A Chinese kung fu directed by Chao Lu-jiang, starring Donnie Yen and Wu Ma.
NOT a sequel to Iron Monkey (1993). A corrupt crime overlord is dealing in guns. A poor conman is trying to trick a stranger out of his money, but the stranger is related to a blind man in town. The stranger and conman end up fighting the crime lord.
What a disappointment. I did not look it up before watching, so I thought this was supposed to be a sequel. It looked and sounded worse than some 1970s kung fu films I've seen. The plot was not communicated clearly and characters were not made clear either. They were definitely shallow and undeveloped. The only thing that I can say in praise of this is that I liked the beginning of the ending fight. The heroes used ladders as weapons, trapping their foes, knocking them down and such. That was it. I rate this bad. You would be better off not watching it.
A Chinese wuxia kung fu directed by Yuen Woo-ping, starring Donnie Yen and Yu Rongguang.
A vigilante is trying to defend the residents of a town from corrupt officials. This man is also running a doctor's office. Another doctor and his son come to town and this doctor promises the officials that he will catch the vigilante. There is one official who is not corrupt and warns the doctors of the government's actions. The doctor eventually meet and join forces against the top official.
Very good! It's been about 12 years since I've seen this, so I watched it again. The plot is clear and the characters are relatively identifiable. What made this stand out to me was the professionally done production and exaggerated fight scenes. Everything was filmed and edited excellently, with good framing and camera movement. The fights used Hong Kong wire, props, dust, fire, buildings, etc... to make them each unique and interesting. There were poles used as weapons and recitation of moves, something that I really like in martial arts films. Recitation of moves is only slightly less cool than extended training scenes. The style seemed close to the newer Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) style of wuxia, but it was more kung fu than swordplay, so I labeled it both. I rate this awesome because it's such an exemplary martial arts film. Watch it.
A Chinese crime drama directed by Wilson Yip, starring Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung and Simon Yam.
A group of police detectives are in conflict with a crime boss. One of the cops was in a car accident 3 years before and the only survivors were him and a young relative. He then finds out that he has a brain tumor.
This was like 1970s American crime films with a "loose cannon cop", but everyone was Asian. The version I watched had an English dubbed audio track and the voices were way off. The voice acting was terrible and I don't think there were any Asian voice actors used. The plot was just total trash and the characters were unevenly developed. Thing that didn't matter were emphasized, but anything pertinent to the plot was not developed at all. For example, who is this guy? (image) He appears multiple times and kills lots of people, but he doesn't even have a name. The cinematography and camerawork looked alright, but there was too much slow motion that was too obvious. I really think this film took itself too seriously. If it had been meant to mock 1970s detective flicks, it would have been great. I rate it poor and would really advise against watching it.
A Chinese American wuxia directed by Yuen Woo-ping, starring Donnie Yen and Michelle Yeoh.
A thief is sent from West Lotus to steal the Green Destiny sword from Sir Te's house where it was supposed to be hidden. Shu Lien captures the thief and hires a group of "Iron Way" warriors to help her guard it. Shu Lien's new student turns out to be related to the thief, everyone fights and most of them die.
Sometimes sequels are not so great. The original Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) was much better because it seemed sincere and there was not as much fast editing going on. The slower pace of the original allowed audiences to digest what was going on before something else happened, but this sequel seemed rushed. The flashbacks, storytelling and training scenes were too short. It seemed like the audience was not allowed time to get to know the characters in order to care about them. I also noticed that people were flying for no real reason. In the original, the wire flying was always motivated by a purpose in the fight or the plot. The plot in this was unoriginal: they are still fighting over that same sword. I know that the current trend in movies is sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes, but there are actually some decent original films being made. Sorry to Bother You (2018) is a good example of this. Sometimes it's best to let sleeping dogs lie and not fix what is not broken (cliche' sentence anyone?). I rate this tolerable because it was insincere, unoriginal, but upheld the basic requirements of the genre.
A Chinese wuxia directed by Raymond Lee, starring Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Maggie Cheung and Donnie Yen.
Opposing groups meet at an inn run by a woman. One of the groups is lead by a woman with a flute and they want to rescue children who are political prisoners. Another group is military from the organization that was holding the children prisoner. A lone swordsman also shows up who was the flute woman's boyfriend, but he becomes entangled with the inn owner.
