I went into “Badge Of Fury” (also known as “Badges Of Fury” for some reason) expecting an action-packed cop movie but what I got was a silly slapstick mess. Jet Li (“Fist Of Legend”, “The Forbidden Kingdom”) has been used extensively in the marketing for this movie but he’s not even the star. In fact, the whole film has had misleading marketing (at least in the Western world).
In this film, a young detective by the name of Wang (Zhang Wen “Love Is Not Blind”) and his colleagues have to try and solve a mysterious murder case where the victims have died with smiles on their faces. They will need all of their whacky martial arts and detective skills to find the culprit.
Unfortunately, Jet Li is not the star. He does fight in the movie but the action sequences are abysmal. The man is a skilled martial artist but you would not know that from this movie. Here, all of his moves are masked by cheap C.G.I. and bad choreography. It reminded me of the dreadful movie “The One”, which also managed to hide Li’s abilities. The other characters are all pretty boring and pretty much everybody has cheesy lines that just aren’t funny.
“Badge Of Fury” has fight sequences that are like a low-budget version of “The Matrix”. People fly around all over the place in this film in some of the most unrealistic and unimpressive action scenes I’ve ever seen. Seriously, “Looney Tunes” follows the laws of physics closer than this film. The comedy is just pathetic with almost all the jokes failing to hit the mark. The only part I really did find funny was the scene where they mention the “Police Story” movies with Jackie Chan. I wish I was watching one of those films instead of “Badge Of Fury”.