Flash Point is a 2007 Martial Arts Movie directed by Wilson Yip and starring Donnie Yen. This is the second collaboration between Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen after Sha Po Lang.
Hong Kong, 1997. A rather violence-crazy police inspector named Ma (Donnie Yen) pursues the arrest of a fraternal trio of Hong Kong gangsters led by the ruthless Tony (Collin Chou), counting on his beleaguered police partner and current mole Wilson (Louis Koo). The three brothers fail to murder a fellow gang boss, which culminates in one of them in jail, but Wilson's cover is blown and he is blackmailed not to testify against them under the threat of killing his pregnant girlfriend. When the other witnesses are killed and Wilson is captured while trying to find her, it is up to Ma to free them and bring down the gangsters for good.
The film was a box office hit and won the Best Action Choreography awards at the 27th Hong Kong Film Awards and 2008 Golden Horse Film Awards thanks to Yen's fight choreography, which included Mixed Martial Arts and quite a few other styles in the mix.
Not to be confused with the 1984 American film, the 1999 DC Comics series, the 2008 Canadian TV series, or with the 2011 DC Comics event.
Flash Point provides the following tropes:
- Action Hero: Ma is a spectacularly militant and violent example of a cop.
- Anti-Hero: From the start, Ma makes clear that he is in the police to kick asses of bad people and not so much to serve and protect. Although in his opinion, one thing leads to the other.
- Arrested for Heroism: How Ma sees his reprimand from the police officers at the beginning of the film. In his own words, all the time he has been there would have been better employed for beating up evildoers.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Ma catches Tony in a heel hook and visibly torques his leg, with its appropriate crunching noise and howl of pain to reassure the viewer, yet Tony ultimately kicks him away and gets up immediately without lasting effects, only limping and grimacing for a second. In real life, unless Tony was insanely flexible (which we can discard judging by the above) the torsion and the effects shown onscreen would have destroyed at least his talocrural ligament, potentially breaking the joint and affecting his knee in the process, and rendered him unable to walk.
- Ax-Crazy: Tony becomes one after getting his brothers killed, but unfortunately for him, Ma himself is not much less of another.
- Big Bad: Tony is the ultimate antagonist of the movie.
- Blood Knight: Ma really loves to fight.
- Blood Upgrade: Ma noticeably starts turning things around once Tony gives him a nosebleed. From that point on, Tony can barely even touch him.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Tony's spinning kicks are somehow strong enough to break concrete columns nonchalantly, though it comes admittedly to no surprise when you how unnaturally resilient he is in general.
- Death Glare: Ma has one almost by default.
- Establishing Character Moment: At the very beginning of the film, Ma gets known by rushing into a combat sports gym and tackling somebody to the ground.
- Extreme Melee Revenge: One of the gangsters takes a young girl hostage to stave off Ma, then throws her aside hard enough that she has Blood from the Mouth upon hitting the ground as he flees. Once Ma runs him down, what follows can only very generously be called a "fight", and ends with an extended take of the camera just barely covering the gangster's fallen form as Ma just Keeps. On. Punching.
- Good Is Not Soft: Our friend Ma could be a contender for the king of the trope. If you are a delinquent, you will suffer.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: A stylistic variation, played straight but averted at the end. During the final duel, the sheer variety of Ma's hand-to-hand moveset is astonishing, including but not limited to kung fu, Western boxing, Judo, Taekwondo, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts, but Tony uses just classic kung fu, and yet he proves to be quite of a match, to the extent Ma still has to to spend every drop of sweat in his body and pull out every trick up his sleeve to beat him.
- Heroes Fight Barehanded: Justified, as the characters only resort to hand-to-hand when guns are dropped.
- Hot-Blooded: Ma is impulsive, energetic and loves fighting, perhaps a bit too much.
- I Know Karate: Averted, as nobody talks about martial arts or similar things in the entire film despite its incredibly high content on them. Amusingly enough, Ma seems to know so many different martial arts that it would take an ungodly time for him for list them all.
- Invulnerable Knuckles: Mostly averted, as Ma's knuckles are shown bleeding and swollen after beating the baddie to death, but still present, as after the kind of beatdown Ma gives the baddie, a man with bare, non-compressed fists would have very probably broken one or two bones.
- Le Parkour: Ma shows some while chasing a mook.
- Made of Iron: The punishment both Ma and Tony take during their final duel is massive, yet they actually never sell it enough aside from some grimacing and blood spits. Ma gets powerbombed full force against a concrete floor and later onto his neck against a steel rail, while Tony takes a free fall from a first floor, an ippon seoi nage onto a concrete ground and a German suplex against some cinder blocks, yet they not only survive to all of this, but barely slow down at all. By the end of the match, they have taken tons of head strikes and haymakers without even looking groggy, and the fight only ends when one uses a technique the other cannot simply soldier through.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Tony ends at the receiving end of a heel hook and does scream in pain when his leg is damaged, but the injury itself just makes him limp a bit and ditch his spinning kicks afterwards, when in real life it would be a crippling injury, possibly forever; even with the adrenaline high he should be screaming and tending his broken leg.
- The Mole: Wilson in the brothers's band.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Oh boy. Ma loves to dispense some of those, and actually kills a guy by intensive ground and pound.
- Lightning Bruiser: Aside from being a martial arts Hercules, it turns out Ma is also an impressive runner with parkour knowledge.
- Rated M for Manly
- Sibling Team: Archer, Tony and Tiger.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: There are not enough punches for you if you have got Ma angry on you.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: He does in the final scene. It's just that he ran out of bullets.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Though not as overtly as other martial arts moves, Ma performs hurricanranas and suplexes on Tony.
- Would Hurt a Child: After being cornered by Ma into a market, Tiger took little girl hostage and threatened to slam her head first to the ground if Ma won’t drop his gun. When Ma obliges, Tiger throws the little girl with enough force that she has blood coming out of her mouth and is possibly concussed. This costs Tiger his life, courtesy of Ma.