The King of the Streets
2012; directed by Yue Song

Jeet Kune Do practioner Yue Song put on many hats for his debut The King of the Streets: producer, writer, director, and star. While one can admire Yue's work ethic and appreciate that this is a Mainland production that doesn't feel the need to hide martial arts action behind a historical or fantasy context, the end results simply aren't that exciting.

The well-worn and dog-eared story has Yue starring as Yue Feng, a young man who was sent to prison for killing someone in a gang that was picking on his friend, gaining him the uninventive nickname of "The Street Fighter". Yue's adventures are not nearly as cool as scrotum-ripping Sonny Chiba's. Upon his release, Yue goes through the usual cliches, such as not being able to get a job, his father disowning him, and so on and so forth, until one gets lulled into a daze before being shaken out of it somewhat by Yue breaking his pledge to never fight again, as he starts defending an orphanage that is being harassed by a gang that (in a not so shocking twist) is led by the same friend helped out all those years ago. All of this is about as compelling as your average summer replacement drama on the CW network, or perhaps more appropriately, any one of the dozens and dozens and dozens of kung fu/martial arts movies already out there that employ this exact plot.

Yue doesn't mind tooting his own horn, as some of the dialogue (which, again, was written by Yue himself) proclaims him to be better than Bruce Lee and Mike Tyson. Of course, there is no way Yue is up to the Little Dragon's level, or even really close to it, but he does show glimmers of promise in the fight scenes. Unfortunately, for the most part, the fight are over too quickly, with camera trickery and rapid-fire editing getting in the way of seeing what might actually be nice-looking martial arts movies if the camera dwelled on them for more than 1.5 seconds.

In the end, despite whatever promise Yue may have held, and the fact that it was nice to see a Mainland movie not made for the sole purpose of stuffing propaganda into the audience's ocular sockets, The King of the Streets is just simply a sub-standard low-budget martial arts picture, devoid of any memorable scenes or sustained excitement, being more of lightweight fare that you will probably remember nothing of shortly after you finish it. This is okay enough for watching via instant Netflix on a long commute or having on in the background while you do something more substantial, such as folding socks, but it is nothing really worth seeking out.

RATING: 4