Badges of Fury

i have to say i do love Jet Li, i have seen all his movies but it is a wonder why he was in this movie although he was not the main actor it was a very bad production. lets start with the script it was lousy something which was done and killed many times i think this film was the actual burial. effects and cgi was done by backstreet dealer. camera man should have had his medicine before even start to work on the day it was that bad. then there is the director i do not know who it was as my knowledge on directors is limited but i can say to you he would be working in Mcdonalds after this movie, he simply try to copy Stephen Chow in to this production but failed on every level on film making. if you want to see a Asian movie today don't bother with this crap go for movie called DRUG WARS thousand times better than this. NOT recommended by me.

I bought this expecting a badass cop movie starring Jet Li. Instead, Jet Li's role is more like a cameo appearance and the film really is a bad comedy with occasional kung fu fight sequences thrown in. I did enjoy the few fight scenes contained here, but as a whole the film is awful.The story is inept, uninteresting and stupid. The humorous aspects of the film rely on crude jokes, slapstick comedy, over the top, ridiculous moments, as well as references to Jet Li's career (officer Huang Fei Huang). That said it might have been fine, except those responsible forgot to make it funny. This movie makes the most crude, lowbrow work of producer/director Wong Jing look like highly intellectual art. Jet Li has proved with his previous films he is a very capable actor that can carry all sorts of stuff. Even though he only had a cameo appearance, Badges Of Fury is a waste of Jet Li's talents and not a good project. Hopefully, Jet Li will be given more than five minutes screen time in the next Expendables installment, one would hope.

BADGE OF FURY is one of those films that misleads thanks to false advertising; the DVD cover makes it look like nothing more than a bombastic Jet Li cop actioner, full of explosions and shoot-outs. The reality couldn't be further from the truth: this is instead a wildly uneven, lowbrow and mildly crazy knockabout comedy in the typical Chinese style.

Western audiences are sure to have their patience tested by a narrative that's all over the place, along with CGI-enhanced action sequences which turn fist-fights into comic-book battles, and all manner of over-the-top silliness. This is a film in which the gags fly thick and fast and the characters themselves fly even thicker and faster, being thrown into buildings and through windows at regular intervals. It's corny, stupid and sometimes jaw-droppingly awful.

Despite the anything-goes nature of the script, BADGE OF FURY is mildly amusing, if you're in the right mood for it. Occasionally, watching the male characters lusting over Yan Liu brings to mind the glory days of '80s-era knockabout comedy like MY LUCKY STARS. And Jet Li is always good value for money, even if his role here is limited and there's no real martial arts action to speak of. Unfortunately, we're saddled with the incessantly mugging and intensely irritating Zhang Wen in the lead role, and he's the worst thing about the whole thing.

Elsewhere, look out for a series of cameos from hot Chinese properties: there's Wu Jing in probably the best fight scene, and there's Collin Chou up to his usual bad guy duties. Stephen Fung (HOUSE OF FURY) bags a slightly bigger supporting role but fails to make an impact, but at least there are plenty of film in-jokes for movie fans to enjoy and the occasional sequence in which the jokes work. BADGE OF FURY is a film that it's best to watch fully knowing what you're in for as I can imagine many viewers turning this one off in disgust and in some respects I can't blame them.

To sum up this movie in one word: Silly.

I watched it because it stars Jet Li, and because Corey Yuen is the action director. I knew of the super low score, but I thought, since Corey Yuen is involved, it at least has to have some decent fighting..? And it does. Sort of. Corey Yuen has worked with Jet Li and Jason Statham several times, (directed the first Transporter-movie) he is excellent, so I wanted to check this out.

Anyhow. The movie is a comedy, think Kung Fu Hustle, only not funny. Basically it's like a cartoon. With cartoony sound effects, very weird "physics", and so on. It's just silly, like one time: someone is punched way up in the clouds by a tiny woman, and everybody laughs. Weird.

The best thing about the movie though, is still the fights. Doesn't have that much fighting, but the fights are entertaining. Full of silliness, but still fun to watch. A little heavy on stupid looking wire-work, though.

Also there's a lot of good, fake-looking mostly, but good use of CGI. Windows breaking, dents in cars, cracks and bullet-holes in walls, that sort of thing, and it actually really adds to the action. Destruction is always good in action-movies.

But, even with some decent fighting, and big use of CGI, it is still not very good. The story is, well, I didn't really catch the story, as I watched minutes at a time, because let me tell ya, when it's no action going on, it's pretty boring. And it's stupid.

"Badge of Fury" (aka "Bu er shen tan") has one of the most misleading DVD covers ever. It shows Jet Li looming over central Hong Kong engulfed in flames. First of all, the movie is nowhere near as explosive as the cover makes it out to be. Secondly, Jet Li is not even the main star in the movie.

The movie is a comedy action of sorts, which I didn't know, so I was a bit surprised when finding out. So does the comedy work? Sure, most of the time, but at times it was awfully forced and scripted. But if you do enjoy silly action comedy movies, then you will get some enjoyment out of the movie.

The characters were colorful and the dialogue was oddly quirky enough to match the characters. But the movie was somehow lacking a deeper storyline and meaning, giving the movie a somewhat irrelevant sensation to it.

It should be said that the actors were doing good jobs all round. I just wonder why Jet Li actually agreed to be in this movie, because it is really way off from his normal arena. And this is definitely not what you would expect from a Jet Li movie.

One thing that puzzled me senseless was why the movie was in Mandarin language when it was filmed and set to take place in Hong Kong. It was just so stupid. It should have been Cantonese.

All in all a mediocre movie that was nothing at all what the DVD cover presented it to be.