Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Leofwine_draca One of the premier action directors of the 1990s, Ringo Lam was a man well-known for his intense, blistering thrillers – and FULL CONTACT is a film that helped establish his reputation. It's a taut thriller that delivers an engaging plot packed with twists and turns, and of course the high velocity shoot-outs that Hong Kong gangster movies are famed for. Rather than delivering John Woo-style imitation stand-offs and mass gun battles, Lam is a director who always focuses on the intimacy of action – the small scale violence delivered to its participants. As such, FULL CONTACT is a very violent film and indeed it is a film all about violence.Things kick off in high gear as we join a jewellery store robbery. Chief robber Simon Yam soon turns out to be a thoroughly nasty piece of work, stabbing an innocent victim through the heart. He's flamboyantly gay, too. Then we join a second story strand involving Chow Yun Fat as a low-rent criminal who we meet standing up for his buddy Anthony Wong, in a role that encompasses both good and bad this time around. Chow Yun Fat kicks backside with a butterfly knife in scenes that were initially censored in the British release before becoming embroiled with Simon Yam and his cronies in an attempt to hold up a truck carrying a ton of gold.Double crosses, back stabbing, and mucho bad taste ensue. This is a film where the majority of the cast are sleazy, stupid or just plain evil. There's moronic muscle man called Psycho, a hooker who spends half the film engaged in sexual situations, and even the hero's girlfriend is a stripper in a sleazy club. Chow Yun Fat himself is clearly a bad guy, and yet he's the one we're rooting for, the one man with morals in a world seemingly devoid of humanity.There's not quite as much action as I'd anticipated, but when it comes the violence is very, very well handled and completely stylish. The nightclub shoot-out uses 'bullet time' slow motion to great effect years before THE MATRIX came out – who said Hollywood was original? Lam is at home detailing hold-ups, shoot-outs, executions, and pyrotechnic effects, and of course it all climaxes with a final bout between hero and villain. I won't spoil it, other than to say it doesn't disappoint. While I wouldn't call this a genre classic in the same league as something like HARD-BOILED, but it is a highly entertaining film. I look forward to watching it again some day to see how it holds up.

Comeuppance Reviews Jeff (Yun-Fat) is a bouncer at a nightclub and one of the coolest dudes ever. He and his friend Sam (Wong) get mixed up with a gang of three unhinged criminals: the flamboyant and amoral Judge (Yam), his mohawked meathead sidekick Dino (Frankie Chan) and Virgin (Fu), the overheated female member of the group. While Jeff is after the money a potential heist might bring so he can help Sam with his gambling debts, not to mention to improve his own life and the life of his girlfriend Mona (Bridgewater), things naturally get out of hand and Judge gets very close to killing Jeff, but Jeff narrowly escapes. Jeff then spends his time in Thailand training to get back into fighting shape so he can take on Judge and his buddies once and for all. And the final showdown will be an epic one for the ages. So get ready because this is going to be some FULL CONTACT revenge! In our estimation, Full Contact is among the finest action product - or any product - produced in the fertile 90's in Hong Kong. It's a crown jewel of the genre, a shining example of what action could be and should be. It's just an awesome movie, directed with energy and verve to spare, that's gigantically entertaining and holds up to multiple viewings easily. From the opening guitar lick forward, you know you're in for something special.Chow Yun-Fat has never been better. As Jeff, the seemingly indestructible bouncer who coasts along on his motorcycle while wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigarette while shooting baddies with two guns, he defines the word "cool". This is the role he should be known for. Every great action movie needs a super-evil baddie, and Simon Yam as Judge is perfect. He's deceptively fey one minute, and deadly the next. His charisma is of a completely different sort than Jeff's, and the contrast is noticeable and they make perfect rivals.Adding to the excellence of this movie are the time-honored training sequences and disco scenes. The song used, "The World Has Gone Insane", by Alan Tam, perfectly captures the spirit of not just the movie but the time in which it was produced. As do the songs by Extreme. Full Contact is also Ringo Lam at his best. He fashioned a powerful, intense and fast-paced ride of a movie that's directed slickly and confidently. It's filled with the violence and stunts we've come to know and love, but somehow this movie is on a higher level than most. There's even subtle themes to look out for, such as Jeff getting shot in the middle of his hands and bleeding, possibly a reference to the stigmata of Jesus? Regardless, Full Contact delivers the goods in spades and at this point in time is in a "much imitated, never equaled" sort of situation.

