Ray Donovan (the movie) and Fistful of Vengeance

Two movies that cap off their series?

Ray Donovan (the movie)

Basically a movie length episode which ties up the story of titular character, the "fixer" Ray Donovan (Liev Shrieber) and takes place immediately after season 7. It contains a surprising amount of flash backs, but this is fine in that it is both important to the story as it echoes current events AND explains more about the dynamic between Ray and his father Mickey (Jon Voight). It's also nice to get to see most of the other cast members one more time, but ultimately that is what will temper any recommendation from me. This movie is definitely only for people who have watched all of Ray Donovan the series, otherwise it's probably best you steer clear.

Fistful of Vengeance

If only the enemies were better with guns...

Unlike the above, Fistful of Vengeance doesn't need you to know anything about its little supernatural / martial arts series called Wu Assassins. It's not even in the title! Instead a quick intro catches people up and we get to see Wu Assassin Kai (Iko Uwais) and company wreak vengeance against... demigods and their minions or something? Story was never going to be the strong point here, but this is actually worse than what was in the series. Also worse is the actual fight scenes which is a bummer. I don't mind the wire work, but having pumped up techno music to seemingly slow combat only highlights the slowness? Again better in the series, which leaves me to say don't bother watching this one unless you really liked Wu Assassins.

Savage Dog

No one likes to play fair.

Somewhere in Indochina during a period where the most wanted and evil men could retain power, a group of them happens to piss off the wrong kick ass guy (Scott Adkins).

To be fair, the movie actually tried to make them seem ok for a while there - almost making me believe they were not going to go down a predictable path but alas, nope.

It's like a rematch for Boyka!

It's a standard revenge fair with a lot of martial arts which are obviously the highlight, especially with Cung Le and Marko Zaror. I'm a little sad Juju Chan doesn't bust out any moves in a role which makes her almost unrecognizable from Wu Assassins.

Anyway, if you are a fan of martial arts or of the guys above then you might enjoy this. For everyone else, there's very little content that for some reason is fully narrated, very silly gun play and is on the cheaper side of production.

I give it 1.5 out of 5 and would probably only watch the fights with Cung Le or Marko again.

Wu Assassins

Surprise! You are now the chosen one!

One day a regular chef (Iko Uwais) randomly bumps into his destiny - granting him supernatural abilities (one of which is to make himself look like Mark Dacascos) and a quest to defeat all the elemental users known as Wu. As if dealing with the triad wasn't bad enough!

Some really good martial arts skills on display in this show.

While the triad / personal parts of this tale are passable, the whole concept of the Wu part and what they are trying to do is really flaky which they try to make up for by having some nice martial arts fight scenes. I'm almost inclined to say that it might have been better without the supernatural bit.

Anyway, this is squarely aimed at die hard martial arts (or Iko Uwais) fans - everyone else should probably just stay away. I give it 1.5 turtle shells out of 5.