A former prize fighter’s quest for revenge takes him deep into the mountains in Phan Anh and Ken Dinh’s martial arts adventure Foggy Mountain (Đỉnh Mù Sương). In essence, the fighter’s battle is against himself and his darkest interests as he must decide whether he’s going to pursue personal revenge or attempt to free the innocent citizens caught up in his quarry’s venal crime enterprise. In any case, Ba Rau (Kim Long Thach) represents a frightening and oppressive force that cannot be stopped unless someone chooses to take a stand.
That someone might not necessarily by Phi (Peter Pham) for he has reasons of his own to hate Ba Rau that are purely personal. Phi gave up his career as a prize fighter to spend more time with his wife, Lanh (Truc May), but was tempted back for one last bout that would supposedly carry a large payout and enable him to pay for treatment for Lanh’s eye condition. However, the match was a pretext set up by Ba Rau so that he could offer him a job. Phi definitively refuses it, telling Ba Rau he wants nothing to do with his dodgy dealings. Offended, Ba Rau has Phi beaten up and dumped in the middle of nowhere before heading to his house and killing Lanh.
An older man who lost his son in the ring during a bout with Phi warns him that hate is a poison and revenge is not an antidote so he’d best dig two graves before he goes, but Phi is adamant that he needs to avenge Lanh’s death by killing Ba Rau who is holed up on Foggy Mountain. Phi seems to have some friends there, but discovers that the village has been taken over as Ba Rau kidnapped the headman’s children and blackmailed him into letting them take root so he can facilitate his new people trafficking business. Matters come to a head for Phi when he finds some captive children but vacillates over rescuing them, firstly claiming that he has more important things to do before eventually coming back after his old friend Bang Tam asks him what happened to his martial arts spirit. Ironically, Phi had asked the same of the village headman wondering whether he can really call it “peace” after making a deal with the devil to appease Ba Rau to “protect” his villagers though the headman simply tells him he’d feel differently if he were older and is simply too young to understand the decisions he has made.
For a time, the film turns into a forest chase movie as Phi and Bang Tam attempt to guide the children back towards the village while avoiding Ba Rau’s henchmen, making use of mountain traps and encountering natural dangers such as the fast flowing river one of the kids falls into spraining her ankle. Phan Anh and Ken Dinh largely eschew narrative in favour of moving from one fight set piece to another with the consequence that there’s very little to tie them together aside from Phi’s otherwise unstoppable obsession with tracking down Ba Rau and exacting his revenge on him.
Then again, as it turns out Lanh probably didn’t want him to avenge her death anyway and may have willingly sacrificed herself in an attempt to protect him from Ba Rau and getting even more blood on his hands by killing him. To truly satisfy himself, Phi may have to remember that there is more than one kind of justice and putting a stop to Ba Rau’s ever expanding crime empire and heinous people trafficking enterprise might be a better way of getting revenge if only in teaching him a lesson that he’s not quite as untouchable as he thought he was. Even so, Phi’s self-obsessed quest for revenge rather than a desire to free those around him from Ba Rau’s influence makes him a fairly complicated hero though the film never really tries to explore the conflict in any depth while the hollowness of the narrative largely robs his quest of its power. Well choreographed action scenes otherwise help to overcome the lack of engagement and budgetary constraints even if the same cannot be said for those around them.
The Foggy Mountain is available on Digital in the US courtesy of Well Go USA
Trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 