The Fatal Raid

The worst has happened. I mean, in the grand scheme of things it isn’t the worst-worst, the world isn’t going to end or anything like that, but it is bad.

The opening scene of The Fatal Raid, a 2019 Hong Kong actioner just now making it to our screens, is filmed using shaky-cam. That’s right, all those long hours of training, the fight choreography, wasted, because you miss it all in the throws of a camera being thrown around. It’s like watching a film, on your mobile, on a rollercoaster.

Anyway, things don’t get much better as The Fatal Raid progresses I’m saddened to say. It is low budget and so I guess some things can be forgiven, the obviously empty streets, parking lots, warehouses where scenes are filmed.

But what can’t be forgiven is the bad writing; a storyline that holds no interest, plot twists that fall harder than a gymnast missing the mat and random interruptions of a schlocky nature.

This is before we get to the Arnie-Commando-levels of bullets that are let rip from a few metres apart and yet hardly anyone is ever hit, or the sneeze and you’ll miss them hand-fight scenes.

Jacky Lee, director of 2012’s “Lives In Flames” is behind the camera and writes alongside Men Wa Choi and Lam Siu Fu. Choi served as producer on Special Female Force, which The Fatal Raid was originally going to be a sequel to.

I’m not sure what the intention was for The Fatal Raid but I’m almost certain this isn’t it. There are eighties US soaps that have more drama and, in some instances, better acting.

I wanted to like it, I really did, but there isn’t much to like. I’m going to watch an actual eighties Hong Kong actioner instead, to remind myself there are good ones.