Bad Blood (2023) by Dan Trong Tran


Former gangster Lam, who's now lost his memory and now hides like an ordinary person making a living by manual labor with his wife and her stepdaughter, finds himself forced to return to a series of old-school combat tactics to save her when he finds out that she's been abducted into a child prostitution ring.

Overall, this was a rather fun and enjoyable effort. The main approach here is the fun setup getting everything laid out involving the background he has within the community, his newfound desire to raise his family, and how that leads to the race to save her from the criminal group when they get involved with her for their crime ring. This is what provides the emotional resonance needed to make the action a lot of fun and still maintains a fun tone and atmosphere to it. Keeping the action hard-hitting and serious while some of the other aspects have a sense of comedy to it is a solid balance that makes for a fun time with this one.

The only area that this one feels somewhat lacking in is the means through which it triggers the return to Lam's criminal past. As a lot of the flashbacks and other bits of background information we get here shows that he's been thoroughly traumatized and trying to get away from that lifestyle at all costs due to his new lifestyle, the means that he manages to overcome all of that in the name of trying to save his kidnapped daughter is rushed through and barely feels all that well fleshed-out. There are a lot of factors here that could've been used to explain this better with a bit more time to help out, but beyond that, there are not a lot of issues with it.

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