Striking Rescue
There are times where “Striking Rescue” feels a bit like “The Professional,” with a lethal killer teamed up with a young girl to take on corrupt drug dealers. But while there are some slight similarities, Siyu Cheng’s action film is not quite that, and it’s the ways that it’s different are what make it unique. For much of its running time, it’s basically just Tony Jaa kicking ass, and that is fine, but this film has some engaging ideas in it that make it an entertaining watch.
The film begins as Bai An (Jaa’s character) has begun his rampage. His wife and daughter have been brutally murdered by drug dealers, and he’s trying to figure out who is to blame. He hones in on an operation with some connection to a well-known businessman, He Yinghao (Philip Keung). Along the way, Bai An takes Yinghao’s daughter, Ting (Chen Duoyi), who seems to know enough about her father’s business to know that he’s not into drugs. She agrees to help Bai An on his path, however, which does have many twists and turns involved. As well as action. An awful lot of action.
Guo Haiwen’s screenplay is a star vehicle through and through for Jaa, and it is a pleasure to see Cheng help orchestrate the chaos for them. In addition to the dynamic between Ting and Bai An (which is what reminded me of “The Professional,” just without the creepy Lolita vibes), Bai An also finds an unexpected ally in Wu Zheng (Eason Hung), one of Yinghao’s security men. Hung doesn’t have the dexterity of Jaa in the action scenes, but really, how many people do?
“Striking Rescue” is unadulterated fun as an action film. It understands what we are watching for, and it gives us what we want. I’m not as familiar with Jaa on the whole as I probably should be, but he is fully engaging as a screen presence, and he and Duoyi have a great dynamic throughout this film that works. A movie like this is meat-and-potatoes action, which is to say that it gives you a sequence every few minutes to keep you watching while not getting bogged down too much in plot. The ending gets a bit unnecessarily convoluted and explanatory- it already gave us our satisfying ending- but that’s a minor inconvenience, especially when it does what it does to bring the emotional core of the film back to the front before the credits fully roll. I really appreciated that little bit.
