Netflix's Fistful of Vengeance, the feature-length follow up to the hit series Wu Assassins, released worldwide on the platform on February 17. It follows the super-powered assassin Kai, played by Iko Uwais, as he traverses the globe, from Chinatown in San Francisco to Thailand, in search of revenge after the death of a loved one. Praise has come far and wide for the movie's grand, fast-paced martial arts sequences, with a camera that dips and dives between the fighters, giving the sequences heft and pizzazz. But there's a surprisingly high-tech story behind how those sequences were shot — because, realistically, you'd never get the same effect from even the fastest camera operator with a steadicam.
Director Roel Reiné, the prolific mind behind dozens of action-heavy dramas, has exclusively revealed to Collider the method behind the madness, opening up on the challenges faced by the production team in bringing his frenetic vision to the screen. "I'm always looking for things we have never seen before, and how cool would it be to have a camera move as fast as [star] Iko Uwais does in the middle of the fight," he told us. "So I went to the Bolt camera rental house in Bangkok and told them I wanted to do a 3-minute moving shot with the Bolt robot arm in the middle of a fight." The Bolt is exactly as the director describes: an on-track robot arm that you program to perform all the speedy maneuvers required of a sequence.
The problem? Usually, Bolt operators program a maximum of ten moves for the arm to perform in a given scene — much less than you'd expect from a full three-minute sequence. But the effect, which you can see in this clip from Netflix Geeked, is pretty remarkable, placing us right in the middle of the action. "I'm so proud of what the end result looks like," the director said.
Fistul of Vengeance, also starring Lewis Tan, Lawrence Kao, and Pearl Thusi, is streaming on Netflix now. Check out the full clip below:
And here's the official synopsis for Fistful of Vengeance:
"Super-powered assassin Kai and friends Lu Xin and Tommy track a killer from San Francisco's Chinatown to Thailand to avenge the death of a loved one. But their hunt soon entangles them with old enemies, a mysterious billionaire and an ancient mystical force bent on taking over the world. Iko Uwais (The Raid) stars with Lewis Tan (Mortal Kombat), Lawrence Kao (Max Steel) and Pearl Thusi (Queen Sono) in this fast-and-furious martial arts action film."