What would you do if you are asked to make a movie and you are given a good decent budget, a successfully proven franchise to adapt, a cast of heavyweight stars and a team of talented visual effects artists? In case your answer is "No idea", then Storm Warriors shall be your perfect guide.... of HOW NOT TO. Yes, you read it right with caps and bold.
Story
The official synopsis of this movie goes something like this: An evil Japanese warlord, equipped with the most weapons of mass destruction of his time, wants to conquer China. A bunch of patriotic warriors which include Wind and Cloud can't bear to see their country goes to their small neighbours in the East and started resisting him. Unfortunately, the official synopsis is very misleading as the whole bloody plot of this movie is one huge jumbled mess. After the first 10 minutes, the whole movie started to go astray and directionless as the directors (the one hit wonder team called the Pang Brothers) prefers style over substance..... which kind of backfire because the style isn't there as well.
Acting
There's nothing I can really comment regarding the acting as they are simply not given any time at all to act. The script and character development is so bland that even 2012's natural disasters had more character and acting in them. Great actors like Simon Yam, Aaron Kwok, Nicholas Tse, Lam Suet and Ekin Chen are squandered. For example, Lord Godless (Simon Yam), despite being the main villain is only given some angsty lines which portrays him more like a whiny teenage kid then an evil warlord. Imagine a young Darth Vader but more shouting.
Direction
Seriously, I think the only vision that the Pang Brothers seems to had in mind is to see how many movies they can rip it off from and get away with it. The most evident victim of the directors is none other than 300. The style in 300 is breathtaking. Every single slowmotion is done with precise timing which does a good job in enhancing the action scenes. Which unfortunately is not the case for Storm Warriors. Slowmotions are used or in this case, spam so frequently and unsparingly that it is more likely to further enhance your boredom then anything else.
Another victim that seems to be also unmercifully butchered by this movie is Zhang Yimou. During fight scenes in between the slowmotions, The Pangs tried to squeeze in some "artistic fighting" movement like the ones you see in Zhang Yimou's movie (ie. "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers"). In Zhang's version, these fighting scenes are done so beautifully and gracefully that it looks more like ballet then act of violence. However, with this movie, such scenes only serves to drag the movie even further and make the fights look even more nonsensical then a Monty Python's sketch.
Pacing is godawful. Plot related scenes are too brief and non-plot related scens are overly bloated. There's no sense of climax in the whole movie as the movie feels flat and for an action movie.... feeling flat is the last thing you want to feel. The final battle with the movie's main villian Lord Godless is very disappointing. Its like the movie suffers from premature ejaculation. It ended before anything gets to exciting. And to make matters worse the movie didn't end there (I will not go into details as this might consider as spoilers to some), unsatisfied of cumming to fast, it decided to go for second rounds. The result? One hell of a overly bloated and boring fights I had seen recently.
Conclusion
One of the most disappointing movies I had ever seen this year. The only saving grace that this movie had is the beautifully done visual effects. Though not perfect (some scenes look outrageously fake), it is still impressive to look at. Now lets just hope that the producers listen to my wishes and never let the Pang Brothers ever touched this franchise again.
4 out of 10
Story
The official synopsis of this movie goes something like this: An evil Japanese warlord, equipped with the most weapons of mass destruction of his time, wants to conquer China. A bunch of patriotic warriors which include Wind and Cloud can't bear to see their country goes to their small neighbours in the East and started resisting him. Unfortunately, the official synopsis is very misleading as the whole bloody plot of this movie is one huge jumbled mess. After the first 10 minutes, the whole movie started to go astray and directionless as the directors (the one hit wonder team called the Pang Brothers) prefers style over substance..... which kind of backfire because the style isn't there as well.
Acting
There's nothing I can really comment regarding the acting as they are simply not given any time at all to act. The script and character development is so bland that even 2012's natural disasters had more character and acting in them. Great actors like Simon Yam, Aaron Kwok, Nicholas Tse, Lam Suet and Ekin Chen are squandered. For example, Lord Godless (Simon Yam), despite being the main villain is only given some angsty lines which portrays him more like a whiny teenage kid then an evil warlord. Imagine a young Darth Vader but more shouting.
Direction
Seriously, I think the only vision that the Pang Brothers seems to had in mind is to see how many movies they can rip it off from and get away with it. The most evident victim of the directors is none other than 300. The style in 300 is breathtaking. Every single slowmotion is done with precise timing which does a good job in enhancing the action scenes. Which unfortunately is not the case for Storm Warriors. Slowmotions are used or in this case, spam so frequently and unsparingly that it is more likely to further enhance your boredom then anything else.
Another victim that seems to be also unmercifully butchered by this movie is Zhang Yimou. During fight scenes in between the slowmotions, The Pangs tried to squeeze in some "artistic fighting" movement like the ones you see in Zhang Yimou's movie (ie. "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers"). In Zhang's version, these fighting scenes are done so beautifully and gracefully that it looks more like ballet then act of violence. However, with this movie, such scenes only serves to drag the movie even further and make the fights look even more nonsensical then a Monty Python's sketch.
Pacing is godawful. Plot related scenes are too brief and non-plot related scens are overly bloated. There's no sense of climax in the whole movie as the movie feels flat and for an action movie.... feeling flat is the last thing you want to feel. The final battle with the movie's main villian Lord Godless is very disappointing. Its like the movie suffers from premature ejaculation. It ended before anything gets to exciting. And to make matters worse the movie didn't end there (I will not go into details as this might consider as spoilers to some), unsatisfied of cumming to fast, it decided to go for second rounds. The result? One hell of a overly bloated and boring fights I had seen recently.
Conclusion
One of the most disappointing movies I had ever seen this year. The only saving grace that this movie had is the beautifully done visual effects. Though not perfect (some scenes look outrageously fake), it is still impressive to look at. Now lets just hope that the producers listen to my wishes and never let the Pang Brothers ever touched this franchise again.
4 out of 10
share the same view v u ...and the actors are all just have few dialogue ..especially the cho cho and second dream, seems like most of the time they just said "feng dai gor.." or "wan tai gor"...with the "pretending naive face and soft voices...despite the character of cho cho which existed since part 1, wat is the purpose of having the 2nd dream wor...wah lau....totally cant see the need of her existence except at the last scene that she hold ekin cheng from jumping down.. >.< sien...
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