06-30-2019, 01:59 AM
Donnie Yen as the most amazing high school teacher ever. Like ever ever. He comes to a school facing funding cuts and closure and fixes the life problems of his troubled students. There are so many lectures - about how bad smoking is, about being a good person, about studying hard for your goals - glaringly jingoistic. It's very Hallmark special, with lots of preachy scenes on how we should all do better. Donnie knows all and can solve all the problems. Most are family and poverty issues. Everyone has a backstory told in flashbacks, and there is much crying. He meets all the families and fixes them in absurd ways to pop music in the background - mostly 7 Years by Lukas Graham.
It's super sappy - painfully so.
Then one student gets mixed up in One Championship (Asia's biggest MMA league) and there's this awesome locker room fight where Donnie takes on all these MMA fighters. It's a really complex and brutal fight. It's only a few moves per shot but it's high impact, and tricky stuff. Well composed, worthy of Donnie. If you can't take the sap, fast forward to this fight scene and you'll be rewarded.
Then it gets sappy again. Then it goes into a Donnie war flashback that's sanguineous with lots of explosions. It's like a full on frontline war zone firefight. Scenes of bodies ravaged by war. Donnie dodges bullets and mortar fire, goes full auto and even bazookas up. There's some Donnie soul searching where he backpacks the Great Wall, spends time in a yurt with indigenous folk, goes to snowbound tundra where there are huge yak herds, lots of scenic panoramic shots of Donnie all over China.
Then it gets sappy once more. Then there's another awesome fight - a real mano-a-mano duel. That's also quite good. And these fights go for a long time, much longer than all the fights I've seen in Hallmark Specials combined (not that' I've seen any of those in years, but I can project). The tone change from the Hallmark Special is jarring both times, but once the fight gets rolling, I'm fully invested. Donnie still delivers.
There is sort of a sword scene with a long meat carver, but it's mostly brandishing. Nevertheless, the action is worth the watch - this is a perfect example of a fast forward to the fight scenes kind of movie, unless you're a glutton for Chinese film and want to see what agendas they are propounding like me.
It's super sappy - painfully so.
Then one student gets mixed up in One Championship (Asia's biggest MMA league) and there's this awesome locker room fight where Donnie takes on all these MMA fighters. It's a really complex and brutal fight. It's only a few moves per shot but it's high impact, and tricky stuff. Well composed, worthy of Donnie. If you can't take the sap, fast forward to this fight scene and you'll be rewarded.
Then it gets sappy again. Then it goes into a Donnie war flashback that's sanguineous with lots of explosions. It's like a full on frontline war zone firefight. Scenes of bodies ravaged by war. Donnie dodges bullets and mortar fire, goes full auto and even bazookas up. There's some Donnie soul searching where he backpacks the Great Wall, spends time in a yurt with indigenous folk, goes to snowbound tundra where there are huge yak herds, lots of scenic panoramic shots of Donnie all over China.
Then it gets sappy once more. Then there's another awesome fight - a real mano-a-mano duel. That's also quite good. And these fights go for a long time, much longer than all the fights I've seen in Hallmark Specials combined (not that' I've seen any of those in years, but I can project). The tone change from the Hallmark Special is jarring both times, but once the fight gets rolling, I'm fully invested. Donnie still delivers.
There is sort of a sword scene with a long meat carver, but it's mostly brandishing. Nevertheless, the action is worth the watch - this is a perfect example of a fast forward to the fight scenes kind of movie, unless you're a glutton for Chinese film and want to see what agendas they are propounding like me.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse
