Fistful of Vengeance

Am I a sucker for titles about having a fistful of something? Apparently so.

This came out this year, courtesy of Netflix, which should have been my first warning. This follows a series called Wu Assassins, about a cook named Kai who becomes the Wu Assassin. Which is basically a super-powered martial arts badass who fights demons. In this case, Kai's teamed up with his friends Tommy and Liu Xin, to track down whoever killed Tommy's sister. This turns out to be a chaos being of some sort, seeking power to destroy her other half, who represents order. Or does she? There's a whole thing about them being two halves of the first man, who created everything, but went too far when he decided to recreate it in his image, and was subsequently defeated and split by the first Wu Assassin.

Why didn't he just make everything in his image the first time?

There's a lot of backstory here I'm guessing was covered in the TV show that is only vaguely alluded to. There's an Interpol agent that shows up because the chaos lady was getting mixed up in organized crime. She and Liu Xin have a whole thing. There's a killer lady who has some beef with Kai because she used to work for his dad. I don't have any clue about what Kai's dad was up to or what he made her do, so that all kind of falls flat.

They kill a lot of people in this movie. Now most of them appear to be devoted adherents to one or the other of the two demigods, or whatever you'd call them. But we see the chaos lady can take control of other people and make them her puppets. They don't show any mercy to those people, either. Just murder the hell out of them. Not like they had any way to restrain them or undo the effect, I guess.

The movie isn't quite a continuous string of fights, gunfights and car chases, but it's pretty close. The chase sequences aren't much to write home about, but the fights aren't bad. Each character kind of has their own way of doing things. The effects on the supernatural/super-power stuff aren't great, and actually kind of detract from the fights. One guy hits another and rather than just sending him flying, there have to be a visible shockwave. Except the shockwave almost looks like someone released a burst of air freshener or something. Just looks silly, you know?

I figure the movie would have been more engaging if I'd seen the TV show first, where I would have time to build up some concern for these guys. As it stood, it kept losing my attention and for a 95 minute movie, felt longer than it was. I gotta stop watching stuff on Netflix, I always end up choosing crap.