A couple of killer brawls and a finale that pulls out all the stops doesn’t drag the martial arts actioner “Blind War” out of the dark.

It’s an Andy On (“Ride On,” “Blackhat”) star vehicle, sort of a modern riff on the ancient “Blind Swordsman” plot that translated into films all over Asia, especially Japan. This Chinese thriller is about a cop blinded in the line of duty, tormented by a criminal quarry, and determined to free his kidnapped daughter from people he crossed in an earlier dust up.

The director of “The Imortal Stone of Nirvana” kicks things off with an over-the-top escape attempt launched at the end of a criminal boss’s trial. One of his lawyers (Yang Zing, who pretty much steals the picture) is in on the caper, which has the boss howling wit delight at the mayhem. But with cops surrounding the courthouse, awaiting the verdict and/or trouble, it seems doomed from the start.

With so many minions recruited to assault the court and with the SWAT teams outside slow to act, maybe they have a shot.

But one cop, Dong Gu (On) jumps the gun because he smells a rat. The assault really set up as the jailed mob boss’s assassination. And the lawyer/femme fatale/assassin Xing Na (Yang Zing) is in love with the cockiest of the killers, a punk who plays it cool disguised as a murderous priest, but who overplays his hand when he injures Dong Gu’s partner and fails to kill that one cop who will seal his fate.

Xing Na is sent to prison, hissing “From this moment on, every breath you take is a gift from me (in Chinese with subtitles). Dong Gu, blinded by a flash grenade, must develop his keen hearing to be able to function and raise his daughter. He’s kicked out of the police for being too gung ho during that caper.

And when that violinist daughter (Yaqi Zhang) is grabbed and trafficked as revenge for his work, Dong Gu must call on those reflexes, that hearing and his special martial arts skills to pursue and battle those who took her.

Xing Na? She busts out of jail during a failed attempt on her life, passes herself off as a fellow cop to the man she’s sworn to take her vengeance on and proceeds to seemingly “help” the father in his mad pursuit up a mobster food chain to the top.

There’s a lot of vengeance going round.

“Blind War” has comically inept cops and veiled Chinese shots at the fictional city of “Manulla,” where human trafficking tracks through every trope of that battered and weary genre — live streaming “auctions” of girls, the rich of non-Chinese Asia bidding away, etc. It’s impossible to place the film in reality, with Caucasian “British” judges and police chiefs and “foreigners” who could be Filipino, old school Hong Kong or Singaporean.

Female characters vie for the title “Dragon King” of this underworld (Not “Queen?”). The blind cop gets into jam after jam, including capture by the local police, but always finds a way out, often with Xing Na’s help.

The plot is teeters between nonsensical and outlandish, with graphic violence and epic shootouts and punchouts punctuating the action beats.

One humorous touch has guns supplied by an Afro-wearing Chinese hustler named “Uncle Harlem.” Kind of racist, but whatever.

The fights are over-the-top and manic, often shot with a hand-held camera and edited into a furious blur. But there’s a video game quality to the body count, the ways our hero dispatches legions of bad guys, the injuries he and his allies survive and the ways he ducks bullets and blow.

The funny bits underscore the silliness of much of what we’re seeing unfold, but the violence brings it all back to “reality.” Not that this is a good thing, not in a thriller this absurdly plotted.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, child trafficking

Cast: Andy On,Yang Zing, Hank Qi,
Zhang Ya Qi and Jane Wu

Credits: Directed by Suiqiang Huo, scripted by A Hi-Yah!/Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:43