Pretty standard for the genre. The plot was full of holes. The biggest being: where did all those guys on horses go at the end? The main characters were mostly identifiable. I liked the inn owner most, but she tended to get mixed up with sword boy's ex. The reason that I liked the inn owner was that her dialogue and acting were most expressive. The head chef from the kitchen was comic relief and he was acted well too. The sets and costumes looked great, as they should in wuxia films. Camera-work and editing were not to my liking quite so much, though. The style of editing was like a new, American action film. There were lots of close shots and very quick editing cuts. It's possible that early '90s Chinese action films started the style that post-2000s American action films lifted from them. When things slowed down, I could tell that everything was staged and composed correctly. The special effects consisted of impossible jumps with rope rather than real flying. There was also blood and a goat cutting scene with item replacement across an editing cut. Audio was in Chinese, but I found good English subtitles. Dialogue was mixed correctly and the sound effects didn't repeat as much as in older Chinese action films. There were multiple sword sounds to vary the sonic landscape. IMDb lists a rating of 7.3/10, AllMovie lists 0 AllMovie rating with 3.5/5 User Ratings and Rotten Tomatoes lists 78% Audience Score for an average of 55.25%. It looks low because AllMovie possibly did not rate it? Without the zero, it would be 73.6% which I agree with. I rate this adequate. You might want to watch it, mostly if you've seen the original Dragon Gate Inn (1967).
A Chinese wuxia directed by Michael Mak, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Michelle Yeoh, Jimmy Lin, Joey Wong and Donnie Yen.
An old eunuch disguised as another old eunuch tries to destroy a gang of assassins. Some of this gang live together and there are romantic relationship problems.
The hour 22 duration felt like it took forever. The pacing was really choppy, with slow scenes right next to fast ones. The plot was nearly incoherent and the characters were difficult to differentiate. Most of the dialogue and acting were misleading because everyone was either lying or being snarky to one another. What I could see of the sets and costumes looked good. Unfortunately, the copy that I got was pixelated like a motherfucker. I'm talking big, square blocks here. 432 x 224 resolution and 211MB file size may be to blame. Given that information, looking for good camera-work was not top priority while I was watching this. The special effects were as over the top as I expected. There was flying people and items, magic, fire and a building collapse. The audio was not exactly good, but I did like the soundtrack. It was probably the best part. The sound effects were like an old kung fu flick: extremely annoying. Stylistically, this fit the early '90s wuxia mold. It has a 6.1 on IMDB. I rate it tolerable.
A Chinese wuxia directed by Ching Sui-tung, starring Donnie Yen and Leon Lai.
A princess' father, the king is killed in battle and she takes the throne. Some of the government rulers/warlords are plotting against her and shoot her with a poison dart. A hermit saves her and they fall in love. The princess must restore peace to her kingdom and reunite with the hermit.
A classic example of the new Chinese way of filmmaking. The hour and a half duration seemed right because of dynamic pacing that rose and fell with action. The simplistic premise was difficult to follow in the plot because of language. More on that later. There were basically 3 characters: the princess, the hermit and soldier x infinity. Obviously, the princess and hermit were the most developed main characters. I had issues with dialogue because of subtitles. The only ones that synched with the film were clearly written by an non-English speaker. Sentence structure and word order were the main issues. This made it nearly impossible to follow the plot. The acting all seemed fine though. I really liked the sets. They all looked professional, but my favorite was the hermit's treehouse. Camera-work was all beautifully done as well. There was lots of shot variety, mostly in distances from extreme close up to sprawling landscapes. What I didn't like about video and camera were the giant battle scenes in the flat desert. Boring. There was no flying, but there may have been some undetectable wire-work involved. The audio was all mixed right and the soundtrack was typical of the area and time. Style and flavor seemed like the filmmakers had watched too much Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of Flying Daggers. This has a 5.9/10 on IMDB and 38% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. I rate it o.k. because it was very typical of the genre, area and time, but didn't really innovate or get creative and unique with the tools available.
A Chinese fantasy directed by Cheang Pou-soi, starring Donnie Yen, Chow Yun-fat and Aaron Kwok.
A magical monkey-man character is created during the rebuilding of heaven's gate. He trains with a master and other pupils before returning to the jungle and arming his monkey friends. He then travels to heaven, where he causes an uproar and eventually turns evil. Upon returning home, he finds his monkey friends dead and this sparks a change in morality.
Someone in China is good at computer animation! The hour 46 duration seemed like a little bit less because of the dense content and quick pacing. I thought that the plot kind of wandered and could have been more cohesive. The main character reminded me of Goku from Dragonball. He even had the power pole and nimbus cloud. There seemed to be the dynamic, humorous Monkey King character and everyone else was static and serious. I think that much of the dialogue got lost in translation, even though there wasn't much anyway. The CG backdrops were amazingly well rendered and everyone's costumes fit their role. There was lots of "camera movement" and quick editing going on in the video side. On audio, we had the expected "epic" soundtrack. The Monkey King's voice kind of irked me. The style was so over the top as to be a negative element. There's only so much CG fantasy that I can tolerate. Other critics agree with me that it's all CG fantasy with no substance. I rate this adequate because it was pretty, but that is all it was.
