03-08-2012, 11:56 AM
This film has everything - elaborate costumes, wonderfully textured backdrops, engaging cinematography, top-notch martial artists (the mighty Yu Chenghui, who played the evil drunken swordsman in Shaolin Temple), cool ancient weapons - the whole film makes drab color schemes glow. I'm not even sure how that works. What it's missing is some goddamn sword fights. All the fights are either off screen or done in such an abstract way that they can't really be seen. There's a major plot device about fighting through a curtain, so all you really see is some one on one side and then a weapon thrusts out and bops them on the noggin. It's downright silly.
I watched a super clean rip - almost HD quality - but no subs. In the end, I couldn't really understand what was going on - who to root for or what the motives behind the whole situation was. Then there's this rather bothersome device where you hear the internal dialogue of the fighters as they plan their strategy, and you see that plan, then someone dies, then you realize it wasn't the actual fight but the internal strategy dialog playing out, so they really didn't die and you get to see the fight again. Well, actually you don't because the fight is so fast and shot in such a way that there isn't really anything to see.
Very disappointing.
I watched a super clean rip - almost HD quality - but no subs. In the end, I couldn't really understand what was going on - who to root for or what the motives behind the whole situation was. Then there's this rather bothersome device where you hear the internal dialogue of the fighters as they plan their strategy, and you see that plan, then someone dies, then you realize it wasn't the actual fight but the internal strategy dialog playing out, so they really didn't die and you get to see the fight again. Well, actually you don't because the fight is so fast and shot in such a way that there isn't really anything to see.
Very disappointing.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse