[KFCC] A War Named Desire Review

Story: Chun packs his bags and gets ready to go to Thailand; he is planing to track down his brother so that he can collect the money that he stole from the family. Chun's girlfriend decides to join him, once in Thailand they find one of the men that work for his brother, after a chain of strange event Chun finally meets his brother who is an important man in the Thailandese Triad. His brother gives him the money and tells him to get the hell out of Thailand. At the bus stop Chun changes his mind he puts his girlfriend on the bus and decides to stay behind in Thailand.

Review: A war named desire is an action drama; two brothers who are divided by time and mistrust are reunited in the underground criminal world of Thailand. The movie deals with the criminal world but it is not really in the triad genre. This movie has some stunning visuals and locations, the last 30 minutes are pretty incredible in the visual sense. The story is well developed and will keep you continuously wrapped up in what is going on.

The movie is focused on a couple of well-developed characters, at first you will have no clue why they do the things they do but during the movie you come to understand the characters more deeply. You could say each of the main characters have their own story and they have 76 hours to come to terms with their situation. The characters are pretty cool but it would have been nice to get more of a background on each of them. The acting was also very good as the characters were all convincing in their roles.

This movie had some incredibly good-looking action scenes, dramatic gunfights that were not hollow but filled with real emotion. The movie is not incredibly action packed, the story is respected and there are no false pretexts just for of some action, the action only really picks up by the middle of the movie. As mentioned the action scenes are very interesting to watch, they are well choreographed and used some really great camera shots. Especially when the scenery and visuals puts that extra emphasis on the emotion in the scene. But the true winner in this movie is the flow of the story and the action just fits into that.

The subtitles were very good on the DVD, there was quite a bit of dialog but it was mostly easy to follow. A War Named Desire is a refreshing new movie from Hong Kong, this is a stylish and well-made product. This is a powerful movie with a lot of strong emotion and with powerful story and well thought out characters makes this movie a must see. We recommend this those that like HK action but this movie pretty much hold international appeal.