Big Bad Film Fest 2026: ‘Fight Against Evil 3’ Review
Xie Miao might never be able to shake the legacy of playing Jet Li’s son in not one, but two action favourites from the 1990s. However, he’s done an impressive job in recent years—after lengthy absence—carving out a path that builds on that history. From this year’s multinational barnburner of a film, The Furious, to his Zatoichi-esque Eye for an Eye entries, Xie has cemented himself as one of the best martial arts stars working today. Flourishing in the direct-to-streaming market with franchises like Eye for an Eye and Fight Against Evil, the star has donned several hats in Chinese-produced action films that rarely get attention overseas. With the third entry in the Fight Against Evil franchise, kinetic beatdowns and a more light-hearted attitude finally match the pedigree of its shining star.
The Fight Against Evil franchise started off as a derivative action vehicle, featuring some memorable stunt choreography that was largely handicapped by some rough editing and a boilerplate narrative. When director Qin Pengfei returned for Fight Against Evil 2, it felt like night-and-day. The stakes were significantly raised, the tone shifted darker, and the action became crisper and more dynamic. Everything flowed neatly while operating within another familiar narrative of crime running rampant through China’s cities. Co-directed by the series’ sole screenwriter, Yang Bingjia (who was working with Xie around the same time on the multiple Eye for an Eye entries), it grasped the physical prowess of Xie’s martial arts style and how set pieces could become more than just a room for someone to punch. Every area became a weapon-rich environment traversed easily from one henchman to the next.
It’s clear that Yang understood how to make Xie pop in an otherwise generic story of cops-versus-criminals. That the films are also blatant propaganda for China’s police forces doesn’t help make things more compelling; the first two films both end with over-the-top admiration for law enforcement. Fight Against Evil 3 doesn’t do away with the nationalism, but thanks to its vacation setting, character-focused screenplay, and a more fun demeanour, it’s an easier pill to swallow. Officer Li Hongqi (Xie) has his wedding trip derailed when a young passenger on his flight, Liu Xinxin (Ma Qianyi), is kidnapped and declared missing. Not one to let justice go unserved, Li drops everything in search of Liu, roping in his mother-in-law, Wang Xiuqin (Diana Lin), and the local police force to help find her in a foreign city.
There are multiple reasons why Fight Against Evil 3 is a marked improvement over its predecessors. For starters, the film’s tropical setting of Tianya Haijiao is a popular getaway destination in the southernmost province of China. Complementing the coastal locale are vibrant colours that paints the film with a more upbeat attitude, slowly giving way to the darker underbelly that allows for child trafficking, gang violence, and other illegal activities to take place. The entire first half of the film is decidedly more lighthearted than any of the films prior. An initial chase sequence culminates in a close quarters brawl within a van as Hongqi takes on several criminals by himself, while recording them on a phone in one hand. Xie’s comedic chops shine brightest in these more cheery action beats, where you can tell both Xie and his character are having a lot of fun playing with the limited constraints put upon them.
Yang’s film is also remarkably better at bringing in outside characters and making Hongqi’s rescue operation feel a bit more collaborative. The wedding subplot is superfluous, but the role that Xiuqin plays in helping her son-in-law find Xinxin is vital and endears both characters to each other. They have a fun chemistry that reverberates throughout the film. It’s questionable why Hongqi would allow his mother-in-law to be so hands-on with a potentially dangerous case, but it’s also clear that Xiuqin wants nothing more than to be helpful in her community. For mostly being held hostage for a large portion of the film, the combative rapport between Hongqi and Xinxin from the beginning of the film helps bridge the gap between just having a strong sense of justice and genuinely caring for someone they only met for a single flight. Their dynamic is entertaining, plus their relationship ends up feeling slightly like a father-daughter dynamic—another echo of Xie Miao’s cinematic legacy of parental figures looking after children.
However, you don’t pay the price of admission for a Xie Miao film just for a charismatic performance. The action here is another reason why Fight Against Evil 3 triumphs over its predecessors and many of its Chinese DTV contemporaries. Front loaded with a lot of one-versus-many brawls that have the fun of a Jackie Chan set piece, they’re sometimes comical in the set-up and gradually escalate into an intricate ballet of confidence meeting skill. When the local police advise against solving problems with fists, Hongqi merely stands back and waits for them to realize that sometimes you just have to throw hands. When the film shifts and its main villain, Madame Qin (Huang Miyi), becomes a prominent foil to Hongqi’s rescue attempts, everything shifts tonally to the feeling of truly fighting against evil. The action moves fast and the camera keeps it all within frame in ways that the previous films occasionally struggled to accomplish. It’s violent and creative, which makes for memorable set pieces that feel like they could go literally anywhere thanks to the performances. While Xie is obviously the draw, Huang gives a nuanced villainous performance that I wish the screenplay was a little less black-and-white on throughout.
Fight Against Evil 3 is certainly not without flaws, but this is the strongest entry in the franchise yet. Xie’s found a role that is not unlike Ma Dong-seok’s police officer in The Roundup films, where his physical abilities and insistence on violence to solve crimes ends up adding levity to the action. It’s in the circumstances for why Hongqi is involved at all where everything becomes grounded. There’s still the overwhelming nationalism and copaganda that plagues the Chinese DTV space, but it’s mostly a footnote in Yang’s film. Again, like The Roundup, there’s a future where Xie is playing Hongqi for the foreseeable future. If each entry can continue to be comfort food with inventive action spliced throughout, the Fight Against Evil franchise should continue for as long as it can sustain itself.
The 4th Big Bad Film Fest took place between August 21st and 23rd. Fight Against Evil 3 celebrated its North American premiere on August 23rd. The full list of films selected for the festival can be found here.
