In the ring, Phi (Peter Pham) is a tough as nails MMA fighter, and he needs money. There’s a procedure that can correct his wife’s vision (she’s going blind) and it doesn’t come cheap. At first I thought Foggy Mountain might be a metaphor for her problems, but instead, it’s something else. In this film’s case, it means that this fighter must either making a deal with the devil, Ba Rau (Kim Long Thach), a rather nasty crime lord, or seek help elsewhere. Thankfully he’s smart in not to accept, but it comes at a price, and thus begins a story of revenge as he searches for his lair located out in the boondoggles.
The concept is fairly standard, and after the setup to motivate Pham to search the rural countryside of Vietnam to hunt down this piece of work and his minions. The bits of action fans want to see are good. However, to get to that point means wading through a story that suffers from pacing issues.
I was not all that invested until the hero finds that this criminal is also running a slave trafficking operation. I wasn’t quite as initially invested at first, but once when directors Phan Anh and Ken Dinh up the ante, by involving the loss of innocence with the kids getting run over, shot at, and et cetera, the viewer in me wants to see these bad guys go down.
Continue reading “At Foggy Mountain, All Roads Lead to Martial Arts Mayhem”
