Archive for the ‘Martial Arts’ Category
Thursday, June 5th, 2025
In the 15 years (!) since the KARATE KID remake I’ve occasionally found myself telling people, “No, seriously, it’s pretty good!” Which is not really what I said in my review at the time, now that I’m re-reading it. So who knows, but I don’t think I’ll be saying that about the new movie KARATE KID: LEGENDS. I won’t try to convince anyone it’s a particularly good movie. But I kinda liked it. Let me say this: it’s definitely way better than THE NEXT KARATE KID, which actually I have to admit I kind of enjoy too.
The cleverest thing about LEGENDS is what we already knew from the trailers: it finds a way to say that the 1984 original and its 2010 remake are not mutually exclusive. In this one the remake’s shifu Han (Jackie Chan, DRAGON BLADE) recruits o.g. karate kid Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio, HITCHCOCK) to help him teach a student, and this in turn is a way to make sense out of the weird title discrepancy that they wanted to make a movie called THE KARATE KID but they cast Jackie Chan so it was about kung fu. Now screenwriter Rob Lieber (PETER RABBIT) invents a relationship between the Han and Miyagi families, and therefore between their kung fu and karate styles. So when one of Mr. Han’s students wants to enter a karate tournament, the shifu wants him to learn specifically Miyagi-do karate from its last known teacher. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Baniaga, Aramis Knight, Ben Wang, Jackie Chan, Jonathan Entwistle, Joshua Jackson, Ming-Na Wen, Ralph Macchio, Rob Lieber, Sadie Stanley, Tim Rozon, Wyatt Oleff, Xiangyang Xu, Yankei Ge
Posted in Reviews, Action, Drama, Martial Arts, Sport | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, June 4th, 2025
RETURN OF THE BASTARD SWORDSMAN (1984) is indeed about the Bastard Swordsman returning. It’s not like BATMAN RETURNS where the title character hasn’t actually gone anywhere and is only returning to the screen – at the very end of BASTARD SWORDSMAN our guy Yun Fei Yang (Norman Chui, LEGEND OF THE LIQUID SWORD) had overcome his fate as a bullied servant of Wudang by mastering Silkworm Skill and defeating the prick who framed him for the murder of the chief and took over the clan. So he becomes their de facto leader but instead of letting them give him a parade or something he immediately walks away with his crush Lun Wan Er (Leanne Liu, WHITE HAIR DEVIL LADY).
Honestly the returning is kind of a bummer, I liked the idea of him traveling around having adventures. Instead this continues the story of Wudang and their feud with Invincible Clan. If you remember, the maniacal Invincible Clan leader Dugu Wu Di (Alex Man, CHINA WHITE) had left for two years of seclusion to further advance his use of the clan’s secret technique Fatal Skill after defeating Wudang in three consecutive duels over 20 years. In this one he comes home and it’s like he woke up out of a coma, he has to hear all this shit that went on in the last act of part 1 with Yun Fei Yang coming out of a cocoon and shit. So Dugu goes to Wudang to demand a duel with our bastard and they don’t want to admit that their chief ghosted them so they act like he just went out for smokes or something, which gets them a week’s reprieve to try to find him. But oh by the way if anyone leaves Wudang during that time they will be killed on sight. That Dugu always has some hardcore stipulations to his offers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Man, Chen Kuan-tai, Lau Siu-Kwan, Leanne Liu, ninjas, Norman Chui, Shaw Brothers
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 5 Comments »
Thursday, May 29th, 2025
BASTARD SWORDSMAN is a 1983 Shaw Brothers production that tells the story of Yun Fei Yang (Norman Chui, HEROES OF THE EAST, ZU WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN), a miserably treated servant of the Wudang kung fu school. He cleans floors and delivers soup and stuff but also in the opening scene the motherfuckers make him run around holding wooden targets for knife practice. When he complains that they’re throwing the knives at him instead of the targets he gets chewed out and called a bastard.
“You can beat me, but don’t call me bastard,” he says, so they immediately beat him and call him a bastard. Sister Lun Wan Er (Leanne Liu, HOLY FLAME OF THE MARTIAL WORLD), daughter of the chief and only female student at Wudang, not only intervenes but brings him to the Hall of Justice to report what they’re doing to him to the uncles. She means well but all it does is get him dressed down some more and told “You’re being unreasonable.”
