A night full of rain lit by the flames from multiple explosions. Motorcycle silhouette and hair metal power ballad wailing on the soundtrack. The Whitesnake MTV music video aesthetic crossed with the HK action cinema Heroic Bloodshed. This is Full Contact (1992), directed by Ringo Lam and reuniting him with star Chow Yun-Fat after films like City On Fire and Prison On Fire. Apparently Lam wanted to move away from any socio-political themes that marked the ‘On Fire’ series, so Full Contact is full-blown style and action genre theatrics.
While it can’t compare to John Woo’s pyrotechnics and stunt work (Hard Boiled would be released the same year with Yun-Fat as well), there’s a strong visual hook and focus for sequences. Like the tapping of rain on Yun-Fat’s switchblade, drawn for a fight with gangsters. Or a gunfight in a club that is marked by incessant POV shots of the bullets flying across the room.
Yun-Fat is Gou Fei, the honourable bouncer who sticks his neck out for his debt-ridden cousin, Sam Sei (Anthony Wing). To leave Bangkok for a new life aboard, on the run from a gambling boss, they agree to partner up with Judge (Simon Yam) and his gang for a heist of military weapons. There’s a neo-noir double cross and Yun-Fat is left for dead, only to return in the shadows ready to take his revenge.
Simon Yam’s entertaining villain is a homophobic characterisation with his close-up magic tricks and flamboyant outfits, styled like Prince in the New Power Generation era. And yet Chow Yun-Fat’s presentation of butch heterosexuality (leather vest, motorcycle, rose tattoo on his arm) also comes off as very camp, and the tension between hero and villain is hilariously charged. Everything is so over the top in Full Contact that it’s hard to take too seriously, even down to the histrionic horniness of the female gang member (played by Bonnie Foo) who just wants sex all the time, even in the middle of a heist! Themes of brotherhood abound with Wong’s heel-turn, and Yun-Fat out for revenge and redemption. There’s enough full blown action, pumping club scenes, and Yun-Fat alternating between romantic suffering or laconically tough to satisfy viewers.
Full Contact feels like the ultimate set of images you could catch on a karaoke video, a feeling amplified by the multiple music montages. All it building to the greatest one-liner a hero ever yelled right before the kill-shot. Recommended.
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