Overrated

Rating: 3/10 (26 September 2015)

I was disappointed with this one vis a vis the ratings it gets. It is barely watchable and eminently forgettable, imho. I'm a fan of old school gung fu movies and have no tolerance for the kind of canine fecal material that Tarantino spews, but understand that some like fantasy and might have different sensibilities.
But even on that level, I just don't get it. Martial arts is about control and mastery of one's self, physically and spiritually, and the best actors are highly accomplished professionals. They are a wonder to behold. So, how does it make it more interesting to have people that have never put in 1/100 the effort jerked all over the place with pulleys and trampolines? OK. If it's a fantasy story...maybe...but you don't watch gung fu movies for the story!
For my money, a person that likes martial arts movies will be about as much satisfied with this one as a hard core NFL addict would be watching a touch football game. Superficially it's kind of the same, but has nearly none of the things you're watching it for. At the end of the day, could the fantasy-flick crowd go watch a nice mindless "written purely as fantasy" movie and not have to drag martial arts down?
I didn't detest this one. It's not like Kill Bill in terms of being just 1000% awful and a sad statement about humanity today. But, WAY too many times I found myself saying, "Did they really need to do that? How does that improve the movie", or thinking that I'd like to see 1/2 the "magic" with some real moves than what is. I guess, that's supposed to be better. It isn't.
At the end of the day, I think it's very sad. This is the trend now and it looks to be about pushing out a superficially similar product whilst greatly reducing costs and not having to rely on very talented people who are not easy to find/recruit/schedule. I totally fail to see how this is any kind of improvement for the genre. It seems like more "make the money men happy, we've plenty of sheep that will follow. Old School is old hat".