Review for Raging Phoenix

Introduction

I have a lot of time for Martial Arts movies, and have a tendency to lap up Hong Kong cinema without much discrimination. But even I have to admit that the heyday of HK action movies is long past, and the culture of nutty stunts and zero insurance has been replaced with a degree of caution and restraint, which if not exactly at Hollywood levels of risk-averse-ness, is still more than enough to keep the next Jackie Chan or Jet Li from making a splash. It turns out that total disregard for actor safety, and determination to keep upping the action stakes isn't dead, it's just crossed a few borders. It's now Thailand that is making the sort of breathtaking action movie that used to be the trademark of Hong Kong cinema some twenty years ago. I've tried a couple of Thai movies, and haven't been all that impressed to be honest, but it turns out that I had been watching The Bodyguard when I should have been watching Ong-Bak, Born to Fight when I should have been watching Warrior King. My comparative inexperience with Thai action cinema is about to change though, as I now get to watch Raging Phoenix, due for release this month from Cine Asia, in both Blu-ray and DVD flavours. This one stars Jija Yanin, who made her debut in Chocolate as an autistic girl who picked up martial arts watching kung fu movies.


In Raging Phoenix, Jija Yanin is Deu, a drummer in a punk rock band, who has a troubled home life, and problems holding onto a boyfriend. When she lays into an ex-boyfriend during a gig, she ends up as an ex-drummer in a punk rock band. When doing the traditional thing and drowning her sorrows in a bottle, she almost becomes the victim of a people trafficking ring, before a skilled fighter named Sanim rescues her. Sanim and his friends have their own particular grievances against the Jaguar Gang who are masterminding the kidnaps, and are using a drunken fighting technique named Mayraiyuth to combat them. When they tell Deu that she is a target for the kidnappers because of a particular pheromone she secretes, Deu insists on learning how to fight with them, but she isn't expecting to fall in love as well.

Picture

As long as a Far Eastern cinema release gets a Film to PAL transfer onto DVD, I'm happy, especially when it's a recent film like Raging Phoenix. The 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer is indeed a proper conversion, it's clear and sharp, and the colours are well defined. There are none of the issues associated with a standards conversion, so this ought to make fans very happy. It's had a good deal of colour correction applied in post, to give certain scenes a bleached look, other scenes made warmer, and the only things to let the film down are moments of occasional softness, and some rather ropy CGI. The most important thing is that the action comes across with clarity, and boy does it ever!

Sound

The sole soundtrack is a very acceptable DD 5.1 Thai track, although not so acceptable are the player forced subtitles that you just can't turn off. There are a couple of lines of English dialogue in the film that get subbed anyway. The surround is very effective, giving full range to the sounds of bones breaking, heads crunching and kicks connecting. The music is quite nifty too, going perfectly with the dance move combat action sequences.

Extras

The Raging Phoenix DVD gets nicely animated menus, from which you can select trailers for 10 other Cine Asia products, and the trailer gallery for the movie with 2 trailers.

The Interview Gallery has 8 interviews to select with the stars, the director and the action choreographer. They are just short, soundbite laden featurettes, which when all put together only come to a total run time of 26 minutes, hardly enough time to get past the introductions.

The B-roll Action Scene Footage lasts 7 minutes, and takes us behind the scenes of the rehearsals and the shooting of the fights.

Conclusion

Oh Wow! It's easy to become jaded and dismissive when you are reviewing these discs on a constant basis. It's very easy to start believing that you have seen it all before, that there's nothing new that can be possibly presented at this late stage. I must have seen over a hundred martial arts movies by now, and I had thought that there was nothing fresh or new that the genre could offer, that every new movie now would be a variation on a theme. Then along comes Raging Phoenix and totally blows me away. This is action as I have never seen before, it's fresh, it's innovative, it is daring, and it's what Hong Kong cinema can only dream of today, it's where Hong Kong cinema was back in the seventies and eighties, only with an added 20 odd years of pop culture, advances in cinema, mixed martial arts and audience expectations.


Raging Phoenix really does mix up its martial arts, kung fu, judo, taekwondo, muay thai, kickboxing, capoeira, adds some street dance, and parkour as well. And then these moves are accomplished while under the influence of alcohol, drunken master style. I am having a rough time restraining my profanity here; as I was cursing a blue streak at my TV last night, simply unable to believe what I was seeing. There may have been wirework in here, some of the moves seem impossible otherwise, but 99% of what I saw looked real. When the camera slows down to show someone's knee connecting with someone's face in careful detail, you realise that these fights have more impact and veracity than those exquisitely choreographed kung fu movies of old ever did. This movie is filled with fight sequences that just had my eyes goggling, my jaw dropping wide open, and sheer bleats of disbelief exploding from my lungs. I have never seen any action movie this fun before!



Of course the story is as daft as a brush, people traffickers grabbing pretty young girls off the street, taking them to an underground lair, where their tears are harvested to produce a potent aphrodisiac. Right under the city is the underground lair, with a bottomless cavern criss-crossed with rope bridges over which to have a fight sequence. Yeah, right. I'd like to see the council granting that one planning approval. Also, while in terms of action, the actors have a blast, and there's no faulting the sillier moments in the film, when things get dramatic and intense, the acting gets pretty ropy. There's supposed to be a romance developing between Deu and Sanim, but it's only because the movie spells it out to you that you realise that. It's certainly not a film to watch if you want depth of characterisation, or strong dramatic performances. It is the sort of film to watch if you like martial arts action, if you like to skip back to the start of a fight sequence to watch it all again straight after it's finished, if you then want to pause it and then slow mo back and forth so you get all the nuances, and can take the time to offer a slack-jawed 'Oh my God!' at the screen every five minutes. Besides, which other film has characters named Pigsh*t, Dogsh*t, and Bullsh*t. And they are the good guys.


If you think you've seen action movies before, think again. Until you have seen Raging Phoenix, you haven't the slightest idea what real action is!