FOGGY MOUNTAIN – Review

Regular readers will know I’ve praised a slew of East Asian martial arts and action flicks in the past few years. South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand, among others have followed the path of the prolific Hong Kong studios, often providing splashier fight and stunt sequences, whether the setting is historical or contemporary. Revenge is the most common classic driver of these plots, so when I saw this arrival from Vietnam, I was hoping for more of the same from FOGGY MOUNTAIN (originally DIN MU SUONG). That’s not what I got, but it’s not all bad news.

Phi (Peter Pham) is a superb MMA fighter, reluctantly competing in underground matches to raise money, hoping to afford a cure for his wife’s blindness. Ba Rau (Kim Long Thach) is the local crime boss who tries to force him to keep fighting as one of his own guys. Phi refuses. Ba Rau and his thugs go to Phi’s home, and find his wife there alone. When Phi arrives, she’s hanging from the ceiling. That starts the revenge journey.

Ba Rau moved his operation from the city to the eponymous rural community. He’s also shifted from staging fights to abducting and trafficking children, intimidating the local leaders to comply, rather than suffer a bloodbath. Phi tracks them down and starts saving captured kids, eliminating any henchmen in his path. That places most of the action in woods and landscapes much lovelier than the rundown dwellings and despicable actions taking place there. The toughest of the enforcers is Vong Akork (Simon Kook), who looks like what Thai superstar Tony Jaa would if he bulked up on steroids, stopping about 2/3 of the way to the legendary Bolo Yeung’s muscle mass.

Everyone already knows most of where the story must take the players, so the measure of quality lies in how they get there. Phi spends a lot of time leading the rescued kids’ escape through the woods and mountains while being pursued by a legion of machete-wielding goons. A few of those minions also have guns to stack the odds even more heavily against our protagonists. On the plus side, there are a couple of surprises in the screenplay, and what they show of the fights is properly gritty and human-scale without wire work or other gimmicks. Kim Long Thach milks his smug, vicious villain role for all it’s worth, especially with an over-the-top evil laugh at the damage he inflicts at will. Pham, a real martial artist as well as actor, follows the tradition of humble heroes pushed too far by the baddies and looks perfectly credible in combat.

The downside is that we’re short-changed on the accustomed dosage of violent stuff. Several fights are cut short, leaving out the (usually gratifying) endings we seek. At only 86 minutes, the two directors (Phan Ahn, Ken Din) might have trimmed some of the gore for international distribution, making this version shorter and more tamely rate-able than many others. I’d be interested in seeing a director’s cut if one is ever released to confirm the existence of action footage we missed.

It’s still a reasonably worthy diversion, but gear down your expectations for adrenaline rushes, since this is quieter and less bloody than many of its competitors.

FOGGY MOUNTAIN, in Vietnamese with English subtitles, debuts streaming exclusively on Hi-YAH! and in digital format from Well Go USA and other platforms, on Tuesday, Feb. 6.

RATING: 2 out of 4 stars