Reviewed by: Hyomil Date: 04/07/2011 Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: MrBooth Date: 04/24/2007 Summary: 5/10 An evil weapon and drug dealer contrives a plan to hijack some weapons bought by a terrorist group as they pass through Hong Kong, then sell them to their rivals. He enlists a corrupt and ambitious customs cop to assist. An honest customs cop becomes a suspect, and finds out a bit too much of the truth, with predictable consequences. His family, also cops and also suspects, decide to find out the truth - action movie style. Fatal Termination has one of those disposable plots that fuelled many an action film in the 80's and 90's - the script evidently being rated so low in priority that they couldn't even bother thinking of names for most of the characters, using some variant of the actors names instead (and at the end of the film I still didn't know Ray Lui's character's name at all, despite being the main character in the film!). Most of what happens doesn't make a lot of sense if you try to think of it in terms of motive or logic, but as long as you view it as a reason to have all the interested parties go bat shit crazy with a cache of weapons in the finale, you shouldn't have too much trouble following it. The film isn't as action packed as I'd hoped, though there's a reasonable smattering throughout and the final scene is pretty entertainingly over the top. The quality of the action is only so-so for me, but I'm not a big fan of gun action by and large - big explosions and loud gunfire don't do much for me, unless they're an excuse for showing us what the well trained and clinically insane stuntmen of Hong Kong can do with their bodies. There's some of that here, but it's more about explosions and bullet holes. One particular stunt with a little girl does rank as one of the most stupid and irresponsible things a Hong Kong stunt crew have ever done though, so the film definitely wins points for that! For the most part the film is basically forgettable though, for me. The shoddy full-frame looks-like-a-VHS Wing Artist DVD with barely intelligible subtitles probably didn't do it any favours, but it's not a film I'm in a great hurry to see remastered (not before Tiger Cage anyway!). Reviewer Score: 5

Reviewed by: Brian Thibodeau Date: 08/14/2006 Summary: Blazingly cool, startlingly nasty from beginning to end! Dark, serpentine action thriller, sharply written by Lee Man-choi and Pang Chi-ming, from one of the colony’s most unsung filmmakers. Andrew Kam, co-director with Johnnie To of the Heroic Bloodshed classic THE BIG HEAT and, later, the excellent HEART OF KILLER, shows his singular knack for taming an abundance of lead characters and converging plotlines into a lean piece of work. To hide his middleman dealings with Arab terrorists and a vicious gun dealer (Phillip Ko, who also co-produced) from hound-dog Political Division investigator Simon Yam, dirty customs chief Robin Shou frames, then kills fellow customs officer Miu Kiu-wai. The dead man’s sister (Moon Lee, in a career highlight performance) and her husband (Ray Lui), both Special Forces operatives, begin their own investigation, but soon find their lives virtually destroyed by the bad guys. The movie plays like a nicely stripped down version of some of the great American police corruption flicks of the 70’s, although the Yanks rarely contrived finales in which all the principals go at each other with cars, copters, grenades, machine guns and rocket launchers on an open battlefield! Of interest: FATAL TERMINATION contains one of the most frightening stunts I’ve ever seen in a Hong Kong movie, as a bug-eyed gwailo goon holds Moon’s little girl by her hair outside the window of a visibly speeding car with Moon on the hood desperately trying to punch through the windshield. The story goes that the kid was never in harm’s way and that the “arm” was actually a strong steel contraption, but it still makes for one of those jaw-dropping, “holy shit!” moments that separate the cinema of Hong Kong from any other. Reviewer Score: 10

Reviewed by: Inner Strength Date: 03/26/2002 Summary: No bad This film is actually not that bad, especially if you like non-stop action films. This really is non-stop action with a reasonable story that will keep interested for the majority of the 90 minutes. But action isn't everything in film making. Rating: [2.5/5]

Reviewed by: hokazak Date: 12/09/1999 Moon Lee is a nice housewifey mom who gets *real pissed* when her little girl is kidnapped. Along with her cop husband, she goes after the bad guys in a big way. (Includes the unbelievable scene in which the little girl is being dangled by her hair outside a fast-moving car while Moon Lee, draped across the hood, is fighting with the people in the front seat.)