Brilliant and touching

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

13 STYLE STRIKE is an eventful little kung fu film shot in Taiwan. It opens with a girl beating up a bunch of goons including a guy who looks like Kim Jong-un before moving into a totally different story about a martial arts school run by Chen Sing, the film's only recognisable face. In something of a shock to this viewer, Sing isn't a bad guy this time around, and even though he doesn't have a whole lot of screen time it's still nice to see him as something other than the stock villain.The story about the intervention of an evil crime boss and his Western allies seems to have been inspired by the likes of THE GODFATHER with a little ROCKY-style ring action at the climax thrown into the mix. There's plentiful action, some of it routine, some of it staged in an interesting way, like a battle on a building site full of scaffolding. The hero is a beefy bloke without much charisma. The bits where he fights Western actors are fun. The whole film has a slapdash feel overall, but isn't too bad considering genre standards.