JAH 9000
There are a few things to like about this presentation. The fight choreography wasn't bad. There was an appropriate amount of humor, which is more or less inevitable in a Drunken Style story. There are quite a few more negatives: 1. The score was kind of one-dimensional and overly moody. It seemed more like the soundtrack of a video game than a deliberate attempt to augment a story with music. 2. There was a disappointing amount of martial arts, and when it occurred, it was generally underwhelming. Drunken fighting was even less present - which is a significant problem, for obvious reasons. There was also no real narrative relationship between the hero and the form. He trains a bit, but he sucks at it. And then his master disappears, never to return. He "learns the secret" of Drunken Fist after being weirdly electrocuted by chi lightning while in jail, and proceeds to more impressively beat up a water barrel than any enemy he later defeats. It's nonsensical and disjointed, and doesn't take Drunken Fist seriously (within the idiom, at least). 3. The villain is a super cheesy stereotype, complete with absurdly fake white hair and giant crazy man eyebrows. 4. There are a slew of important characters who appear out of nowhere, or vanish into nowhere, or have secret motives revealed out of the blue. 5. There is an overabundance of moody interludes, in which the hero is staring into the middle ground, breathing heavily.6. There are numerous pointless relationships, such as the annoying woman in the brothel who supposedly harshly abandoned Beggar So when his fortunes turned, AND stole a pile of his money. Yet, there's no lead-in to this betrayal, so nobody gives a flip. It's just an absurdity, and the audience dislikes the character because she's acted badly, not because anything she did in the narrative. The "master" - I just can't get over the fact he just wanders on. He writes some letter and bails. He never faces his old foe. He's never killed so as to motivate Beggar So. He just leaves mid-story and that's that. Prior to that, he doesn't make much of an impact. He doesn't train So in any meaningful fashion - even though the realization of Drunken Fist is supposed to be his life's great dream. And then... in spite of that same fact... he just shoves off before seeing whether or not So pulls it off... WHAT? Then, his daughter... There's no chemistry, and no attempt to simulate it. She's just kind of there, and she has female body parts, and so we're expected to agree that there's a deep and great love affair going on. That's helped along (not at all) by a weird, sudden, random sex fantasy in the mind of So. Otherwise, she's furniture, existing mainly to end up a distressed damsel at the climax, when Captain Eyebrows threatens her life in a bid to escape. 7. The movie is in Chinese, with subtitles. That's cool. But it also seems to be overdubbed in Chinese. I'm sure there's some reason for this - but it's annoying. Extremely annoying. I gave it a 2. I say it's a good effort, with a good bit of attention to detail in certain important areas. That rating is largely based upon the first segment of the flick, which is watchable and even capable of instilling false hope - but after Su Can gets arrested, the fail parade begins. Be advised: You can't UNwatch it.
eldergreyscion
I love terrible kung fu movies. That being said, this was so much worse than terrible that I couldn't even finish it. If a film could give a human being cancer, this would be the one. The fight choreography was decent. The direction, acting, dialogue and everything else about the movie made me want to strangle puppies. HBO did a very, very poor job of rendering this story watchable. 1/10 can not watch. Can also not watch the next movie because I've poured bleach in my eyes in order to not be haunted by this crap.
