Yeah.

Dante Lam’s last film, The Viral Factor, sent me into apoplectic shock. I wasn’t disappointed; I was insulted.

So going into Unbeatable/激戰, I was nervous.

I had heard it was good, but I still couldn’t shake my creeping suspicion.

I didn’t want to set my expectations too high.

But I did want to have expectations.

I want to like the movies I see.

I just want to leave the cinema happy.

Is that so wrong?

Unbeatable/激戰 tells the stories of several very different people and their struggles.

The most prominent stories are those of Eddie Peng and Nick Cheung’s characters.

Eddie Peng plays Lin Si-Qi, a young man trying to find focus and purpose in life.

Nick Cheung is Fai, a man on the far side of life trying to distance himself from his past as well as make amends for it.

Both of them seek their goals through participating in an MMA tournament being held in Macau.

Eddie’s character is trying not only to focus himself but to inspire his father (Jack Kao), a failed businessman who still somehow has enough money to gamble and drink to oblivion every day.

And not cheap paint thinner either; he’s drinking Johnny Walker black!

Nick Cheung is also working on two fronts; he’s trying to negotiate a relationship with his emotionally wounded landlady (Mei Ting) and her feisty little girl, played by Crystal Lee.

I’m usually not fond of kids (unless they’re barbecued), but Crystal Lee is very entertaining and even more convincing.

Child actors are always a gamble, but she displays a lot of assurance and skill.

She’s almost reason enough to watch the movie all by herself.

If she isn’t, it’s also great to see Philip Keung Ho Man as Fai’s old friend who gets him a job working at a gym. It’s a small role, but I really liked him.

But Unbeatable/激戰 doesn’t need any help from it’s character actors.

It looks great, and could work as a tourism board commercial for Macau.

The cinematography was really nice, and the only time the movie was obviously video was for brief flashes during the fight scenes.

Even so, that fit into the story because it just looked like TV coverage anyway.

The fight choreography and the cinematography of the fights work very well together.

I was really impressed by the fights, which looked authentic and therefore painful.

It’s more than obvious that Eddie Peng and Nick Cheung worked really, really hard not just to get in shape but to make their fight scenes realistic.

It worked; I flinched more than once, and I was very convinced.

MMA rules don’t allow some of the hits shown in the film, but they are dramatically useful, and it’s just a movie.

Andy On appears to have a lot of fun in his role as the antagonist, a cocky wrecking ball of an MMA fighter.

He’s very convincing in his fight scenes, as well he should be.

You could argue there’s an anti-foreigner subtext (Andy On speaks English), but it didn’t bother me, and that’s something worth noting.

Unbeatable/激戰 is a sports genre film that calls to mind almost every boxing or fighting movie I’ve seen, whether intentionally or otherwise; Raging Bull, The Fighter, Million Dollar Baby, Warrior, and probably others, but those are the ones I noticed the most.

It’s not a bad thing for a film to follow genre conventions.

Warrior was so generic I could predict the plot a mile away, but the film was acted so well it really didn’t matter.

To a great extent, Unbeatable/激戰 succeeds in the same way.

There are no surprises here, except that it’s such a good movie.

The film’s climax is as obvious and expected as the fate of the ship in Titanic, but I didn’t mind.

I can actually be pretty forgiving and easygoing; all I ask is that you entertain me.

And Unbeatable/激戰 definitely entertained me.

It balances comedy and drama well; the laughs are all based in very real dialogue and situations, and help make the characters very real and human.

Nick Cheung’s acting is even more impressive than his physique.

 And his physique is nothing to sneeze at.

He does a fantastic job inhabiting his character, and I hope he wins an armful of awards.

To be fair, Unbeatable/激戰 does get a bit slow in the middle, but there’s enough good acting and nice imagery that I never felt bored.

The narrative took a pretty hefty jump at the end, but it worked within the frame of the story, and as I said I was having so much fun that I didn’t really care.

I really enjoyed this movie, and I actually want to watch it in the cinema again without having to take notes.

Watch this movie. You’ll be glad you did.

Gay men and straight women are lucky; they get a big, steaming bowl of eye candy served right in the middle of a really good sports movie.

What do straight guys get?

Beach Spike.