Wound's Fighting
2003; directed by Na Po Luen

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. This movie is called Wound's Fighting. Is it a typo? Is it a bad translation? Like the mystery of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world will never know. Hailing from the Z-level shot-on-video and straight-to-VCD director Na Po Luen -- aka Napoleon, get it? -- the same auteur that brought us the similarly bafflingly-titled Sanguinary Requital, Messing Passion, and the masterpiece known as The Thief of Red Lips Fish, Wound's Fighting is indeed every bit as bad you might think it is, and probably a good deal more. This sort of movie is the reason the fast-forward button was created.

Starring Baat Leung-Gam, aka Bobby Yip, aka that one dude with the bowl cut that you've seen in the background of dozens of Hong Kong gangster movies, Wound's Fighting is your usual rehashed twaddle about low-rent Triads vying for control of a territory no one with any semblance of a brain would give two shits about. There's double-crosses, doomed romances, and brawls featuring obscenely oversized knives. Obviously, this sort of thing could, and has, been done well in instances, at least when the matters are handled by film-makers who have a modicum of talent.

However, Wound's Fighting comes off as the sort of affair that doesn't put any sort of effort forth in any way, shape, or form. It's a given in a movie like this that the acting is going to be bad, and the technical aspects are going to be below the line at best. But Wound's Fighting takes things to a lower level. Not only do the obviously fake firearms not even shoot blanks, instead making the actors pantomime the act of shooting, the blade hits don't draw any blood. Couldn't the producers come up with $1.49 for a quart-sized bottle of Roundy's ketchup? I guess maybe they blew the budget on the Garage Band-looped soundtrack, which features choice cuts by relevant artists like Ricky Martin. Seriously, Ricky f'ing Martin? If you are going to steal music, why not swipe something good?

That question is probably overthinking matters a smidge. Actually, it's overshooting the intent and results of this so-called film by a country mile. Wound's Fighting is an ultra low-budget affair that was probably never intended to be anything more than a cheap cash-in attempt aimed towards easily swindled gwailos eager to take in anything that might have the semblance of the greatness of the better Hong Kong gangster movies, and taking it too intensely (or really, with any degree of seriousness at all) will most likely have you running for some Advil, a shot of Jagermeister, or perhaps both. Putting any and all hyperbole aside, Wound's Fighting is film-making at its' very worst and deserves to stay at the murky chum-filled bottom of the bargain bin from from whence it came.

RATING: 1