Storm Warriors Review

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

Flash Point Review

I had never been a huge fan of Donnie Yen honest. I always deem him as an inferior martial arts actor compared to the likes of Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah and Jet Li whom I had grow up watching and idolizing. I never really liked him, not even in the excellent Wilson Yip directed SPL (a.k.a Sha Po Lang) in which IMHO is great because of Simon Yam, Sammo Hung and the then-HK-movie-industry-rookie Wu Jing in which he plays a cold blooded silent assasin for the triads which will even make Luca Brasi feels like a n00b.

Then came Dragon Tiger Gate, a flick which the trailers feels much more cooler than the movie itself. True, I must admit that the movie's redeeming point is none other but Donnie Yen himself but his GODMODE-ON in nearly all his scenes is a huge turnoff for me.

Fortunately for me, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and decided to catch his latest flick which is currently showing in the cinemas now called Flash Point. Ok to be honest, its not really that benefit-of-the-doubt bullshit that got me buying tickets for this flick. Its the trailer of this movie that got me excited about this movie. Because in the trailer, there is zero dialogue, zero cliched-plot-revealing-flashing-words-on-the-screen and is very straight to the point by telling you this is a martial arts flick because all you ever see in the trailer other than the movies title are kicks, punches, armbars and a beautiful executed german suplex. And being the huge sucker for martial arts movie I did not seem to care about the lessons I learnt from Dragon Tiger Gate and just rush to get the tickets to the movie as soon as I have the free time to watch it once it is released.

Ok so now, on with the movie's review. Ok here's a brief synopsis of the plot. Donnie Yen plays a no-nonsense cop, just cop who is ruthless when it comes to catching criminals (which in other words is a 100% total opposite of Malaysian cops) and is trying hard to catch a band of villainous ruthless Vietnamese brothers. While Louis Khoo plays the undercover cop as the lackey of these villains. Well if you ask me, the plot is nothing but a build up to a huge one on one brawl towards the climax. The movie started at a slow pace for the first 45 minutes to 1 hour with time given for "plot development". After that it is a non-stop martial arts fest which is perhaps the most realistic looking fight choreography that I had ever seen in a movie. Instead of using traditional kicks and punches that is used in most martial arts movies, Flashpoint uses MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) which is much more rawer, intense and realistic.

In most martial arts film when guy A kick guy B to the floor, guy B will bounced back up almost immediately or guy A gives him enough time to do so. But not Flashpoint. A strike that takes down the opponent is usually followed up by more punches, kicks or even submission holds such as the deadly armbar. In other words the fight scenes is done very nicely in a very smooth uninterrupted flow of punches, kicks, throws and locks which I had never seen before in any martial arts flick and all these are directed by Donnie Yen himself.

Well despite its flawless fight scenes I do have a few major complaints about this movie though. Donnie Yen and Louis Khoo just doesn't have on screen chemistry. Both of them don't seem to "connect" with each other at all. Also Fan Bing Bing in the movie serves no purpose other than being a very sweet eyecandy. Not that I mind or anything, but she's being cast into the wrong role IMHO.

Overall Flashpoint is a must watch martial arts movie for all fans of this genre. I give it an 8 out of 10 stars.

P.S: To those who have no idea what MMA is, try searching for it on Youtube.