Close to the worst

Rating: Null/10 (7 June 2001)

I was pre-sold on this film - the awards, the breathless praise, everything about the film was supposed to be extraordinary. Then I saw it. WOW!!! How can everybody be so wrong??? It must be politically correct to praise a foreign film and politically insensitive to dare to criticize the Chinese. First, the plot - it takes every bad scene out of spaghetti westerns and changes bandanas into Chinese clothing. A sword was stolen - a sword was found. The plot has all the complexity of a Dick and Jane "novella"!
The acting - I have rarely seen such poor acting. It almost seemed like we should see a sign saying "grimace" before the actor changes expressions. The dialog during the chase in the desert was so hokey that I had trouble not laughing. Starting with: "Dark Cloud is Coming, Dark Cloud is Coming, Dark Cloud is Coming, Dark Cloud is Coming"
This film won awards?????? The reviewers must have been delusional! Or, as noted previously, ultimately PC.
I am not a kung foo(my choice of spelling)fan but must believe that there are better "fight" scenes out there. Once you see one of the flying fights, there is no need to see more. The restaurant(?) fight was straight out of a B grade western.
The protagonist/heroine - Let me see if I got this straight. She was an 8 or 10 year old kung foo wunderkind who gravitated to stealing valuables as a "joke"??
Now for the old hag/governess/"bad guy". She was angry because the aforementioned 8 year old wouldn't show her the kung foo manuals??? [Dialogue - Young one: I showed you the pictures but not the words. Hag: That's why I didn't improve.] And the fabulous use of technology - an arrow-firing down-dated machine gun??? ....and it just so happened that the heroine was the only person in the world to know both the poison used, the fact it had an antidote and she could prepare it ("but it is difficult" - so difficult that it takes 3 seconds too long). Talk about pre-juvenile plot!!! .... and the final scene (nah, I better not go there). Suffice it to say that we are left with the desert king and an inscrutable expression.
These comments will have served their purpose if just one person (not politically correct) is warned off and chooses not to rent this film.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate this a minus 3