When Sister says the uncles are being unfair one o them says, “Nonsense. If we were unfair would the chief assign us to be guardians of the law?” In other words authority is always correct by reason of being authority. And authority has decided that the bullies get to keep bullying but Yun Fei Yang has to carry fifty water pails a day. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Man, Leanne Liu, movies that have Wu-Tang albums named after them, Norman Chui, Shaw Brothers, Tony Liu, Tony Lou Chun-Ku, Wang Yong, wuxia, Yeung Ching-Ching, Yuen Tak
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 4 Comments »
Monday, May 26th, 2025
STRIKING RESCUE is not a title I really understand. The movie is not about a rescue that made me say “Wow, what a striking rescue!” I guess maybe I was struck by it? I don’t know. But I do know I enjoyed the movie. It’s a Chinese production, with a largely Chinese cast, but it’s a Tony Jaa movie set in Thailand. The plot is only passable, and playing a character that’s all anger and no innocence means he lacks some of the usual Jaa appeal, but the action is voluminous and ferocious. He still has it, and tariffs have clearly not depleted the Chinese action movie industry’s reserves of elbow grease.
It opens in classic Jaa fashion, with his character Bai An wrapping those giant fists in ragged tape, practicing his trademark earth-shaking elbows, knees and kicks on a stack of tires and a padded wooden dummy, splattering water and dust through the sunbeam that lights the scene, and CG glass shards through the credits. As he hits harder and harder there are flashes of a car flipped over, a wife and daughter shot, Bai An’s cries of anguish. And then we’re back to today and he’s out in a crowded market following somebody. Right into it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eason Hung, Mao Fan, Peng Bo, Philip Keung, Siyu Cheng, Tony Jaa, Xing Yu
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 16 Comments »
Thursday, May 22nd, 2025
May 13, 2005
UNLEASHED (a.k.a. DANNY THE DOG) is a movie I reviewed when it came out 20 years ago, but unlike MINDHUNTERS I’ve rewatched it a few times over the years. In fact I found some notes and screengrabs from an unfinished review when I last watched it in 2021. It’s a truly international creation, an English-language Jet Li vehicle co-starring American Morgan Freeman, produced and directed by Frenchmen, choreographed by Hong Kong legend Yuen Woo-ping and filmed and set in Glasgow, Scotland, but it feels like it has a unified vision, a very specific take on how to make a 2005 action movie with a big heart.
Li plays Danny, a feral person raised in a cage by the cruel gangster Bart (Bob Hoskins, SUPER MARIO BROS.) and trained to be his attack dog. When Bart needs to intimidate debtors or enemies he simply removes Danny’s metal collar and he will go ape shit, destroying everyone in the room with blunt martial arts savagery. Danny is severely traumatized – is he also developmentally disabled in some way? This is never discussed, but for whatever reason he’s very childlike, and he doesn’t know to yearn for a better life until he happens to find one after Bart is attacked by rivals and seemingly killed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bob Hoskins, Jet Li, Kerry Condon, Louis Leterrier, Luc Besson, Mike Lambert, Morgan Freeman, Pierre Morel, Scott Adkins, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime, Martial Arts | 8 Comments »
Friday, May 9th, 2025
ABSOLUTE DOMINION is the new one from writer/director Lexi Alexander (GREEN STREET [HOOLIGANS], PUNISHER: WAR ZONE), her first feature film in 15 years (she’s been doing television). If you’re like me you’ve been interested in her since her PUNISHER movie, are very aware that she was a German kickboxing champion sponsored by Chuck Norris to immigrate to the U.S., where she portrayed Kitana on a Mortal Kombat live tour, and were excited to hear she was doing a martial arts movie. She’s also known for being fearlessly outspoken, particularly about Palestinian and Arab issues, so it was extra promising that this seemed to have an aspect of social commentary to it.
Well, the results are interesting, at least. The movie is primarily set in 2063 A.D., nineteen years after an era of devastating terrorist attacks by various factions of religious zealots. What changed? A live streamer named Fix Huntley (Patton Oswalt, BLADE: TRINITY) jokingly suggested that each religion should train a fighter to enter a tournament called “The Battle of Absolute Dominion” to decide which religion the world would follow. The idea immediately caught on, now Huntley oversees the tournament and I guess everyone just goes along with the results. World peace. Not bad. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Winter, Alok Vaid-Menon, Desire Mia, fighting tournament, James Adam Lim, Julie Ann Emery, June Carryl, Junes Zahdi, Lexi Alexander, Mario D'Leon, Naya Olinga, Olunike Adeliyi, Patton Oswalt, Philip Tan
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 7th, 2025
LOVE HURTS is a trifle, a truffle, a little treat meant to be devoured quickly and forgotten. But that’s much better than I’d heard (one critic called it “nearly unwatchable,” I remember), so I feel kinda guilty that I listened to the conventional wisdom and skipped it in theaters. Ke Huy Quan got his 87North-produced action vehicle, an even greater honor than his Academy Award if you ask me, and I waited for video. For that I apologize.
