Watch Movies Online: Ringo Lam’s Full Contact
If you’re a fan of those John Woo Heroic Bloodshed films, Hard Boiled, The Killer, A Better Tomorrow, you should check out the work of Ringo Lam, starting with Full Contact. This film was Lam’s attempt to create a film that brings old school, knight in shining armor chivalry to the modern action flick. This goes back to the original Hong Kong title: Chivalrous Thief Gau Fei. Put it on your queue next time you watch movies online and want some hardcore action.
Chow Yun Fat plays Gau Fei, a bouncer slash bodyguard slash professional thief slash biker gang leader. So basically, an all around tough guy. He brings a lot of style to the role with his leather vest, Harley Davidson t-shirt (while driving a Honda bike, actually), and smoking black and mild cigars. Interestingly, this is why the movie didn’t do so well at the Hong Kong box office. In the US, Chow is an action star, in HK, he’s a comedy star, and his Hong Kong fans didn’t want to see him in such a violent film.
We begin with Gau Fei at the night club watching his girl dance and throwing unruly patrons out on their rears. Then he receives a call: His cousin is in trouble with a loan shark and he needs his help.
Fei gets betrayed and what seems like a mission of revenge becomes a mission of redemption. Be on the lookout for the “Rocky Montage” moment about half way through, where we see Gau Fei train himself to shoot left handed and recuperate after being shot at, having his right finger and thumb cut off, and being set on fire.
The film is really just gorgeous, focusing on rainy streets, burning buildings, there’s a lot of red and blue, fire and water imagery in the film, and the result is one of the most dreamlike, beautiful action movies ever made, matched only by Johnnie To’s Exiled some fifteen years later.
The movie isn’t always easy to find on DVD, which is why we recommend it as a movie download. It’s certainly worth a watch if you’re into action flicks, especially if you have a taste for the Hong Kong action flicks of the eighties.
The movie was sort of the last of the Heroic Bloodshed films, having been made in 1992, the same year as Hard Boiled, just before John Woo and Ringo Lam left Hong Kong to make films in the US. Interestingly, both directors made their Hollywood debuts with Jean Claude Van Damme, and both of those films were nearly ruined by Van Damme’s constant demands in the editing room. The end result was great Van Damme movies, but bad John Woo and Ringo Lam movies.
The film has a sense of nostalgia, sentimentality, and a lot of beautiful images you’ll just find yourself wanting to stare at for hours on end. It really is a unique action flick, having used bullet time ten years before The Matrix gave it a try.
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