According to an account floating around the film fan realm, Dennis Law, the producer of last year’s Category III-rated retro-horror-fest Gong Tau: An Oriental Black Magic told the film’s director Herman Yau to damn the censors and just go for a no-holds-barred approach. That story of moviemaking daring may be apocryphal but, based on Fatal Move, a deservedly Category III-rated actioner directed, scripted and produced by Law (and co-produced /lensed by Yau), it is easy enough to understand how it came to be spun.

Bloody, brutal and revelling in a whole range of violent, visceral visuals, Fatal Move contains super vicious and spectacular fight action between Triad brothers and battles between underworld figures and the police. Long-time HK cinema enthusiasts will gleefully greet the film as a blast from a far grittier past.

Emotionally raw as well as physically painful, the resolutely unrestrained movie also possesses scenes of a grown man crying like a child and another being hurt more by a woman’s words than subsequent slashes of a sword. At the same time, even while certain scenes of torture and execution are capable of causing viewers to feel like gagging, other segments run the risk of reducing the same viewers to maniacal laughter due to the mayhem sometimes being so incredibly over the top that it verges on the cartoonish!

Set largely in the harsh world of the Triads, in particular that of a major gang whose TT&L initials stand for Truthfulness, Trust & Loyalty, Fatal Move possesses multiple sub-plots and characters. At the centre of much of it all are three intriguing individuals: powerful TT&L boss Lung (played with significant gravitas by Sammo Hung); his sometimes capable but still generally weaker younger brother Tung (the ever-watchable Simon Yam); and Lung’s wife and TT&L’s financial wizard, Soso (Kelly Chu happily making the most of a rare meaty role for a mature female).

Having connections of various types and strengths to one or all three of them are a diverse group of men and women, some more truthful, trustworthy and loyal than others. Among the more eye-catching of Fatal Move’s supporting characters are the blue-haired Tin Hung (Wu Jing) and – albeit to a lesser degree – handsome Hung (Jacky Heung – son of Charles, who also co-produced this movie), two TT&L henchmen who earn the respect and fear of others through the style and amount of destruction they leave in their wakes. As it turns out, though, it’s the less immediately attention-grabbing likes of Lung’s wealthy supporter Tong Lai Yu (Hui Shiu Hung), the hardworking Triad Wu (Kenneth Low) and the not at all fat Fat (Cheung Siu Fai) who play a greater part in moving things along and provoking the type of action that leaves scores of people badly maimed, if not dead.

Still, the sparks don’t truly fly until Wu’s wife, Tracy (Pinky Cheung), attempts to make her move in a negotiation scene that pits her against another, far more formidable and ruthless, female. As for the police, suffice it to say that even while their ranks boast characters (notably those played by Danny Lee, Maggie Shiu and Lam Suet) with noteworthy stories of their own, in the world of Fatal Move, it’s the Triads – and some of their more ambitious women – that dominate, and prove to be far more deadly.

Yvonne Teh