Review – Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Simu Liu is absolutely charming in the title role of this big-budget fantasy effects piece. The story is standard stuff: a talented young martial artist discovers his secret destiny and goes on to save the world from the encroaching powers of darkness. The forces of evil have a slight Lovecraftian twist, which I enjoyed. Overall this is an apt MCU adaptation of the source material. Mildly amusing

Review – Mortal Kombat (2021)

This reboot is slicker and more expensive than its predecessor, but the story remains video-game-adaptation simple. Once again Earth’s hereditary heroes do battle under confusing circumstances with invaders from another dimension. The plot doesn’t make much sense, but it provides enough glue to hold the action sequences together. Fight choreography is good, and the effects fit in nicely. Mildly amusing

Review – Special Ops

These ops aren’t very special. We got on a Stephen Bauer kick and decided to watch some of his movies, which is a shame because apparently a lot of them look a lot like this one. And to add insult to injury, Bauer’s barely in it. Most of the screen time is devoted to the martial arts styling and random macho posturing of star / writer / producer A. J. Draven, who looks too much like Ben Stiller on steroids to be taken seriously. Fortunately, his appearance doesn’t exactly ruin the movie. Taking anything this bad seriously was never in the cards. See if desperate

Review – Ninja Assassin

Finally a movie combines good martial arts action with the range of effects work possible with CGI. The plot is standard stuff: rebel ninja with a heart of gold goes up against his former clan while protecting a whistle-blowing CIA operative from assassination. However, the combination of effects and choreography put the fight scenes a cut above the usual low-budget kung fu crap. Mildly amusing

Review – Double Impact

Jean Claude Van Damme plays twin brothers separated in infancy after their parents are murdered, which doubles the need for plot twists that explain his accent. Then as adults Hong Kong criminal Alex and California pretty boy Chad reunite to inflict kung fu revenge on their parents’ killers. The martial arts sequences are fairly good, but the rest of the movie is run-of-the-mill. Mildly amusing

Review – Sanshiro Sugata 2

This is the movie I was afraid the first one would be. The print I saw was terrible, which is okay because the movie itself was no great shakes. Our judo champion hero violates the sacred rules of the dojo by fighting for money against an American boxer and accepting without permission a challenge from a couple of karate expert jerks. Though set in 1887, this was made in 1944. The resulting anti-American propaganda – particularly the sailor who mumbles like Popeye until Sugata throws him off a dock – is stiff and silly. Kurosawa later openly admitted that he had no interest in making this movie, and it shows. Mildly amusing

Review – Sanshiro Sugata

Though this is Akira Kurosawa’s first feature film, it includes a lot of the visual and plot elements that would later make him one of the world’s best directors. The story follows a man through the early years of his career as a judo student. By learning to quiet his mind and appreciate the beauty of life, he becomes a superior fighter. Overall the picture follows lines similar to Kurosawa’s later work but without the bloodshed or the epic running time. After watching disappointing early efforts from some of my other favorite directors, I was pleasantly surprised by how good this one was. Worth seeing

Review – Samourais

Judging by the names in the cast and crew, this is one of the most international movies I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the biggest messes. After several hundred years in the same body, a demon needs to be reborn. So he impregnates a Japanese girl living abroad, forcing her father to fly all the way to France to try to kill her. It proves to be no easy task, as he doesn’t want to do it and a French friend and a squad of the demon’s henchmen protect her. For the most part this is just garden variety bad. But one element particularly bothered me: the friend has a stupid, annoying sidekick who appears to be of North African descent. I’m not sufficiently familiar with French culture to say for certain, but I’m willing to bet that the guy is an ethnic stereotype that would be considered highly offensive as a Black or Hispanic caricature in an American movie. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Ninja

If this had come out back in the 1970s, I would have considered it one of the best non-Bruce-Lee martial arts pictures I’d ever seen. However, three or four decades later this is strictly derivative stuff. The plot – American ninja battles former fellow student angry about being passed over for promotion to head of the ninja school – is all too familiar. The choreography is way better than old Chuck Norris productions, but it’s nowhere near as good as the fancy fights in most 21st century kung fu flicks. Though it has a few good stabbings, for the most part it’s just dull. See if desperate

Review – Good Guys Wear Black

Ohmygod, Chuck Norris! Who told you that you could act? Whoever put that notion in your head is not your friend. You need to do way less gum flapping and way more ass beating. Seriously. The basic plot structure here is typical stuff about a special forces unit in Vietnam abandoned in the field as part of an evil scheme by crooked politicians. After the survivors return stateside and resume their normal lives (naturally Chuck is a macho race car driver), one of the bad guys seeks to cover up the whole mess by putting out a hit on everyone. The picture sports a handful of good action sequences, but it’s mostly yakkity yak. See if desperate

