578 Magnum (VN/2022) - Dung Luong Dinh, Alexandre Nguyen

[laagi]

Even with a charismatic lead (Bruce Lee lookalike?) , 578 ends up being downright underwhelming.

With a simple plot with occasional action scenes thrown into the mix this should've been a fairly easy approach.

Unfortunately 578 fails pretty much in every department save a few exceptions. It's actually those that can deliver at least some sort of enjoyment.

The acting for the most part here is OK. Although most of the villains end up being borderline comical. I love that they named one of them (obviously gay) "Slutty Long", for whatever reason.

Also through it's entirety I couldn't help but wonder what happened on the cutting room floor? At times 578 feels like it's missing entire chunks of the movie, not to mention everything seems loosely stitched together. Which leaves you as a viewer pretty baffled. Not that the story is very demanding but still...

Which brings me to the action scenes. They're wild and not in a good way. Changing from one camera angle or perspective to another, quick cuts, totally random slow-mow, poor choreography etc.

There's really only two sequences worth mentioning which is a first brawl taking place at the side of the road which sees Hung square off against multiple opponents with the use of his surroundings. And the other incidentally not even featuring our lead but a female supporting character (H'Hen Nie) showing up out of the blue at a shipping port to help out Hung.

Overall I felt pretty disappointed. It's by no means terrible but also not average at best. Adding insult to injury is an unforgiving runtime of 107 minutes! You could probably spend this amount of time with a far better movie. Skip or seek out the actions scenes on YouTube.

Edited January 24, 2023 by laagi