The Avenging Fist has some loose connections to the Tekken franchise, Tekken 3 in particular. I’ve played several of the Tekken games but am not familiar enough with them to draw clear comparisons. I can however confirm that the antagonist, strangely named Combat 21 (played by Roy Cheung) wears an overcoat that looks a whole lot like that of M.Bison from Street Fighter fame.
Videogame connections aside, The Avenging Fist is a decent movie that takes place in a futuristic Asian city complete with flying cars, hover scooters, holograms, and a lot of other future mega-city tropes. Leehom Wang stars as Nova, a twenty-something dude who has learned some physical martial arts skills from his late father who was a policeman for the city, but whose death is still shrouded in mystery, at least to Nova. In this future, weapons have been abolished, but a few police officers including Sammo Hung’s character, Dark, carry a Power Glove.
Bringing back videogame connections for a second, yes this does share the name with the (in)famous Nintendo accessory and it about looks the part, too. The Glove gets its mystical power from the 90% of the human brain’s power that is normally never used or accessed — it’s called The Forbidden Zone, and being able to control this part of your brain is something very few can even do. This black-skied and otherwise dystopian future city is about to come to a breaking point with Combat 21 planning a city takeover. Through brainwashing, he’s amassed a pretty powerful army, including a massive beast that was created in the labs.
Furrowing your brow yet? This movie gives you plenty of reason to shake your head, there’s plenty of B-movie themes and ideas here and I’ll admit that getting through the cheesiest aspects of it can ask a lot of you. It’s hard to get invested in any of the characters, despite a moderately well done love story between the very pretty Belle (Kristy Yang) and under-used badass Stephen Fung (known as Iron Surfer in the film).
The Avenging Fist is predictable, cheesy, and generally ‘blah’ enough to make it somewhat of a slog to get through, but it’s also got enough miscellaneous things going for it to make it worth the ninety-five minutes it takes to get through. I thought the futuristic setting and the whole idea of the Power Glove and Forbidden Zone were ok, the fight scenes are entertaining, and there is just enough intrigue amongst the protagonists that you’re curious about their fate.
On DVD, The Avenging Fist has nice artwork and a 16:9 picture with Cantonese 5.1 and Stereo audio. English subtitles and chapter select are here, as well as the trailer for the movie and several trailers for other Well Go USA releases. It’s not a particular inspired release, but it’s for a niche audience and I’m all for relatively obscure titles finally making their way to DVD.
To the summary…