Wally World

Here's another Well Go special: Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024). We saw the preview in front of another movie, and it looked fine, so I gave it a spin (you probably guessed that Ms. Spenser worked through it).

It stars Raymond Lam, a poor refugee from the mainland in 1980s Hong Kong. He has a fight in an underground fight club to earn money for an ID card. When he wins, he goes to triad boss Sammo Hung. Hunng invites him to join the triad, but he just wants the money. When Hung cons him, he grabs a duffel bag from Hung's HQ and takes off, goons in pursuit. He ducks into the Kowloon Walled City, outside Hung's jurisdiction. 

The Walled City was a real place - a square block where police wouldn't go, or building inspectors, or pretty much anyone who isn't crooked. It's claustrophobic and crazy, with walls, floors and roofs built and demolished any which way. But Lam finds the people there are kind, willing to give him a meal and a job. He also finds that the duffel bag is just drugs, not money like he'd hoped. 

He meets the informal ruler of the Walled City, Louis Koo. He's a barber, a martial arts master, a criminal and a benevolent dictator. When he fights Lam, he knocks him to the floor, kicks him into the air around head height, then socks him across the room. 

Here's the odd thing about the movie. Parts are modern one-man-army fights, sort of like John Wick. Some are over the top comic style wirework fights. One character has spirit powers, so his skin can't be pierces. Then there's a scene where a pimp beats his drug addicted woman, and is later beaten by the rest of the gang for beating a woman. And that second part is played for laughs. 

The movie definitely has some great fights, in several different levels of realism. It also has a lot of well-known faces (although Sammo Hung is the only one I could have named). But the real star of the show is the setting, the chaotic, dystopian, but somehow cozy Kowloon Walled City. It reminded me of the best parts of the 2012 Total Recall - a very, very lived-in universal city.