Striking Rescue — Siyu Cheng [Review]

Tony Jaa, action cinema’s favorite Muay Thai fighter, has faded from the limelight a bit after a quiet decade so far. He entered into it with Dimitri Logothetis’s 2020 Jiu Jitsu, where an ancient protectorate of ordained jiu-jitsu fighters protects the world Avengers-style against a would-be alien invasion. A long way gone from Ong-Bak (2003) and SPL II: A Time for Consequences (2015), the pick-me cash-bag tackiness of Jiu Jitsu preludes the rest of the performer’s work this decade. He was added as a less important side character, a Thai cop, to the Mainland money-making franchise Detective Chinatown in the series’ third entry (2021), while 2023’s Expend4bles proved to be as dumb and useless as its slovenly-spelled title. His supporting role in Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2020 Monster Hunter, which was both a good film and a good action film, is the lone stand-out in his very periodic post-pandemic work.

Enter the brand-new Striking Rescue, his latest go-around and another entry in his Chinese filmography. It may be a new release, but there is nothing new under the sun in director Cheng Siyi’s (Desperado) tirade against drugs and poorly digitized action. A drug lord kills the wife and kids of Bai An (Jaa), and so he seeks revenge, partnering with an afflicted young girl on the way (He Ting, played by Chen Duo-Yi) and dismantling the drug empire, mostly by playing whack-a-mole with the bad guys. Jaa’s Bai An doesn’t talk much, and when he does, it is in an uncomfortable English, creating a communication barrier that the film never really attempts to resolve. He obviously isn’t here to talk, though, but is instead around to drive his flying knees into the chests of child killers — which he does plenty of. All of which is to say, it’s not entirely unimaginable that some algorithmic machine spit out the premise for this Chinese production.

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