Released: September 2018
Director: Vincent Soberano
Run Time: 100 Minutes
Not Rated
Distributor: SP Releasing, LLC.
Genre: Action/Thriller
Cast:
Ian Ignacio: Jacob Casa
Rhian Ramos: Annie Casa
Sarah Chang: Mei Li
Monsour Del Rosario: Mike Vasquez
Vincent Soberano: Tony Pascual
Gus Liem: Henry Tan
Enter The Dragon, starring Bruce Lee, set the standard for martial arts action movies back in 1973. It was the first movie of its kind to feature a collaboration between a major Hollywood studio and a Hong Kong studio. Effectively, it was East Meets West. While it was the last fully complete film that Bruce Lee starred in, the effects and the influence of the film have been felt for decades. It inspired not just a new generation of martial arts films, but it also inspired people to take up the martial arts themselves. Bruce Lee and Enter The Dragon made martial arts awesome. You can see the influence that the movie has had on movies like Bloodsport, Kickboxer, and the Undisputed sequels. It wasn’t just movies that felt that kind of impact. Video games got in on the action as well with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. To this day, Enter The Dragon remains the undisputed king of martial arts movies, at least from my perspective. So, whenever I see a movie that features a martial arts tournament of sorts, it brings a smile to my face, if it’s done well. If it’s not….well….you know what happens next. That brings me to today’s review: Fight For Justice: The Trigonal.
The Trigonal follows Jacob Casa as he attempts to retire from being a world-famous MMA fighter when he learns that his wife, Annie, is pregnant. At their dojo, they’re visited by a couple of goons who offer him an invitation to a martial arts tournament called The Trigonal, which is fronted by Henry Tan, a drug-lord experimenting with new types of drugs to give his fighters an edge. When Jacob refuses, the goons murder his best friend and brutally assault his wife, putting her in the hospital. Swearing revenge on Henry Tan and his goons, Jacob teams up with the police to put an end to Tan’s plans. Welcome to cliche plot #565: Man refusing to participate in a tournament is forced to participate when his family is attacked. How many times have we seen this story play out over the last 40 or so years? I’ve lost count. To be honest, it’s not the worst kind of story-line in the world. The problem is that it is incredibly by-the-numbers without attempting something new. It plays out exactly the way you think it does, which leaves little to no tension in the proceedings. It’s really hard to get invested in a story when you can predict exactly what happens next. I’m not saying a movie like this needs to be original to be good, I’m just saying you have to do more than just rely on an old formula. Throw a few more things in there to spice it up, at least.
Let’s talk about the acting here. For the most part, the acting here is incredibly underwhelming. Villains first. Oh, god. If they’re over-reaching, they’re reading from cards, I swear. Now, I understand that this film employs a decent number of martial artists. There are exceptions, but martial artists generally don’t make good actors unless they’re doing something really physical. Aside from that, line delivery is flat and uninteresting with dialogue that’s high-school level. The guy who plays Henry Tan, the main villain, has the flattest line delivery of anybody I’ve seen in years. His character doesn’t come across as threatening at all. He’s just a one-note greedy villain. Even the worst James Bond villain has more personality. All the other bad guys are just cartoons of the worst variety. The good guys fare a little better. Ian Ignacio plays Jacob, and he’s not awful, it’s just that there’s not a whole lot of charisma there, but I think that’s a problem with the writing and directing. Rhian Ramos plays his wife, and she’s not half-bad, although her character is just set up to be a victim. The real standout of the film here is Sarah Chang as Mei Li. She’s clearly having fun with this, and whenever she’s on screen, the movie comes to life. She’s incredibly charming and has this wonderfully goofy personality that’s infectious. I love it. So, the performances are mostly just…meh.
One of the most important aspects of a martial arts film is the staging and choreography of the fights. Sarah Chang, who plays Mei Li, is also a very gifted martial artist herself. The Trigonal was her first film as an action choreographer. There are moments in the film that you can definitely see that she has some talent in staging fights. There are some fights that are pretty decent. One of the other things that’s important for a movie like this, is being able to see what’s going on. As gifted as Ms. Chang could be as a fight director, she’s let down by some seriously bad cinematography and camera-work. When you have actors that are martial artists, you want the audience to be able to see what they can do. The camera-work is far too close for comfort, and because of that we don’t really get to see the full extent of Sarah’s work. The fights are far too chaotic, and the amount of slow-motion employed borders on irritating. Ian Ignacio handles himself pretty well as does Sarah Chang and everyone else, but it’s just incredibly baffling why the director would want fight scenes filmed this way. I don’t like it and it does everybody involved a major disservice. Not only that, some of the fight scenes feel….insincere. Now, I understand that you don’t to injure your fellow actors, but the fights in this movie have this feeling like their punches are being pulled when they don’t need to be. You don’t really feel the impact of these fights like you should. The best fight scenes have the audience kind of cringing and wincing at how hard the characters are getting hit. That’s real delivery and sometimes the actors do get hit. It’s the nature of the beast. The Trigonal feels far too safe to be taken seriously as a fight movie, I’m sorry.
I don’t like coming down hard on movies. I really don’t. There’s enough negativity in the world, but I have to call it how I see it. Fight For Justice: The Trigonal is not a good movie. In fact, it might be one of the worst fight movies I’ve seen in the last 5 years. I’m not trying to insult the actors and the other people involved in this film, but for me, The Trigonal is a failure on nearly every level with the exception of folks like Ian Ignacio and Sarah Chang. I want to see more from these two, and I know they are capable of doing much better than this. When I saw Buybust a couple years back, it showed me what the folks in the Philippines can do with an action movie, but so far I haven’t seen anything since then that’s remotely close to that level.
My Final Recommendation: 4/10. Skip it.