Review – The Art of Action

Considering the “Starz/Encore presents” up front and Samuel L. Jackson doing the narration, I was expecting another run-of-the-mill assemblage of scenes from martial arts movies I’d seen a hundred times. So I was pleasantly surprised when this turned out to be a thoughtful, interesting documentary about the development of the martial arts genre. Most of the emphasis is on China, but the coverage is thorough, going all the way back to the suppression of the Shaolin temple and the spread of its arts to the Chinese opera. The picture also included footage from the silent era, which showed how little the genre has progressed in many ways. To be sure, Jackson’s pseudo-hip commentary isn’t particularly welcome. But this turns out to be a good movie despite him. Worth seeing