Talk about coming out of nowhere – within a month of dropping its first trailer and the general knowledge of its existence online, “Striking Rescue” sticks the holiday season landing as easily Tony Jaa’s best martial arts thrill-a-thon since “Triple Threat”, and arguably his best his “SPL 2: A time for Consequences”!
A true tornado of Thai and Chinese style action, “Striking Rescue” gives Tony Jaa and the supporting action players an open playground to go to work in wild fashion. Additionally, “Striking Rescue” also gives Tony Jaa a canvas to thrive a bit more on the dramatic side of things, while also showcasing with vivid flair what “The Raid 3” with Tony Jaa might have looked like!
Trailer
Cast
Tony Jaa leads “Striking Rescue” as the movie’s protagonist An Bai, with Chen Duo-Yi portraying the young co-lead He Ting.
Esson Hung plays Wu Zheng, while Phillip Keung portrays He Ting’s father and businessman He Ying Yao, with Michael Mao Fan playing vicious drug lord Clay, and Shi Yan Neng as his equally ruthless right hand man Tai Long.
Peng Bo also appears as the hatchet-wielding assassin Lu Ping, with Bolin Yu portraying Sang Kang.
Plot
Following the murder of his wife and daughter, An Bai is a man driven by vengeance, embarking from Thailand to China to track down the drug kingpin responsible for his family’s demise which An Bai himself ended up being framed for.
An Bai believes that Chinese businessman He Ying Yao is the man behind it all, and believes his resentful daughter, He Ting can help point him the direction of his target.
However, An Bai unexpectedly finds a new enemy in the mix when a drug cartel kidnaps He Ying. With such an unexpected twist of events, An Bai and He Ting join forces to track the kidnappers down, with An Bai still convinced of He Ying’s guilt and He Ting hoping their mission will uncover the real mastermind of the murder of An Bai’s family.
Action
“Striking Rescue” Combines The Best of Thai and Chinese Action
When Tony Jaa first set the martial arts movie world ablaze with 2003’s “Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior”, it was obvious how much he’d be right at home in the Hong Kong action scene.
Long after crossing that threshold with “SPL 2: A Time for Consequences” and “Paradox”, Tony cements that his elbow-to-the-head style of fight choreography is tailor made for Hong Kong – or, in this case, Chinese – action filmmaking.
Director Cheng Siyi is as excited about the Thai-Chinese action combo as anyone, with “Striking Rescue” delivering a patented Tony Jaa-style flying knee to the audiences face in the movie’s first smackdown of An Bai searching for his family’s killers, just five minutes in.
“Striking Rescue” keeps the flow of action consistent and enthralling throughout, but the movie also lets Tony flex his muscles in another way.
Jaa at His Peak in The Fights and Emotional Moments of “Striking Rescue”
Action movie revenge plots didn’t just recently come into the minds of screenwriters, but “Striking Rescue” gives Tony Jaa a platform not just for his talents in action, but one of most layered acting performances to date.
True, the language structure of “Striking Rescue” is a bit of a head scratcher, with Tony mostly speaking English as the supporting cast mostly sticks to Mandarin Chinese, and the two keep in their respective linguistic lanes in an odd two-way street of English and Mandarin dialogue exchanges.
Even still, Tony puts great care into his portrayal of a man who has lost everything and finds himself at the end of his rope with how crushing the loss of his family has been for him. “Striking Rescue” also reveals the specifics of the murder of An Bai’s family gradually, culminating in a powerful scene of An Bai lamenting their loss and even possibly realizing the totality of it for the first time himself.
On the flip side, the emphasis “Striking Rescue” places on both the striking and the rescue lets Tony Jaa shift into pure beast mode in some of his craziest fight scenes and stunts of the last half decade. Moreover, “Striking Rescue” is also elevated substantially by its cast of villains and supporting heroes, along with one of the more self-evident influences on the movie’s action.
“Striking Rescue” Has Some Very Wild Villains – and a Few Influences from “The Raid”
The villains of “Striking Rescue” know they’re pure evil, and love it!
Shi Yan Neng’s Ting Long, aside from a well-placed singular side kick to his enemies here and there, is mostly kept in reserve with a sinister grin on his face, though it’s worth the wait for him to primarily chew the scenery in the knowledge that he’s the kind of right-hand man villain who is saved for the end.
Peng Bo brings an equal amount of fun to “Striking Rescue” as the cackling, ace-wielding assassin Lu Ping, channeling the show-stealing energy of Julie Estelle’s Hammer Girl in “The Raid 2”. Peng Bo’s Lu Ping – whom KFK is now officially nicknaming “Hatchet Girl” – snags one of the movie’s highlight fight scenes with An Bai, matching his elbow chops against her ruthless hatchet slashes.
As the nickname and fighting style of Hatchet Girl should make quite evident, “Striking Rescue” takes quite an influence from “The Raid” movies in its fight choreography, and if that alone weren’t evidence enough, An Bai’s hallway fight with a dozen henchmen that’s capped off with a one-on-one machete battle.
It goes without saying that anyone blown away by “The Raid”-style 40 minute finale of “Life After Fighting” is going to relish the Thai-Chinese-“The Raid”-style action combo that “Striking Rescue” tosses into the blender and dishes out for its audience.
“Striking Rescue” Packs Two Kinds of Punches in Its Finale
Maintaining such a high volume of action throughout its run time, “Striking Rescue” also scores a real slam dunk in its finale. First the bad news – it’s Shi Yan Neng’s only proper fight scene in the movie. And now the good – it’s every bit as phenomenal of an “Ong Bak” vs. “The Wrath of Vajra” leading men showdown as anyone could ask for, clocking in at a six-minute Muay Thai-Shaolin kung fu war with Yan Neng having a ball as a crime world enforcer with the hubris and braggadocio of an old school Shaw Brothers villain.
While hitting the bull’s eye in the action department, “Striking Rescue” also delivers a gut punch of a different sort in its finale in pulling back the curtain a bit more on who played what role in the death of An Bai’s family.
A combination of remorse and attrition is the emotional note of the final confrontation of “Striking Rescue”, and one that hits as hard as any of the movie’s plentiful and gloriously powerful martial arts showdowns.
Summary
Even evaluated on its own merits, “Striking Rescue” is a wild, exhilarating ride of martial arts action and stunts combining Thai and Chinese styles with the DNA of “The Raid” movies. However, the fact that this seemingly just dropped out of the sky like Tony Jaa dropping an elbow on an enemy’s awaiting cranium lets it land with the exact same kind of impact.
In arriving as such an out-of-left-field wildcard, Tony Jaa’s return in “Striking Rescue” is the surprise stocking stuffer from Santa Claus tailor-made to give martial arts lovers around the world a holly, jolly Christmas!
Trivia
- “Striking Rescue” debuted in China and Hong Kong on the streaming platform Youku on November 8th, 2024.
- “Striking Rescue” is the first Youku movie to receive a theatrical release in North America.
- Tony Jaa and Shi Yan Neng both previously appeared in 2019’s “Master Z: Ip Man Legacy”.
- Siyu Cheng’s other movies as director include “The Grandmaster of Kung Fu”, “Fist of Fury: Soul”, “Kai Guan”, 2022’s “The Tai Chi Master”, and 2024’s “Desperado”.
Favourite Quotes
- “I’m not Tony Jaa!” – An Bai (telling He Ting to jump from a second story balcony.)
- “You are not qualified to be my enemy.” – Tai Long (to An Bai)
Striking Rescue debuts in North America on December 6th!