Quan (BREATHING FIRE) stars as Marvin Gable, a corny realtor who rides his bike to work, toting the heart-shaped cookies he baked for Valentine’s Day, and spreads joy like his name was Ke Huy Quan, so his co-workers would never guess that he was once a brutal and feared assassin. But some old associates and other dangerous people come crashing through his comfortable suburban life when a woman he was supposed to have killed resurfaces to leave them all taunting love notes. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 87North, Andre Eriksen, Ariana DeBose, Cam Gigandet, Can Aydin, Daniel Wu, Drew Scott, Elisabet Ronaldsdottir, Jonathan Eusebio, Josh Stoddard, Ke Huy Quan, Lio Tipton, Luke Passmore, Marshawn Lynch, Matthew Murray, Mustafa Shakir, Phong Giang, Rhys Darby, Sean Astin
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Martial Arts, Romance | 7 Comments »
Monday, March 10th, 2025
LEGENDS OF THE CONDOR HEROES: THE GALLANTS is the unwieldily titled new Tsui Hark joint, which I was grateful to be able to see in a theater. (This puts my lifetime Tsui Hark theatrical screenings at four, after DOUBLE TEAM, KNOCK OFF and FLYING SWORDS OF DRAGON GATE 3D IMAX). Based on a famous story by Jin Yong (whose books also inspired the SWORDSMAN trilogy), it’s the type of thing I hope for from Tsui these days: a wild and extravagant wuxia epic, expertly put together at a swaggering blockbuster scale. A great time at the movies.
It opens with narration by a guy talking about witnessing many famous battles of Genghis Khan (Baya’ertu, CREATION OF THE GODS I: KINGDOM OF STORMS) and the Mongol army. As you watch these enormous conflicts on screen you wonder how the fuck a guy was witnessing it without getting chopped to bits, and then you find out: he was perched above on a cliff. When the Mongols spot him they shoot arrows at him, but he seems to repel them with some sort of energy shield trick. Okay, good, we got a real one here. This is our protagonist Guo Jing (Xiao Zhan, THE ROOKIES), a martial artist who aspires to greatness and has an interestingly convoluted backstory. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ada Choi, Alan Aruna, Baya'ertu, Hu Jun, Jin Yong, Tony Leung Kai-fai, Tsui Hark, Xiao Zhan, Zhang Wenxin, Zhuang Dafei
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, March 4th, 2025
Lately, with reality increasingly losing its appeal, I’ve had more desire to lose myself in fantastical worlds of animation. Even when those places are horrible in their own right it feels like an escape, because at least they’re made of nice drawings and paintings. NINJA SCROLL transports us to a mystical past of deadly assassins, some with magic powers, others just so skilled that they might as well have ‘em. This is from 1993 and it was legendary in that decade for providing extravagant violence that seemed novel to us Americans when delivered in cartoon form. It still kinda works as that, but more importantly I think it holds up as a pretty entertaining movie.
The writer/director is Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and though I never really made the connection that it was the same guy, I’ve written about several of his works. I talked a little about VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST (2000) in my original BLADE II review, I covered THE ANIMATRIX (2003) when I was revisiting that whole franchise (he did the “Program” segment), I really liked his DTV/OVA HIGHLANDER: THE SEARCH FOR VENGEANCE (2007) when I did my review series Highlanderland. Also he wrote the live action AZUMI 2: DEATH OR LOVE, though unfortunately I was disappointed in that one. I do like his stories on the other stuff, but it’s obviously the drawing and movement that makes them fly (often literally). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: anime, ninjas, Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Posted in Reviews, Action, Cartoons and Shit, Martial Arts | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, February 25th, 2025
I’m generally a sucker for an international co-production action movie, especially the ones based in Chinese martial arts but with some western stars. For example the one with Milla Jovovich, or the one with Coolio, or NAKED WEAPON. But I’m suspicious of these big period piece ones with an American star or two outside of their usual context. I’ve even hesitated to pull the trigger on the one with Arnold in it. I’m still a defender of THE GREAT WALL, but most of these are not Zhang Yimou joints. It’s easy to assume that the Hollywood guy is phoning it in for a paycheck and the international producers are trying to coast on name value, leaving us to be bored by a bunch of yelling and sword clanging and CG armies.
DRAGON BLADE (2015) also has the hurdle of being a late-period Jackie Chan movie, but it defies the odds. Give or take some of the awkwardness of the format, this is an entertaining (and charmingly corny) story about what happens when a rogue Roman legion link up with a badass squad of disavowed Chinese peacemakers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adrien Brody, Daniel Lee, Jackie Chan, John Cusack, Lin Peng, Mika Wang, Sharni Vinson
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 7 Comments »
