Film Review: Hit N Fun 臨時決鬥 (2025) - Hong Kong
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 6.5/10
Rating: ★★★
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A Bruised Love Letter to Hong Kong, Packing Punches and Sentimentality - Hong Kong Director Albert Mak Kai-kwong’s “Hit N Fun” arrives draped in the garish colors of a Lunar New Year confetti cannon, promising slapstick and high-kicking hijinks. What emerges, however, is a film with a bruised heart beating beneath its spandex fight shorts – a bittersweet cocktail of Muay Thai, mid-life crises, and the fading glitter of Hong Kong’s dream factories. It’s an ambitious swing, often landing solid emotional punches even when its feet get tangled in tonal mismatches.
The setup crackles with potential. Picture Louise Wong’s Elsa Lam, a razor-sharp advertising executive discovering her boyfriend’s infidelity not with another office drone, but with Macau’s reigning Muay Thai queen, Surewin Suen (a fiercely focused Chrissie Chau). Elsa’s response? Challenge the champion to a fight. It’s gloriously absurd, the kind of premise that fuels midnight screenings. Her path leads her to the ramshackle "Chung Lui Society" gym, run by Bruce Chung (Louis Koo), a former legend now wrestling with failure, debt, and the quiet desperation of irrelevance. His wife, Carrie (Gigi Leung), is a retired actress navigating the cruel erasure of time in a youth-obsessed industry.
Mak understands the primal joy of physical comedy wedded to genuine stakes. The training sequences are “Hit N Fun”’s undeniable highlight. Watching the impeccably coiffed Elsa get ragdolled by the gym’s resident lovable loser, Stallone Ko (a scene-stealing Tony Wu), is "consistently hilarious," a perfect blend of slapstick choreography and character-driven absurdity. Koo, often the stoic hero, delivers one of his most layered performances in years. His Bruce is all weary grit and buried tenderness, a man whose fists remember glory his present can’t reclaim. Opposite him, Gigi Leung is luminous and heartbreaking. Her Carrie embodies the quiet ache of faded stardom with such vulnerable authenticity; you feel every slight, every flicker of hope extinguished by a dismissive casting agent. Their shared history and quiet resilience form the film’s aching backbone. When the final fight arrives, it’s not just about kicks and punches; it carries a surprising weight of "philosophy," as EasternKicks noted – a cathartic release built on more than mere brute force. It feels, indeed, like a "parable of Hong Kong," clinging to scrappy defiance against overwhelming odds.
The film, however, struggles to maintain its nimble footing. That promising, kinetic first act gives way to a middle section that drags like wet gym towels. The repetition Elsa endures in training mirrors the film’s own pacing issues; what was funny the first few times becomes exhaustingly familiar. Trimmed by 20 minutes, this could have been a lean, mean machine. Instead, momentum stalls. Worse still, the script occasionally lurches into "cheap tearjerker" territory. Noble sacrifices and sudden tragedies feel unearned, grafted onto the narrative rather than organically rising from it. The life lessons – about perseverance, love, and second chances – are often delivered with the subtlety of a training kick to the head, lacking the nuanced tension the earlier character work deserved. The ending, while crowd-pleasing in its optimism, retreats into the safety of a predictable "loser-turns-winner" template, a disservice to the more interesting, messy energy Mak conjured earlier and showcased so brilliantly in “Rob N Roll”.
“Hit N Fun” is an undemanding watch elevated significantly by its stellar cast and bursts of genuine inspiration. Louis Koo and Gigi Leung share a chemistry that radiates warmth and shared history, making their struggles deeply affecting. Louise Wong throws herself into the physical comedy with admirable gusto, and the production values, especially the fight choreography after that grueling month of cast training, are top-notch. It’s a film with its heart firmly in the right place, wearing its Hong Kong soul on its sleeve. Yet, it’s ultimately slightly bogged down by its own sentimental ambitions and structural sag. It throws wild, entertaining punches, lands a few beauties squarely on the chin, but occasionally pulls them, opting for a comforting hug when a sharper jab was needed. It’s a solid experience: flawed, sometimes frustrating, but undeniably warm and worth seeing for the luminous humanity Leung and Koo bring to the ring. Just don’t expect the non-stop Lunar New Year fireworks the title implies; this is more like dazzling pyrotechnics occasionally fizzling into a poignant, sentimental drizzle. (Neo, 2026)
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