Underground fighter Phi (Peter Phạm, The Crawler, Red Cargo) has decided to call it quits to live a more peaceful life at his beachside home with his wife Lanh (Trúc Mây, The Vampire, Thick Blood), but is lured into one final match by the promise of a big payday that would allow him to pay for the surgery needed to fix his wife’s eyesight. When Phi wins the match, this upsets powerful crime lord Ba Rau (Thạch Kim Long, Furie), who lost a lot of money betting against him. And Ba Rau takes out his anger on Phi’s wife. Phi is desperate to get revenge, and learns that Ba Rau’s main hideout is a place called Foggy Mountain, in Vietnam. However, when he arrives at nearby Foggy Village, Phi discovers that Ba Rau has been running a human trafficking operation there, terrorizing the locals for years.
Village master Vang Pa (Phạm Huy Thục) refuses to accept Ba Rau’s offers of partnership, and so the threats against the villagers increase, and more women and children go missing. A local teacher, Bang Tang (Le Thao), is a former student of Phi’s, and knows how to fight, but she is no match for Ba Rau’s army of men—especially axe-wielding head henchman Voong Akor (Simon Kook, Ip Man 3, The Great Escape). She looks to Phi to help the village and save the abducted villagers, but he seems more focused on finding Ba Rau and getting revenge for his wife. Can Phi put aside his own quest for death and vengeance to help save lives instead?
Foggy Mountain is a pretty classic story about a man out for revenge, who gets sidetracked along the way, reluctantly agreeing to help those in a small village who are being terrorized by a local crime lord. At a high level, the film sort of reminded me of The Blind Swordsman. We have this skilled fighter who’s on a mission to find someone at the top of a mountain, but decides to assist people in trouble. Even though Ba Rau’s soldiers are armed with machetes, knives, arrows and guns, they are no match for Phi, who’s a master with his hands and feet. He can spin through the air and disarm his foes with a flying kick, or rapidly punch them in their core like a speed bag. This leads to some exciting martial arts face-offs in the middle of the jungle as Phi and his former student Bang Tang free some kidnapped women and children, and try to lead back to the village, along with the help of a ragtag group of villagers who don’t really have any fighting experience. However, pursuing them is head henchman Voong Akor, who makes a worthy opponent. He tends to stand back and allow the other soldiers to weaken the enemy before he steps in to finish things off. He’s been ordered by Ba Rau to bring Phi back alive—though he would be more than happy to finish him off.
The film has some beautiful scenery, and well-choreographed fight sequences, but some of the story feels a bit rushed and skipped over at times. For example, when the group is making their way through the jungle and see the soldiers approaching from afar, Phi heads off in another direction to “slow them down”. In the very next scene, one of the soldiers gets caught in a rope trap—it’s not immediately clear what even happened as no time had passed, and we never even saw Phi spend time setting this up, or watching/tracking the soldiers. There are a few other situations like this where the film quickly cuts to a scene without really explaining how the characters got there or that there was any passage of time. The movie is only 86 minutes, so there definitely could have been some more bridging scenes added. Granted, in some cases, this is used well for comedic effect, such as in a scene where one person is tied up and another goes to save them, when we hear a thud and all of a sudden we see the two of them are now tied up next to one another.
Well Go USA has released Foggy Mountain on digital format, but no physical release has been announced at this time. Normally in my reviews, I would comment on the audio and video presentation of the release, but I watched this film via a watermarked screener, and I’m not sure how it compares to the final quality of the consumer product. The film is presented in its original Vietnamese language, with English subtitles. Some of the locations are displayed on the screen in both languages. I did have an issue with some of the dialogue, which can be needlessly complex at times. Several of the characters are rather wordy and like to speak in metaphors. Some of these are very cliched, such as an old man telling Phi he should dig his grave if he’s looking for vengeance, and that hatred is like a poison and revenge is not the antidote. This, combined with the fact that some of the subtitles are written in broken English, makes the dialogue slightly difficult to follow at times—I had to rewind a couple times to re-read the dialogue. However, this was not a major issue.
What’s Included:
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Digital specs may vary by platform/retailer.
- 1080p / Widescreen 2.35:1
- Audio: Vietnamese Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles: English
Film: (1:26:42)
Extras:
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No bonus material included
Final Thoughts:
Foggy Mountain is a pretty classic, standard story about a skilled fighter out on a quest for revenge, who comes along a small village in need of a hero. The film gives the main protagonist some emotional grounding for his quest, the characters are generally interesting, the martial arts fights are well-choreographed and exciting, and there’s some humorous bit thrown in. Some of the dialogue is a bit hefty, filled with cliched metaphors, and some of the story beats could have been allowed a little more time to breathe. But overall I found the film to be entertaining and worth a watch.
Foggy Mountain
$3.99 (as of January 17, 2025 21:07 GMT -05:00 – More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
