Triple Threat

What do you get if you add the stars of The Raid, Ong Bak, Chocolate, Wolf Warrior 2, Kung Fu Man, Undisputed III, Spawn and Pit Fighter together? You get Triple Threat, that's what you get. A film that will be of interest to both fans of South East Asian action cinema and of 80's and 90's B-movie action. Unfortunately it doesn't live up to the best of the former or the memories of the latter.

Two friends, Payu (Tony Jaa) and Long Fei (Tiger Chen), are hired by a mercenary called Devereaux (Michael Jai White) to take part in a raid on a jungle compound in Indonesia with the goal of freeing prisoners. Unknownst to them Devereaux's real plan is to free a terrorist called Collins (Scott Adkins). During the attack a camp soldier, Jaka (Iko Uwais), sees his wife gunned down before his eyes. Meanwhile a businesswoman by the name of Tian (Celia Jade) has arrived in the country and is planning on using her late father's fortune in a bid to curb organised crime. Both her story and Jaka's search for revenge soon become intertwined. Things get bloody.

I wanted to like this more than I actually did. Yeah it's full of nasty violence, brutal fight scenes and a healthy smattering of gunplay, everything you want from a full blooded action flick but there's just a feeling of......deja vu and disappointment. It's all been done before. There's nothing here that wasn't done 20 years ago already by a Van Damme or a Norris or a Chan or a *shudder* Blanks. There's plenty of crunchy fight scenes and gruesome carnage but there's just nothing unique, there's no hook. Indonesian action movies have been spoiling us rotten for the last few years. The Raid movies, The Night Comes For Us, Headshot. Insanely vicious slices of madness made special by out of this world action choreography and action sequences that have never been seen before that western cinema wouldn't dare even attempt. Jesse V. Johnson as director tries gamely but Triple Threat, despite the wealth of martial artists on display just comes across as a pale and generic version of those movies.

It's a shame because the talent gathered for the movie is fantastic. Jaa set the world on fire a decade ago with Ong Bak and Tom-Yum-Goong (which gets a nice in-joke). Uwais is the poster boy for Asian action at the moment. Adkins is a fantastic onscreen scrapper who really should be far more famous by now and Tiger Chen learned his trade under no less than Yuen Woo-ping, the Hong Kong cinema god who made Jackie Chan famous. Add to that lot an old action pro in the shape of Michael Jai White and a heavy duty MMA scrapper like Michael Bisping and you should have the ingredients for an action extravaganza. But it all falls flat and no one of them add any bit of sparkle that might inject a bit of fun into the film. White tries but it just ain't emough. The decision to have Jaa, Uwais and Chen acting in English doesn't help matters either. In their own, Thai, Indonesian and Chinese tongue they wouldn't exactly be the best actors but when stuck speaking in English they really struggle with the emoting required of them and that translates into a big dose of cringe for us viewers. 

A wasted opportunity. In the hands of someone like Gareth Evans this could have been a stunner but dull action and dull leads take all the fizz out of proceedings in big way. English director Jesse V. Johnson deserves credit though for making the jump into large scale action. His previous films were action movies too but smaller and more personal. They suited his style better. Savage Dog and The Debt Collector in particular (Both starring Scott Adkins) were a very entertaining pair. Hopefully for his next film he heads back in this direction and if he doesn't I hope his next budget stretches to a better fight choreographer. These days you just have to be distinctive to stand out.