winner55 I saw this film originally on the Tai Seng VHS tape and believed I was seeing the original. The recent MEI AH re-release video reveals an additional 4 minutes Tai Seng trimmed, and they are pretty strong; it's amazing what a couple of minutes will do for a film.This is as nasty a crime film as you will ever see. Ringo Lam goes straight for the throat of a contemporary Asia crumbling into a gaudy, violent nihilism. The moral center is held to be a thin hope that maybe the right thing can be done for an innocent girl wounded unnecessarily during a gang fight. Everything else is blood, perversion, and flashy neon.Sounds like a good reason not to see the film? Not so. This is one of the least exploitative exploitation flicks around - the film doesn't suggest that anyone in it is having fun, even the psychos laughing as buildings blow up, with people in them. In a world where everything is meaningless and anything goes, finding meaning becomes the only reason to live and the only real accomplishment.Cinematically, this is Ringo Lam in top form, developing a style that is often as flashy and hollow as the culture it portrays, but through which moments of intense realism burst forth, reminding us of the real pain such violence entails. Many films (East and West) have since imitated this style, but without Ringo Lam's sense of moral critique, it can easily become just so much flash and glitter, of the kind Lam is actually criticizing here.Finally, one must remark the excellent performances by all the actors involved.A very disturbing, but very excellent - and in an important sense, a very necessary - film.

rdoyle29 Another entry into the "cheer for the most likeable bad guy" series of Hong Kong action flicks. "Full Contact" tells the oft-told tale of betrayal and revenge, served up as a potent cocktail of Western convention mixed with the trademarked Hong Kong style. When Jeff's (Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun Fat in true hard-case form) friend Sam (Anthony Wong) steps on the feet of a local loan shark, Jeff comes to his rescue, creating a powerful enemy in the vengeful gangster. Seeking to skip town and make good, the two hatch a plan to hijack an arms shipment with the help of Sam's flamboyant and malicious cousin Judge (a delightfully sleazy Simon Yam) and his gang of dysfunctional thugs. What Jeff doesn't know is that he's being double-crossed by the wild group of brutal killers, who plan to bury him as they make their getaway. Judge forces Sam to off his loyal friend Jeff, but Sam botches the job, leaving Jeff to return for bitter revenge after dealing with an emotionally painful betrayal and a physically challenging rehabilitation. Lam foregoes the melodrama of Hong Kong counterpart John Woo and goes straight for the jugular with unremittingly stark and graphic violence. At the same time, the characters retain a certain amount of sympathy. Frequently outrageous and over the top, "Full Contact" is nonetheless a well made film suffering from a fairly weak script. Though comparisons to Woo are inevitable, especially because of Chow Yun-Fat in the lead role, Lam is a different kind of director and, accordingly, "Full Contact" is a different sort of beast. Although it opens with a robbery that rapidly turns into a shoot-'em-up, there's none of the balletic, elegant violence that characterizes Woo and his imitators. When the camera lingers over the carnage, it's not a lovingly choreographed sweep. Unlike in Chow's films for Woo, for which he is best known in the West, there's little that's noble about Chow's character in this one. He's heroic only by comparison to the psychotic gangsters he takes down one by one. Fortunately, Chow is up to the challenge of portraying a character of questionable morals in an honorable light, and Anthony Wong and Ann Bridgewater, respectively playing his best friend and wife, are equally top-notch. Lam's direction is excellent as well. His fine control of the action and pacing keeps the film from peaking too soon, and even a bullet's-eye view during a climactic shoot-out in a nightclub works in the movie's favor. The level of violence makes most of what Hollywood produces tame by comparison.