Full Contact


 

Director: Ringo Lam
Year: 1992
Rating: 9.0

Ringo Lam's wonderful entry into the Heroic Bloodshed genre generates a complex story of loyalty and betrayal on many levels with some incredible imagery, action and acting from Chow Yun Fat, Simon Yam and Anthony Wong. The movie begins with a jewelry heist in Bangkok by Judge (Simon) and his crew (Frankie Chan, Bonnie Fu) and then transitions to a Bangkok nightclub where Jeff's (CYF) girlfriend Mona (Ann Bridgewater) is dancing on stage in a suggestive manner. He receives a call from Sam (Anthony Wong) who is in trouble with a loan shark and Jeff goes and gets him out of trouble. There is a price to pay though as both Jeff and Sam have to go into hiding. The only solution is to help Sam's cousin Judge pull off a daytime truck hijacking.



 
Simon Yam revels in his role as the crazed Judge playing him very foppishly with a gun up one sleeve and a boy toy up the other. You don't know if he wants to shoot Jeff or screw him. His crew are just as crazed and I particularly liked Virgin (Bonnie Fu Yuk-ching) who is anything but and later during the hijacking makes herself orgasm with Jeff looking on. Not too surprisingly Judge and crew double-cross Jeff and there is an intense scene as they force Sam to join them in the betrayal.



 
They leave Jeff for dead, but in a wonderful montage of scenes we see him recover in Bangkok while back in Hong Kong Judge and crew and Sam prosper. And we watch Sam become as brutal as any of them, and also capture the heart of Mona who thinks Jeff is dead. This all leads to Jeff coming back to Hong Kong to seek revenge. The scene in the nightclub is brilliant as the camera slowly goes back and forth between all the protagonists - Jeff, Mona, Sam and Judge and the tension slowly builds. Some memorable imagery in this film - the rain on the bloody switchblade, the knife driven through the man's hand into the block of ice, the now famous usage of following the bullet in flight. In the final showdown there is some terse dialogue - Judge to Jeff- "You're the one I admire most. What a pity I can't sleep with you. You are so cruel. I want to die with you", to which Jeff responds "Masturbate in Hell ". But who could resist Chow Yun Fat in his denim and his hair cut short with a hedge cutter. Both of them and Anthony give adreneline spiked performances that are scary and memorable. The gunplay and fights are torrid, brutel. fast and wonderfully choreographed by Lau Kar-wing.