Fistful of Vengeance Review – Ball of Mess

When you look at the 2022 movie ‘Fistful of Vengeance’, it’s confusing as hell to understand if the makers had a decent budget or not. The sets/locations are pretty great, the VFX is decent enough… but some of the casting is just bad. And the plot is… well… it’s all over the place.

Directed by Roel Reine, the film is a follow-up of the Netflix series ‘Wu Assassins’, which seems to have a decent rating, but for those of us who haven’t seen the show, ‘Fistful of Vengeance’ makes little sense. The primary villains don’t look intimidating at all, and the protagonists have a hard time keeping their roles interesting. The action sequences bear a lot of resemblances to old Jackie Chan movies, which isn’t bad, but things get repetitive and boring.

Since the story takes place in Thailand, there’s that racist yellow tint over a lot of scenes, typically used to represent poorer nations. Or maybe that’s just me reading too much into stuff happening at sunset time? But considering the amount of Thai series I watch, the cinematography definitely fails to do justice to the tourist nation in its wide-angle and bird’s eye view shots.

Despite being only 90 minutes long, viewers will soon find their interest wavering. Some of the romantic sub-plots are completely unnecessary and do nothing to move the story forward. I tried watching it over two days and gave up after the first half. So maybe you’d want to skip it if you haven’t seen ‘We Assassins’ either.