01-20-2007, 11:39 PM
This is Jackie Wu Jing's latest, his first lead role since Tai Chi 2. He was the psycho villain in SPL, and also starred in Legend of Zu and Drunkey Monkey. A former Beijing Wushu team champ, ala Jet Li, Wu Jing has great potential as the next great kung fu star. He's charismatic, can play charming or psycho, and he's got the moves - fast, precise, balletic. But this movie sucks. Wow, does this movie suck.
The fights are all great and there's a fair amount of them because it's about underground death matches (like that's an original plot). But the story is so dreary. There's a subplot about a prostitute. There's a crying corpse. There's some pimped out HK gangsters. There's some ridiculous underground fight scenarios (you'd think if they were betting tens of millions of dollars, they could find a slightly better place to hold such fights than the pier loading docks, or empty warehouses with only a dozen people watching.) Wu Jing gets off some original fight moves - he's beautiful in action - but the story offers nothing at all but stuff to fast forward through.
His next project is Let's Steal Together, with the twins (Twin Effects) and Sammo Hung. Not much has been released about this one, but it's an action comedy. Wu Jing needs a good vehicle to launch him and I suspect this won't be it either.
The fights are all great and there's a fair amount of them because it's about underground death matches (like that's an original plot). But the story is so dreary. There's a subplot about a prostitute. There's a crying corpse. There's some pimped out HK gangsters. There's some ridiculous underground fight scenarios (you'd think if they were betting tens of millions of dollars, they could find a slightly better place to hold such fights than the pier loading docks, or empty warehouses with only a dozen people watching.) Wu Jing gets off some original fight moves - he's beautiful in action - but the story offers nothing at all but stuff to fast forward through.
His next project is Let's Steal Together, with the twins (Twin Effects) and Sammo Hung. Not much has been released about this one, but it's an action comedy. Wu Jing needs a good vehicle to launch him and I suspect this won't be it either.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse