jaa and Shi that fares well enough to entertain fans.
The next most important part about the film comes progressively between plot developments in a series of flashbacks that reveal the violent offset that commences An’s journey into the underworld. Moreover, Cheng and screenwriter Guo Haiwen do terrific in keeping the film’s major twist at bay until the film’s satisfying and poignant final act.
Striking Rescue is a worthwhile addition to Jaa’s branch-out into international stardom, especially in China with roles in Detective Chinatown 3, and the Hong Kong-produced second and third installments of the Kill Zone saga. Save for some of its flaws, Cheng’s latest otherwise manages to whet the appetite enough, warranting the attention it demands with a star as consistent and promising as Jaa is.
