INVISIBLE TARGET Review

The frenetic pace and energy of Hong Kong actioners have remained consistent throughout the years. But what possibly separates today’s action films and those of the past is better technology. Better CGI, better wirework, better sound effects – you name it, they got it down pat.

Benny Chan’s Invisible Target is loud, fast, action-packed, adrenaline-pumping, explosive, overall entertaining. The pace is good, the acting effective. Character development is handled deftly, and the story is told with enough gusto to keep us riveted throughout its more than two hours running time, with flashes of humour in all the right places.

In short, it’s never boring. But strangely enough, it’s not particularly special or memorable either.

A straightforward actioner, Invisible Target is, as Stefan pointed out in his review, full of breaking glass. Every time someone flies through the air, it’s very likely that somewhere somehow, there will be a pane of glass for his projectile body to shatter. Far from being a nuisance, it’s really rather amusing to watch and anticipate.

If you didn’t know that it was a Benny Chan film, you’d probably think that this was a John Woo movie, with its themes of brotherhood and honour among thieves, moral ambiguity, etc. The story goes to great lengths to let us know that there is a fine line between the good guys and the bad guys, and that each has his own reason for his actions and methods of survival. This is probably the film’s only great flaw, that the moments of downtime and respite from the relentless action is for the characters to spew endless lines of musings about justice, survival, vengeance, whathaveyou, so much so it becomes rather repetitive after a while. It just makes you want to scream “OK, we get it! Now move on!” We’re here to see some ass-kicking. And the film doesn’t disappoint in that department.

A gang of foreign thieves led by Tien (Wu Jing) scores a major heist in the city, but inadvertently kills maverick cop Chan Chun (Nicholas Tse)’s fiancee in the process. Six months later, the gang finds that they’ve been double-crossed, and someone has made off with the loot. They return to the city to exact revenge and get their share of the money. The only problem is, standing in their way are three young cops, Chan, Fong (Shawn Yue) and Wai (Jaycee Chan). Chan is seeking revenge for the death of his fiancée, Fong wants a rematch after getting his ass seriously kicked by Tien, and Wai wants to find out what happened to his brother who was an undercover cop who infiltrated the gang. Meanwhile, unknown to all of them, there is a certain “invisible target” who is the mastermind behind the whole mess.

Like I said before, the technology today further enhances the experience in an action movie, and the fights here are bone-crunchingly fearsome, just like in the excellent SPL. And when Wu Jing gets into the thick of things, you can be sure there’ll be some seemingly humanly-impossible moves. It’s a real delight every time he’s on screen. Yue and Tse are no less effective as well. In fact, one particular sequence in a restaurant, played solely for humour, is reminiscent of the introductory restaurant scene in Dragon Tiger Gate, the film where the two proved their martial arts mettle.

Jaycee, son of Jackie, shows that he can act, and in the chop-sockey department, he is fittingly underwhelming, true to his junior cop character. Perhaps in the future he’ll be able to show more of the kind of legacy his father has built.

The characters are almost superhuman, if you can believe how single-minded they are during various chase scenes. They fall off roofs, get hit by large vehicles, fly through glass, tumble from two storeys, roll in fire, and still come off with only a few bruises! And this is probably the first time you’ll see action heroes applying ointment on each other’s wounds after a fight!

Lapses in logic aside, the skilful editing holds until the big finale that takes place in the police headquarters, when things get just a tad confusing. But by then, you really won’t care anymore. The movie ends literally with a bang, as all hell breaks loose and more bones are broken than you can count.

If anything, Hollywood directors can certainly learn a thing or two about shooting action from their Asian counterparts. Hong Kong filmmakers still keep the action within frame, and there’s none of that shaky camera shit, unless it’s absolutely necessary.

But as much as it’s entertaining, ultimately Invisible Target is just another addition to the Hong Kong action tradition. It’s not particularly groundbreaking, nor are there any real surprises. The technology now only helps to enhance the action vocabulary, until the day someone comes along to find a new way of utilizing what’s available to create something completely new.

But Invisible Target delivers when it comes to what really counts in this kind of film – the action.

On another note, there’s a very strange cameo by a very famous actor-singer, who only appears in a photograph. He’s not even in the flashback scenes. I’m sure a lot of the other audience members were also scratching their heads over this.