Special ID Film Review

Special ID

Director: Clarence Ford
Year: 2013
Rating: 7.0

Donnie Yen makes so many damn movies that I have lost track of them. Eventually, I catch up with them like I just did with this one. Yen has always been a conundrum for me. When he isn't bashing people's faces in or kicking them across the room, I find him blandly annoying. But I would posit that since 2005 beginning with SPL, he more than anyone has kept action films alive in Hong Kong/China. As an actor, director and choreographer, he has made an indelible mark on action films. And with Rogue and John Wick, this has been recognized outside of Hong Kong. And he is sixty damn years old. But still doing it. I just wish I liked him more as an actor. There are really only a handful of Hong Kong/Chinese actors who can still bring it on the screen. Legitimate action skills have been a dying art for years now - but this film has a couple of the folks who can still do it.

This was the last film directed by Clarence Ford aka Fok who died earlier this year. It wasn't a bad way to go out though most of the film belongs to the choreographers. I am not sure what happened to his career - he was one of the most stylish interesting directors in Hong Kong during the 1990s with Naked Killers, The Dragon from Russia, The Iceman Cometh and Warriors: The Black Panther. At times narratively incoherent, but a pleasure for the eyeballs. He really cut way back in the 2000s for some reason - perhaps his health? This one is a little shaky narratively, but not too difficult to follow. If I had known it was yet another film about an undercover cop, I might have skipped. Along with serial killer films, I feel like they have run their course for a while. Infernal Affairs made being an undercover cop so popular that they are now offered as a career at university.

The plot is actually fairly simple - there is unrest and suspicion in the triads - gangs trying to take over territory from others. Donnie who is undercover has been a gang member in good standing for six years and is asked by the Big Boss (Ngai Sing aka Colin Chou) to investigate another triad just returned from America. This triad member is played by Andy On and we saw him earlier killing four men and burying them. And stealing the Boss's merchandise. Donnie has to go into the Mainland to do this where he hooks up with a couple of Mainland cops. Interesting, that in Hong Kong no other cop other than his handler (Ronald Cheng) knows about him for fear of exposure - but the cops in China can be trusted. This was a Chinese production and I am just surprised that they showed so many triads working there.

One of the cops he partners up with is Jing Tian, who is pretty fabulous here and has some tough action scenes (or her double). She has been in some films from the West - Kong: Skull Island, Pacific Rim: Uprising and The Great Wall. She nearly steals the film from Donnie in her scenes. Things go kablooey as expected and bloodshed follows. But no one is going to watch this for another film about an undercover cop having to deal with his desire to be a cop again. We came for the action and this delivers that on a silver platter. Some really fine action - at times brutal, at other times acrobatic - and a car sequence that had me trying to figure out how the hell they did it and no one died. That part was choreographed by Bruce Law. There is a terrific match-up between Donnie and Ken Lo, where Lo brings in some of his authentic Muy Thai skills, then Donnie against a bunch of triads working for Frankie Ng (again playing a triad).

Later on, he has two fights against Andy On - the last one as brutal as a crowbar to the head. And others and Jing Tian gets into a few scuffles and has a leading role in the car sequence. There is some dumb stuff in there - when his mother gets beaten up, he carries her on his back to the hospital, running down a road. Not advisable. Call an ambulance. And Donnie jumping up and down whooping it up in excitement should be banned. Some terrific action - take it where you can. At 60, one has to wonder how much longer Donnie can keep doing this.