02-05-2022, 11:33 PM
Fistful of Vengeance screener unlocked.
You know how I say 'fast forward to the fight scenes?' That might save you 10 or 15 mins off this hour and a half flick. It's solid fight scenes.
Only a few characters carry over from the show. And that teaser for season 2 in the series? Totally irrelevant. It's mostly Kai, Lu and Tommy, who form a sort of Asian three musketeers, and the villainess Zen. No time is wasted explaining the whole Wu Assassin thing. Kai just has superpowers and that's pretty much just qi blasts.
There's a short fight at the beginning in a club against a jiangshi (qi vampire) that makes no sense. Then there's a few minutes break. Then there's a big fight that moves to a car chase and then to another big street fight. Guns, hatchets, butcher knives, machetes, shuriken, frying pans, magic spears, and more. Then there's a break for some gratuitous sex (Go Lewis!)
There's a plot line that's super mythic, tapping the Chinese god of creation Pangu. That's kind of in the way. Should just be fights. For a moment, I was thinking that they were just trying to redo the level of ultravi like The Raid, but there's more breaks and the fights aren't as good.
But don't get me wrong here - the fights are pretty good. Iko is still on point when he drops those elbow strikes. Lewis can move and despite not yet establishing a fighting style beyond good kickboxing, he delivers some solid work here. It's an excellent showcase for Juju as she takes on Iko convincingly - bold to do a decent male hero v female villain fight and carry it off well.
And there's a spectacular one-er in what I consider to be the finale fight. There's lots of digital stitches and it's only around 2 mins, but kudos for the swirling camerawork.
The cinematography is gratuitous drone shots of Bangkok, but Bangkok is a spectacular city so those work. There's a particularly nice drone shot that moves from a fight in a high rise bridge to a car chase in the parking lot.
There's a weird magic ending that didn't really make sense to me and felt really superfluous. The finale is in some strange spark spilling industrial building that has an ancient archeological site in the middle that's a gateway to another dimension or some silliness. This really isn't the sort of film to think about at all. That'll just ruin it.
D00M recommended. Predictions: Yeti will be amused. Greg will be annoyed at its vacuousness. cf will enjoy watching Iko move. KB will find it too ultravi. tg's reaction is unclear.
You know how I say 'fast forward to the fight scenes?' That might save you 10 or 15 mins off this hour and a half flick. It's solid fight scenes.
Only a few characters carry over from the show. And that teaser for season 2 in the series? Totally irrelevant. It's mostly Kai, Lu and Tommy, who form a sort of Asian three musketeers, and the villainess Zen. No time is wasted explaining the whole Wu Assassin thing. Kai just has superpowers and that's pretty much just qi blasts.
There's a short fight at the beginning in a club against a jiangshi (qi vampire) that makes no sense. Then there's a few minutes break. Then there's a big fight that moves to a car chase and then to another big street fight. Guns, hatchets, butcher knives, machetes, shuriken, frying pans, magic spears, and more. Then there's a break for some gratuitous sex (Go Lewis!)
There's a plot line that's super mythic, tapping the Chinese god of creation Pangu. That's kind of in the way. Should just be fights. For a moment, I was thinking that they were just trying to redo the level of ultravi like The Raid, but there's more breaks and the fights aren't as good.
But don't get me wrong here - the fights are pretty good. Iko is still on point when he drops those elbow strikes. Lewis can move and despite not yet establishing a fighting style beyond good kickboxing, he delivers some solid work here. It's an excellent showcase for Juju as she takes on Iko convincingly - bold to do a decent male hero v female villain fight and carry it off well.
And there's a spectacular one-er in what I consider to be the finale fight. There's lots of digital stitches and it's only around 2 mins, but kudos for the swirling camerawork.
The cinematography is gratuitous drone shots of Bangkok, but Bangkok is a spectacular city so those work. There's a particularly nice drone shot that moves from a fight in a high rise bridge to a car chase in the parking lot.
There's a weird magic ending that didn't really make sense to me and felt really superfluous. The finale is in some strange spark spilling industrial building that has an ancient archeological site in the middle that's a gateway to another dimension or some silliness. This really isn't the sort of film to think about at all. That'll just ruin it.
D00M recommended. Predictions: Yeti will be amused. Greg will be annoyed at its vacuousness. cf will enjoy watching Iko move. KB will find it too ultravi. tg's reaction is unclear.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse