This is far from a flawless movie but then again, the movie was also
obviously aiming for something else. It's simply meant to entertain and
to be sort of a throwback to the golden era of old fashioned, Asian,
Kung Fu flicks. And I must say, it works out well enough as such.
It's obvious this was a labor of love for RZA and for
co-writer/producer Eli Roth, who share a passion and understanding for
the genre. You could say this is the foremost thing that lets the movie
work out. It doesn't quite feel like a millions of dollars budgeted
movie, that attempts to be a deliberately bad and silly Kung Fu flick
at time but rather it feels like a quality movie that's paying homage
to the genre, by not just nodding at it but also by doing plenty of
original genre related stuff of its own.
It's actually a pretty detailed movie, both visually as story-wise.
This might sound strange, since the actual story can get quite messy
and simplistic at times. But this actually is something that's very
consistent with the genre. Even the best genre examples 'suffer' from
this and movies such as this mostly thrive on its characters, fight
scenes and everything else that is leading up to its, always
inevitable, finale.
I can definitely see how its story and storytelling in particular could
bother people but you have to keep in mind that nothing about this
movie is going to be air tight and not everything is going to make
sense or explained into detail. It's just a movie in a genre that
forces you to just go along with things and don't question things too
much. After all, it relies on a silly premise and the laws of physics
don't apply to this movie neither.
Having said all of that; this clearly still isn't the best thing the
genre has to offer. The fight scenes looked cool enough but there
aren't always shot that well, for example. Not sure if it was the
editing or the directing but something often felt lacking about it.
Another thing that bothered me was the fact that this movie featured
too many different characters in it. It tried to do and tell too much,
while the story itself really didn't need any of that. It probably had
everything to do with it that the movie its first initial cut was about
4 hours long and the movie got trimmed down heavily after that. The
movie instead is now trying to put too much into 95 minutes, making
things feel a bit messy and rushed. It really should had focused on one
main character and one main character alone, to make things at least a
bit more involving and easier- as well as more pleasant, to follow.
I still definitely liked the movie good enough for its silliness and
all of the entertainment it had to offer, even though I actually still
think they could and should had pushed things a bit further at times.
It wasn't a punishment to watch so to speak and I could even say about
it that it's a movie I probably would watch again at one point. But be
aware though, it's clearly a movie that's not just for everybody.
In feudal China, a blacksmith who makes weapons for a small village is put in the position where he must defend himself and his fellow villagers. From: IMDb.com
Directed by: RZA
Starring: Russell Crowe, Cung Le, Lucy Liu and others
