Like The Room and Fateful Findings, Fight of Fury boasts a quadruple-threat creative force with writer/director/producer/star Shuny Bee, and this film is about as intentionally successful as The Room and Fateful Findings before it. All right!
This martial arts “masterpiece” is about Brandon (Shuny Bee), an “amazing” martial artist and ex-gorkha soldier who supposedly uncovers a human trafficking operation and saves some women. In his quest to end human trafficking, his daughter gets kidnapped by the traffickers, so then it gets really personal and he unleashes the full wrath of almighty Brandon upon the baddies.
In real life, Shuny Bee is a martial artist and personal trainer, owning his own dojo which he then uses for filming most of the Fight of Fury’s scenes. He doesn’t really bother to hide the fact that this is his real-life dojo, as there are pictures of him everywhere featuring his real name, as does the martial arts jacket he wears prominently throughout the film. All right!
Despite being, on paper, a film about a one-man army taking on human trafficking, in actuality there’s not much fighting happening in Fight of Fury. There are, however, lots and lots of badly-acted scenes of talking, some of which are incredibly confusing. Case in point: we’ve established that this is a film about human trafficking, all right? Well, there are some very questionable and baffling scenes in which the women who are supposedly trafficked appear to be happy and willing participants. Also, in the beginning four women are at a restaurant when a guy comes over and offers them a powdery drug that he proceeds to put in their drinks right in front of them. And they willingly drink it (WTF!!??!) and get kidnapped, but it’s cool because being forced into prostitution is, according to this movie, a pretty nice time.
It takes a lot for editing to stand out in a film. Samurai Cop managed to do it, and so, too, does Fight of Fury. Sometimes it seems like Bee has a twin brother or is capable of short-range teleportation because of the way he will constantly appear at different locations within the same scene. Plenty of action or acting scenes have random passersby half-paying attention to the film being made as they’re walking by (shout out to the mom pushing her toddler in a little red car stroller while the climactic one-on-one sword fight takes place). Injuries happen outside of the flow of time, appearing, disappearing, and then reappearing after they actually take place. All right?
Bee shows off his skills in about 2-3 fights, and while he’s doubtless very skilled in real life, his skills don’t translate well on film as the choreography is possum-in-a-dumpster-level trash. Brandon’s daughter, Maya (Who I think may be his real-life daughter, Shareen Bee? Or I might be mixing up character names and his onscreen wife was his real-life wife) shines with a few action scenes which are a combination of legitimately good moves from the kid and legitimately silly acting from the stuntmen she’s beating up.
Fight of Fury is 81 minutes long and about 81 minutes too long. It’s a bad movie, and not so bad it’s good, mostly just bad bad. There are little nuggets of cheesy gold here and there, like the fact that characters (especially Bee) punctuate most of their sentences by saying “all right.” But, as you watch the film boredom quickly sets and stays there while the seconds crawl by. Now, I don’t want to discredit all the hard work that went into making this film. No doubt making a movie is not easy, even shitty movies. It still takes time, money, energy, and a lot of people coming together to do their best. So, nice try. They did create a finished project with the noble intention of calling out the horrors of human trafficking (I think? Again, they do a really bad job on this point and I can’t stress that enough).
I don’t know what, exactly, Bee’s goal was with this film, but he managed to accomplish a goal. All right!
Rating: 0.5 Soul-Sucking All Right’s, out of 5
Disclaimer: Just because I am the Action Flick Chick and love action movies does not mean I condone real life violence in any way. Everyone has their own shit to deal with, be nice to each other.
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