Fatal Raid, The (2019) Review

“The Fatal Raid” Japanese DVD Cover

Director: Jacky Lee
Cast: Patrick Tam Yiu-Man, Michael Tong Man-Lung, Jade Leung Ching, Sharon Luk, Lin Min-Chen, Jadie Lin, Jeana Ho, Hidy Yu, Chiu Sin-Hang, Yona Fong
Running Time: 91 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

The Fatal Raid originally started out as a sequel to 2016’s Special Female Force, but somewhere along the way it was decided to scrap the sequel angle and make it a standalone story with different characters. I have a couple of theories around why this decision was made – first off is that the producers perhaps realised that Special Female Force was a pretty lacklustre attempt at a movie, so making a sequel to it was hardly going to be a thrilling box office prospect. Secondly is that the plot of The Fatal Raid is so remarkably similar to Special Female Force that it feels more like a remake than a continuation, so it was decided that having people think it was a rip-off rather than a remake was the lesser of two evils. Either way, it ended up being made, and apparently in 2019 incorporating the word ‘Raid’ into a movies title was still considered a bankable thing to do.

To demonstrate the similarities, it’s worth giving a quick plot recap of Special Female Force. Opening in Thailand, a sting goes horribly wrong which results in a unit being almost completely wiped out. 20 years later, the only surviving member (played by Jade Leung of Black Cat and Satin Steel fame) is now a trainer for new recruits in Hong Kong, one of whom turns out to be the daughter of one of the fallen comrades from the botched operation in Thailand all those years ago. Now let’s take a look at The Fatal Raid. Opening in Macau, a sting goes horribly wrong that results in several unintended fatalities. 20 years later, one of the surviving members (played by Jade Leung of Black Cat and Satin Steel fame) is still on the force, and a new recruit she ends up working with turns out to be the daughter of the innocent victim from the botched operation in Macau all those years ago. The feeling of déjà vu is palpable.

The similarities also serve to highlight some of the differences. In Special Female Force Leung’s characters from 20 years ago is played by Stephy Tang, however in The Fatal Raid Leung gets to play her character both in the present day and 20 years ago. Either director Jacky Lee thought that Leung’s appearance is youthful enough to pull off a 20-year time difference with nothing more than a short bob cut, or didn’t have enough budget to bring in another actress for the scenes that play out in the past. I’m willing to give equal plausibility to both options. The Fatal Raid is Lee’s sophomore movie in the director’s seat after 2012’s underwhelming Lives in Flames, which took a look at the HK indie band scene. Lives in Flames was the kind of directorial debut where you assume the director is only going to get better with subsequent efforts, so if anything The Fatal Raid makes for an interesting case study to prove that isn’t always the case.

Opening with a pre-title shootout that’s horrendously edited to the point where it’s impossible to know who or what anyone involved is shooting at, it’s a scene which sets the tone for much of what’s to come. To elaborate on the plot, the ‘fatal raid’ from 20 years ago saw Leung and fellow cops Patrick Tam (The Myth, Port of Call), Michael Tong (Firestorm, God of War), and Sharon Luk (Overheard, Love in a Puff) ambushed in Macao, leading to the death of Luk, Tong, and an innocent bystander. In the present day, survivors Leung and Tam are sent back to Macao to face an anarchist gang who are going on a crime spree, this time backed up by Lin Min-Chen (Vampire Cleanup Department, One Second Champion) and Jadie Lin (Mission Milano, Undercover Punch and Gun), along with returning Special Female Force cast members Jeana Ho (Raging Fire, Iceman 3D) and Hidy Yu (Vampire Warriors, Kick Ass Girls).

Frankly, The Fatal Raid is a chore to get through, not least because tonally it’s a complete train wreck. Attempting to go from puerile comedy, to heart wrenching drama, to cheap titillation, as a director Lee feels like he’s significantly out of his depth. I’m a big fan of Jade Leung, however here literally every scene she’s in involves her tearing up at the thought of 20 years ago, and not a whole lot else (we even get a post-credits sequence of her crying some more, just to top it off). Characters ramble on about justice almost as if it was a pre-requisite that the script had to have 100 instances of the word appear in order for production to be approved. From lines like “Remember you want to be a policeman because you want to uphold justice!”, to the villains calling themselves the Three Sons of Justice, if you were to play a drinking game every time the word got mentioned you’d have alcohol poisoning before the end credits roll.

Patrick Tam acts like he’s in a different movie altogether, as if he thinks Wong Kar-Wai or Soi Cheang is behind the camera, seemingly unaware that his super seriously acted scenes are next to ones that have the ladies taking place in a raid wearing hotpants next to fully kitted out SWAT team members. The ladies themselves are horrendously under-developed, with the banter between Lin Min-Chen and Jeana Ho being the closest we get to the characters having any kind of personality. Jadie Lin barely registers at all, and Hidy Yu doesn’t register full stop, barely having more than a line of dialogue during the entire runtime. There’s some barely there tension attempted to be created between the Hong Kong and Macau police units, but even that seems to only be there for the Macau Chief of Police to declare, “In fact, after Macao regression to China, it has been very safe prosperous”, in one of the scripts most cringe worthy lines.

By far one of The Fatal Raid’s worse crimes is the inclusion of Chiu Sin-Hang as a comedy relief police officer assigned to the HK unit to help them on their mission. Much like Patrick Tam appears to think he’s in a legitimately serious police thriller, Sin-Hang appears to have been told he’s in a nonsensical Lunar New Year comedy. Fixated on Lin Min-Chen, he daydreams about being in a relationship with her, and in the final shootout arrives with ammo refills for the ladies, before breaking the fourth wall to tell us how cool the gunfight is, and he hopes he can actually take part in one in the next sequel. It’s literal groan inducing stuff, and while Sin-Hang is a director in his own right (he helmed One Second Champion, and co-directed Vampire Cleanup Department alongside Yan Pak-Wing), anyone who’s only experience of him is his performance here will likely wish to never see him onscreen again.

That leaves the action, which is handled by action director Johnny Tang, a relative newcomer on the block having been working in the industry since the late 00’s, and whose most recent work can be seen in Hand Rolled Cigarette. The action is actually one of the high points, with a handful of grounded fight scenes that employ liberal doses of grappling and takedowns, smartly compensating for the fact that none of the ladies look like they could throw a punch that’d have much impact. There’re some worthy falls in the mix as well, and Tang utilises plenty of breakable props for bodies to be thrown into. The shootouts that bookend proceedings admittedly fare less well, mainly because for the 1000s of bullets that get sprayed everywhere, they seem incapable of actually hitting anything, and also for the fact that everything is filmed so close there’s no sense of space of distance between those doing the shooting.

Despite some brief flashes of action though, there can be no denying that The Fatal Raid is a clunker of a movie. Jade Leung is completely wasted, the CGI blood looks awful, and there’s also one of the most ridiculous revenge motives committed to screen. By the time we witness the absurdity of the ladies changing clothes in the middle of the street, set to a throbbing heavy metal soundtrack, I realised any hope of Jacky Lee understanding why audiences clock into these movies was well and truly lost. I mentioned the post-credits sequence involves Jade Leung crying, but it also contains a scene which hints at a reboot of a certain movie which put her on the map, albeit with another character in the main role. While I’d be all for that as much as the next person, if it does happen, please keep Jacky Lee as far away from it as humanly possible.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 4/10