[KFCC] Born to be King Review

Story: Chicken get married with the daughter of the boss of the Yamada gang, a powerful Japanese Yakusa group. The marriage is in the hope of bringing a closer relation between the Hung Hing Triad, the Taiwanese San Luen and the Japanese Yamada crime groups. All seems to go well after the wedding and relations between the groups are closer than ever but trouble start brewing in Taiwan shortly after. The Taiwanese Triad has been without a leader for a while, chicken returns to Taiwan to represent his faction in the debate for San Luen leadership. Things become quickly ugly as several people are arguing over leadership and Chicken is pushed into the fight for leadership. Some people end up dead in the coming days and Chicken is suspected and must go into hiding. Brother Nam comes with the Hung Hing triad from Hong Kong to help Chicken get out of his bad situation.

Review: Born to be King is the latest installment in the Young and Dangerous series, this is the 6th movie not including the 2 prequels. After so many movies, is there anything new that can be shown? With the 4th and 5th movies in the series the story starting loosing its color and originality, this movie was supposed to be the revival of the serie. Some people were disappointed because of the expectations over the movie but others have found this one to be quite enjoyable. This movie was fresh and full of life compared to YnD 5, also you had a lot of new characters and settings. The story has some similar elements to the previous YnD stories but there is enough new material to make it feel new. As usual you can expect the story to be generally simple but filled with a couple of interesting twists.

There are quite a lot of new characters in the series this time, as for the surviving members of the old cast. One of the strongest point in this movie and the series are the characters, after watching so many movies in a series you really get to know the characters. The movies are the stories of these characters, you watch them grow and evolve and sadly some of them die along the way. Its these characters that are the life of the series, as for the new characters that are thrown in this latest movie, well they seem to fit in like clock work. The Japanese Yakuza group is great, specially Sonny Chiba as their leader, and the detailed expansion of the Taiwanese triad is also great. There is one terrible thing to mentioned about the actors, and this has been occurring several times in the series. The actors that play characters who have died are sometimes recycled into new characters, yes we are serious, one of the villains in this movie died in YnD 4 and 5, is back playing another major role and little was done to alter his look. Of course there were some other actors from the early YnD's that were back as well reincarnated into different characters. It does not ruin the movie or anything but it is a stupid thing that we feel should be mentioned.

The Young and Dangerous series never stuck out as action packed, the movies always focused more on the drama of Triad life rather than the action and fighting. Pointless violence will take you only so far but a great story and some really incredible characters will give you the longevity to the movie. You have some fights in the movie but very little. It is really only added when it will give that extra dramatic edge. The success to this movies entertainment factor is really the chemistry between actors and the continuing story. This movie is in a way like an episode in the soap opera, there is no beginning and there is no end. There will always be someone waiting for the next episode in the series.

The subtitles are great on the DVD version, their dialog is easy to follow as well. Born to be King is said to be the departure from the Young and Dangerous series into a whole new chapter. The characters are all grown up now and hold serious positions, they are all bosses of various sections of the Triads. I guess its safe to say that this can indeed be the beginning of a new chapter. There is one thing we would like to mention about the general series, the depiction of the Triad life in these movies is pretty glorified. These criminals are actually the heroes and the true darkness of a life of crime is never portrayed. This series is more of a drama about the lives of these characters and not something that dwells really deep into the criminal world. That note has no real relevance to this review but we thought it would nice to mention for those who are more interested in darker types of triad movies. We strongly suggest this movie to those already following the YnD series, we are not sure how easy it is to follow the movie without having seen the previous movies.