Raging Fire (2021)

 

Raging Fire is Benny Chan's last directorial effort, having passed in 2020. It stars Donnie Yen and Nicholas Tse as the archetypal good cop and bad cop. After being wronged at trial and made the scapegoat, Tse character's is out for blood.

As cookie cutter as this plot gets, the drama, suspense, and action work very well together. Benny Chan had tackled a similar film in 2004, which was New Police Story. While very different in terms of the scope of action, both deal with the rouge cop concept. Raging Fire hones in on Donnie's character as he deals with corruption on the inside and old feuds outside. At times it feels like he's reprising his roles from earlier films, but not outright copying them.

The slight downside is that because only Donnie and Nicholas are trained to fight, the only actual hand to hand combat is the final one. From the perspective of a typical Hong Kong police film, it's understandable that there are more fire than fist fights, but comparing it to films like SPL it's not nearly as brutal. What's great though is that many of the stunts are done for real and not added in post, which is what you would expect from Donnie.

Between this and Limbo, my faith is rekindled in the Hong Kong film industry to pull off enjoyable crime films that still have explosive action. With the right talent at the helm you'll still get good films.

R.I.P. Benny Chan