Undecided upon a star-rating
DVD Release
When the head of a village’s
sacred Buddha is stolen, it is up to young martial arts prodigy, Ting, to
travel to the big city to retrieve it, and save his village from damnation.
So, I watched this film whilst
quite drunk, and sitting with my equally tipsy friends and, honestly, if we
hadn’t been inebriated and up for a laugh, we probably would have turned it off
after the first five minutes. The acting is truly terrible, whoever did the
subtitles should probably seek another form of employment, and the script is
loaded with so much forced exposition it rivals Jupiter Ascending in terms of spelling out the plot.
It is just utterly bonkers
throughout. How anyone could ever take this film seriously is honestly beyond
me, as we all just sat and laughed for the duration, revelling in the
ridiculous chase scene through the streets, a truly hilarious chase scene on
tuk-tuks, and a young man kneeing his various opponents in the face. There’s
also an insane baddie, made obvious through the fact he’s had a tracheostomy,
speaks like a Dalek, and roves around in his wheelchair like some kind of
disabled Emperor Palpatine. The fight scenes are pretty good, with plenty of ‘oohs’
and ‘ahhs’ to be had, and this is the first time I had seen this style of
martial arts, which made it rather interesting to compare with the fluid,
ballet-like movements seen in The Raid 2.
The characters are wholly one-dimensional, and any attempt to make them appear
three-dimensional is just so hysterically funny and cliché, it seems absurd it
ever got through the script-edits.
For sheer entertainment value
when you’re sitting around with your friends, drinking and feeling pretty
jolly, it isn’t a bad film, but it’s something I would not sit down and watch
again. It’s not meant to be at all funny, and yet it was so serious that it
somehow was, with the final fight scene going from one balmy moment to another.
I’ll remember it fondly because I laughed a lot and had a great time with my
friends, but there’s not much of merit to really comment upon…
Comments
Post a Comment