Slightly above average martial arts film

Rating: Null/10 (31 August 2004)

The one thing this movie has over the average martial arts film is the cinematography. There is a lot of beautiful scenery and they show it. Other than that, it's pretty typical stuff for the genre - revenge motive, lots of fights, and unfortunately lots of flying. The flying is neat the first time you see it; It's really old by the twenty-fifth time. It's a gimmick like the camera gimmick in the Matrix. The plot is very average. I have to wonder if the people fawning over this thing have ever seen a martial arts movie before. They're all like this. Martial arts movies were quite popular in the US back in the 1980s, so it's no big deal that there's still one being shown here. Sure, most of the American ones were absolute crap, but if you really delve deeply into the genre, and don't mind reading subtitles, there's some truly spectacular stuff out there. Stuff that makes this movie seem like an unimaginative run through the clichÃ©s in comparison.
Martial arts films are full of strong female characters, many of the movies have absolutely startling cinematography, there's always an ending that fans of Hollywood blockbusters wouldn't expect, the characters are most often consumed with internal conflict, etc.
As far as the fighting in this movie, it's not bad. Nothing compared to a Bruce Lee film - nothing at all - but at least it's not silly like so much of the Jackie Chan slapstick stuff these days.
Overall, if you think this movie is great, boy, are you ever lucky, because you've just discovered a genre in which movies like this one are only slightly above average. Some of the really good ones will blow your mind.