BUFF Review: Fatal Termination (1990) dir. Andrew Kam
Most movies have warts. But not all warts are made equal.
Part of the 2024 Boston Underground Film Festival
Restorations are net boons. Each and every restored film rejuvenates the decaying state of global cinema by a smidgen. The gorgeous new restoration of the 1990 Hong Kong non-stop shooter Fatal Termination, showing for the first time in North America at the Boston Underground Film Festival, blesses cinephiles with a penchant for Hong Kong cinema. The film itself, however, barely achieves competency and even this mediocrity finds itself marred with one of the most egregious and abusive child stunts ever executed on camera. Most movies have warts. But not all warts are made equal.
Moon Lee and Ray Lui lead a formidable cast of some of the hottest actors to ever perform in an indeterminable action-packed picture with a fuzzy plot about an arms deal gone askew with Middle Eastern rebel groups played by Australian actors dressed in Middle Eastern attire and with what appears to be brown face. What actually happens is more or less exactly the kind of thing that always happens in these kinds of movies: crime of all sorts, good cops, bad cops, gunfights, car chases, money making and money losing, vengeance, etc. The biggest exception to the usual tropes, at least by North American standards, comes through in the pessimism that colors the violence; unlike in all of the feel-good happy endings of Hollywood, not all of the good guys escape with their lives. Violence has consequences not just for the antagonists but also for the protagonist, as a proper buttload of people meet their brutal end.
Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.