Review – Hero

On the surface this looks like yet another Crouching Tiger production, a flying-swords-of-kung-fu-death picture with good production values and extra added prettiness. But this one also packs a modern moral under the choreography and cinematography. An expert swordsman (Jet Li) gains an audience with the Emperor after slaying three assassins who posed a threat to the throne. As soldier and statesman talk, different versions of events unfold. I can’t get too far into the conclusion without at least partially spoiling the picture, so suffice it to say that this seems better geared for Chinese audiences than for the potential North American market. Mildly amusing

Review – Enter the Ninja

Exit the brain cells. The title is no doubt meant to evoke the memory of Bruce Lee’s most famous picture, but the first two words of the title are the closest the two movies come to resembling each other. The plot is the usual, trite nonsense about a ninja-trained American who comes to the defense of a friend being hassled by a wealthy jerk who wants his land. The real stand-out element, however, is Menachem Golan himself in the director’s chair. This thing is so badly mishandled that the fight sequences – the bread and butter of flicks like this – begin to resemble comedy routines. Even the soundtrack is dreadful, sounding like the music for bad superhero cartoons from the early 70s. Normally I’d be willing to dish out a couple of points just because movies this bad usually have a certain charm (or at least a good kata or two). But for some unexplained reason they throw in cockfighting sequences on top of everything else. Honestly, there’s more cockfighting in this than there is in movies about cockfighting. See if desperate

Review – Unleashed

If Jet Li hadn’t been in this, I probably would have skipped it. And that would have been a partial shame, because the concept was sort of interesting. Li plays an emotionless fighter who remains completely docile as long as he has a dog collar on. But when his boss the loan shark (Bob Hoskins) takes it off, he turns into an ass-whupping machine. But the “dog” escapes from his master and ends up befriended by a blind piano tuner (Morgan Freeman). The resulting drama is plenty maudlin, but it does feature some well-choreographed fight sequences. Audiences have come to expect no less from Li. Mildly amusing

Review – The Octagon

Jeez, Chuck. Just shut up and fight. Some of the martial arts sequences in this old Chuck Norris flick are okay – especially the big show-down in the end – but they’re too few and far between. The rest of the picture sports some of the worst dialogue and voice-overs ever recorded on film. So before you sit through the whole thing, check to see if some altruistic soul hasn’t perhaps cut this down to nothing but ninja battles and posted it on Youtube. That’ll save you more than an hour, not to mention considerable wear and tear on your nerves. Mildly amusing

Review – Forbidden Warrior

Usually one must turn to the Sci Fi Channel for productions of this quality, though I think I actually recorded it off one of the Showtimes. Regardless of venue, here we have yet another Asian-flavored sword and sorcery movie. A young woman – the “chosen one” – is taught martial arts by a blind magician while the two sons of a ruthless warlord … well, I think you can see where this is going. If you like this sort of thing, you’ve come to the right place. Mildly amusing

Review – The One

Imagine Time Cop and Double Impact mashed together. Swap Jet Li for Jean Claude Van Damme, and you’ve got a pretty good idea what’s in store for you here. Sure, it’s travel between dimensions rather than through time. And rather than twins, our hero is also his own evil doppelganger from an alternate universe. Still, the whole thing tastes suspiciously like leftovers. To his credit, Li does some snazzy fight choreography. If only the action sequences hadn’t been burdened with so much sci fi nonsense, this might have been a better movie. Mildly amusing

Review – The Forbidden Kingdom

It was cool to watch Jet Li and Jackie Chan work together. Occasionally we get some good cinematography. The rest of this is mostly a Sci-Fi Channel picture artificially inflated to big screen proportions. The Chinese folk legend stuff could have been fun, but as usual with Hollywood it has to be about a white kid magically transported to the land of legends. If only the writer and director had been a bit less self-indulgent, I think they could have made something solid out of this. Mildly amusing

Review – Kill Bill Vol. 2

I knew guys in college that wrote screenplays like this. Of course, most of them are still delivering pizza for a living. Oh that the same fate should have befallen Quentin Tarantino. By some miracle this one’s even worse than the first. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Kill Bill Vol. 1

The movie’s an almost constant parade of fight sequences, some of which work and some of which don’t. The swordplay in particular is probably a lot more impressive if you’ve never seen Toshiro Mifune or any of the other Japanese greats this stuff is “borrowed” from. And that pretty well sums up the rest of the experience as well: stylish but inept. Quentin Tarantino’s witless misogyny drives a big chunk of the story, so most of the production that actually counts as original isn’t worth watching. Finally, this clearly isn’t intended to stand on its own. So I expect if you’re going to devote two hours to this stinker you might as well go ahead and spend another 130 minutes or so to sit through the second part. See if desperate

Review – Bulletproof Monk

Chow Yun Fat once again lends his talents to an all-too-Hollywood martial arts action movie slash goofy buddy comedy. This one wasn’t quite as bad as Rush Hour in the offensive ethnic humor department, and a lot of the choreography was pretty good. But it’s still the story of an Asian kung fu master who takes a westerner under his wing for no readily apparent reason other than potential box office receipts. If they’d left the dumb white kid out and just focused on the Tibetan monk (Chow) pursued by an evil Nazi and his mercenary henchpersons, this would have been a much better movie. Mildly amusing