Head Rush | aka Lôi Báo (2017) Review

“Head Rush” Promotional Poster

AKA: Lôi Báo
Director: Victor Vu
Cast: Cuong Seven, Tran Thi Nha Phuong, Quach Ngoc Ngoan, Ngoc Anh Vu, Jason Ninh Cao
Running Time: 107 min.

By Paul Bramhall

There was a time in the mid-late 2000’s when it seemed like Vietnam was going to be the next big thing when it came to action filmmaking in Asia. After briefly facing off against Tony Jaa in 2005’s Tom Yum Goong, former U.S. wushu team member Johnny Tri Nguyen headed for the homeland and made an immediate impression with his starring turns in 2007’s The Rebel and 2009’s Clash. Things came to a grinding halt though when the governments film censorship board banned the 2013 gangster movie Chinatown, of which Nguyen was also the star, believing that it didn’t cast the country in a favourable light. A decade on and it still hasn’t seen the light of day, and the decision felt like it put the brakes on the momentum that Vietnam was building in the action genre.

The result saw Nguyen step away from action roles all together, and since then what was hoped to be an opening of the floodgates has become little more than a trickle. During the 2010’s the only notable output was reduced to middle of the road actioners like Tracer (2016) and Furie (2019), with the occasional anomaly like the Andy Long action showcase Luc Van Tien: Tuyet Dinh Kungfu (2017). Lôi Báo was another production which hit local cinemas in 2017, and thanks to a renewed interest in Asian action cinema during recent years, was picked up by U.S distributor Glass House 6 years later and slapped with the title Head Rush (ok, it’s still better than Kill Zone).

The title Head Rush does at least have some bearing to the plot, as we meet a struggling comic book artist played by Vietnamese rapper Cuong Seven (Tracer). By day Seven spends his time working on his latest superhero story, which he hopes will be his next big hit, while his wife keeps him and their son afloat by running a cafe. The movie that immediately springs to mind during the first act of Head Rush is Hong Kong’s Operation Scorpio, which also saw Chin Kar-Lok as a comic book artist, and translated the action he was drawing on the page to the screen, mixing both fantasy and reality. Indeed one of the action highlights in Head Rush is a perceived action sequence that sees the hero of Seven’s comic dodging bullets, and partaking in some limbo-esque kung-fu to disarm a group of attackers (it makes sense when you see it).

Back in reality though Seven can’t seem to shake that tickly cough that afflicts him wherever he goes. Naturally, this sees him diagnosed with lung cancer and only given weeks to live, which results in a lot of soap opera styled melodramatics as Seven attempts to complete his superhero story, despite the pleas of his wife and son to spend more time with them. Luckily we’re not in a Korean terminal illness melodrama though, so at some point Seven’s friendly uncle comes along and offers a potential solution. Played by Hoang Son (Killer: Number 7), not only does he offer plenty of sage like literary criticism, but he’s also a farmer on the side. As it happens, not just any farmer, as he reveals a secret laboratory hidden in his greenhouse, one which is being used “for growing humans, not just strawberries”.

It’s at this point that Head Rush displays its true colors – that of an unashamed B-movie. Son’s research involves the transplant of human heads from one body to another, which is as hilarious as it sounds, only made more so by the fact the entire approach to such a concept is played completely poker faced. This slightly heavy-handed take on the material is likely down to having Victor Vu in the director’s chair. A Vietnamese American filmmaker whose primary body of work comes out of Vietnam, Vu isn’t a stranger to controversy, after his 2012 wuxia Blood Letter was accused of plagiarizing several Chinese and Korean productions. However in recent years he more than redeemed himself with dramas like 2015’s Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass and 2019’s Dreamy Eyes, both of which were submitted as Vietnams entries for Best Foreign Language Film at their respective years Academy Awards.

Considering the more reflective nature of the productions he was directing in the late 2010’s, it only makes the pulpy tone of Head Rush stand out even more, and there’s a distinct feeling that Vu is attempting to imbue proceedings with a level of gravitas that’s at odds with the ridiculous nature of the story. For a start, where are a comic book artist and a genius strawberry farmer going to find a healthy body for Seven’s head to be transplanted onto? Lucky for them, it just so happens that a mysterious assassin is being pursued by a shady organisation who want him dead in the nearby woodland, and once he’s shot and left for dead Son decides it’s the perfect opportunity for some head swapping to go down. At this point you may wonder if a body full of bullet holes really fits the bill of a healthy specimen, but Head Rush isn’t concerned with such lapses in logic – cut to some CGI on a monitor showing one head being swapped for another!  

From there on in its turtleneck sweater city for Seven, as he finds himself miraculously cured, but struggling to hold a pencil to complete his comic book. Thankfully there’s plenty of distractions – who is the nurse that he feels a strange attraction to? Why is he suddenly a parkour and kung-fu expert? Will he have to wear turtlenecks even in the summer? Only 2 of those questions are answered, but only 1 feels like it makes any sense. Son emphasises that Seven needs to lay low for fear his whole head swapping research will be uncovered, but with a new lease of life Seven soon finds himself using his abilities to rescue kids from burning buildings, take down purse snatchers, and at one point even lifting a car to free up a crash victim.

It’s the last feat which gives Head Rush it’s most eyebrow raising moment. Well, admittedly perhaps if I’d read the synopsis beforehand it wouldn’t have been that big of a surprise, but going in fresh there’s been no indication until this point that Seven has special powers. The narrative plays out in such a way that his newfound kung-fu and parkour skills are assumed to have been developed as a result of years of training as an assassin, and not be perceived as superpowers as such. However, superpowers they apparently are, and presumably because no one else in Vietnam can bust out the kung-fu or parkour moves, when the murdered assassin’s old buddies recognize the movements but not the face, it spells trouble. Believing it’s their left for dead target who, having somehow survived, is now living under a new identity (and yes, apparently happy to make himself as conspicuous as possible), they set out to finish the job.

The result is several moderately entertaining fight scenes, sprinkled with some gun-fu, courtesy of action director Vincent Wang, who contributed to the fight action in big budget Hollywood productions like Doctor Strange and The Great Wall. It feels like a missed opportunity that none of the action scenes manage to reach the heights of the imaginary scene from earlier based on the comic, with the choreography being serviceable but unspectacular, and Seven’s apparent trademark move involving the same limbo-esque move as his creation (essentially he can recline backwards in slow motion like Neo dodging bullets in The Matrix, which looks slightly better onscreen than it probably sounds in print).

Ultimately director Vu can’t seem to find the balance between the melodramatic moments of the story and the ridiculous concept that he’s working with, no more evident than when the pace literally stops in its tracks prior to the finale for a twist involving a family reveal, complete with unnecessary flashbacks. The final scene involving Seven’s wife and her sewing machine reframes everything we’ve seen so far to be a superhero origin story in a way which doesn’t quite work (and with the benefit of watching Head Rush in 2023, is safe to assume most audiences agree with, as 6 years on from its release we’ve yet to see a sequel). Head Rush is an amicable effort hindered by uneven pacing and unwelcome melodrama, but perhaps the biggest missed opportunity was for the western distributors to rename it Head/Off.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10