Wings Of Dread enjoys its North American Premiere at the fourth edition of Big Bad Film Fest this weekend.
If there’s one thing I love about an Ashton Chen flick, it’s an Ashton Chen flick that knows how to feature one of the best working actors in cinema of the last fifteen years-plus. Wings Of Dread is that movie, and with none other tha action movie stalwart Iko Uwais as a core villain able and willing to present a challenge to our steadfast protagonist in a deadly hijacking thriller that saves its best for the last.
The front and back of this action spectacle co-helmed by Chen’s The Drunken Prodigy and Blade Of Fury shepherd Qin Pengfei fronts the story of Gu Chaoyang (Chen), a cop struggling to balance between delivering criminals to justice and keeping flight attendant girlfriend Lu Lu (Nita Xia) happy and fulfilled. In a desperate attempt to fix their relationship, Gu charts LuLu’s airline to Uraya, only to end up sharing a flight back with his then ex-girlfriend, an unknown gang of terrorists looking to free a notorious criminal from the sky marshals transporting him, and a set of passengers unknowing of the terror that awaits them.
There’s enough action to help get the viewers’ attention from the start, but you’ll have to wait throughout the first half of Wings Of Dread as the parenthetical romantic plot unfolds enough for things to eventually materialize. By then, we already meet a slew of colorful characters, along with Uwais in the seemingly affable role of a passenger that Gu befriends after a mixup at the airport in Uraya, boarding the flight back to China.
The relative antagonists are also ample in rivaling Gu and the other lawnen with notable performances by actress Hong Shaung (Hunt The Wicked) and Liu Fengchao (The Butcher’s Blade), coupled with some expansive fight pieces and setups throughout the film’s second half to keep things afloat. Indeed, the film borrows a few tropes from similar genre favorites, all which invariably serve to the film’s benefit; At one point Gu is framed as the bad guy, and it’s not too long until a villain’s tattoo is recognized from a distance, serving as big giveaway and resulting in a major standoff.
The action, by far, is the most fulfilling factor in Wings Of Dread, with sequences featuring Chen and other supporting cast members opposite Uwais and the rest of the lot, as their characters square off while the plane flies into a thundercloud. The only other fascinating thing about the film’s action scenes aside from Chen and Uwais is an extensive bathroom fight between two of the film’s actresses in a knock down-dragout close-quarters brawlfest. I can’t remember the last time I’d seen a bathroom fight, and if an award were being handed out for such, this film would earn it.
At about eighty minutes – removing the film’s behind the scenes reels and subsequent end credits, Wings Of Dread is enough to warrant the attention of anyone who’d been eager to see Uwais and Chen on screen. My only gripe is that Uwais’s character is dubbed with a voice that’s so glaringly not his own, but with Chen and Uwais leading the charge in a perfunctory plot that makes the most out its players when it counts, I can’t complain too much.