04-20-2013, 02:58 PM
This is a really odd flick. It has a bit of Mo Lei Tau humor ala Stephen Chow. It has good veritas from leads Tony Leung and Zhao Xun with her crazy eyes. It's opulent. The magic is supposed to be stage tricks, but they are all special effects, which are marginally explained in some scenes, downright sorcery in others. There is sort of a sword fight, some foreplay fu, and a gratuitous blood spitting. There's a battalions of ninjettes lead by a Japanese villain armed with a super CGI shuriken that can cut through columns. There's a warlord in a cowboy hat with a cowboy gun. There a flying guillotine. There's a recursive movie in a movie. It tries to be funny, romantic, wise, and an adventure, most of which makes little sense. No bollywood, but pseudo Cirque du Soleil. In the end, I was left wondering, wtf was the point of that?
Shadow boxing the apocalypse