Wu Xia

[Drunk Monk]

Shaw Brothers meets CSI via Agatha Christie. Artsy enough for the art house crowd? Perhaps. I need to see it with subtitles as the dialog scenes were complex. Hopefully they were discussion good character development, and not just going on about sacrifice or patriotism or some commie rot.

Wu Xia is very entertaining visually. The sets and costumes are rich and detailed, just what we are now coming to expect from Chinese productions. The CGI stuff is very amusing - I love the way dim mak is depicted. It's a gorgeous film.

It was great to see Jimmy Wang Yu again. There's an in-joke with his appearance, but it's kind of a spoiler. That being said, this film could serve as a creation tale for Donnie's next franchise.

The action...well, there's not enough of it. Donnie's choreography remains top notch - this is his Shaw Bros choreographic homage. But I could have used like two more fight scenes. There are sword fights - mostly armed swordsmen going after unarmed Donnie - and if there were just two more of those, it would have been perfect for me. The pacing is a little funny. The film is front-loaded with visuals and action, then it slows down for a lot of chit chat (this is where two more fights could have been inserted as it feels like a long spell), then there's another fight, then more chit chat, then a finale fight.

I enjoyed Wu Xia a lot. It has a unique vision for a martial arts film that is very refreshing.

[Drunk Monk]

The subtitled version is available on Netflix.  It is re-titled Dragon for U.S. distribution.  That's a stupid title because there are no dragons here, plus there already are plenty of Kung Fu flicks titled Dragon. 

This movie is much better with subtitles.  It's actually got a decent plot.  That's so refreshing for the Kung Fu genre.  I really enjoyed it this time, now that I had a better idea of what was going on.  Without subs, I missed a lot of story arcs, and I imagine trying to figure those out half-a-decade ago was annoying and made the fight scenes seem fewer and more far between.  There's some really nice stuff in this film - the cinematography, the CGI, the fight scenes, the settings, all very well executed.  And Kara Hui is magnificent, totally different than her My Young Auntie character, so much so that I didn't even recognize her the first time through.  She delivers one of the best fight scenes in the film.