Verdict
Summary
The highlight of the film sees Jaa using a motorcycle to fight off a mob of killers (let’s call it motorcycle-fu!), but the rest of the movie works really hard (or not nearly hard enough, depending on your point of view) to deliver a credible premise with a script that at least sounds coherent enough to follow without subtitles, even when the movie is spoken and delivered in English. Cheng Siyi directed it, though his style seems to be to copy every other cutting edge Chinese filmmaker working in the market today.
Plot:
A man wants revenge for the senseless murders of his wife and daughter.
Review:
Bai An (Tony Jaa) is a Thai man living in China with his Chinese wife and half-Chinese daughter when they get into a horrible car crash that ends in even greater horror: A hitman murders his wife and daughter right in front of him over a flash drive she possesses with evidence that could potentially implicate a notorious drug lord of all his crimes. Bai An immediately goes on the warpath to hunt down every petty drug dealer and thug connected to his family’s killing that he can find, which leads him to the drug lord himself. Turns out that the drug lord has a teen daughter, whom Bai An kidnaps as leverage, but what he doesn’t realize at first is that a whole cadre of thugs working for the drug lord’s competitor want the girl as well for their own purposes, which means Bai An has double the peril headed his way as he must deal with two factions of scum and villainy at the same time! The road to vengeance is never easy, and Bai An is about to find out just how much bloodshed is required to satiate his thirst for revenge.
A Chinese production with a Thai martial arts superstar, Striking Rescue is full of action, but extremely low on sense and sensibility with its incomprehensible script that is comprised of broken, pigeon English, Chinese, Thai, and lots of grunting and yelling. Jaa is usually cast in benevolent roles that require him to fight for what is right, but never because his character wants revenge, but here he’s a runaway train of rage, and the movie opens with a montage where he beats used tires to death, causing his fists to drip with blood. He seems to have wanted to sully his squeaky clean image with this bloody and relentless movie, and while his fans may enjoy it, I found him to be strangely out of place in this wacky world inhabited by unhinged axe-wielding assassins, namely a female nutjob who gets turned on by getting the crap kicked out of her. The highlight of the film sees Jaa using a motorcycle to fight off a mob of killers (let’s call it motorcycle-fu!), but the rest of the movie works really hard (or not nearly hard enough, depending on your point of view) to deliver a credible premise with a script that at least sounds coherent enough to follow without subtitles, even when the movie is spoken and delivered in English. Cheng Siyi directed it, though his style seems to be to copy every other cutting edge Chinese filmmaker working in the market today.
Well Go USA has just released a Blu-ray edition of Striking Rescue, after its brief one-week theatrical run last December (which I regretfully missed), and it comes with some bonus trailers and a slipcover. It’s affordably priced to own to complete your Jaa collection.
