An adaptation of the Japanese hack-and-slash video game of the same title that has spanned 24 years and 15 consoles, Roy Chow’s Dynasty Warriors was shot in 2017 but dragged its feet through post-production for 4 years due to financial issues, finally landing with a thud at the Chinese box-office, with an online release following less than a week later. Like the video game, it follows the epic events of Luo Guanzhong’s fundamental novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms while infusing it with fantasy tropes: no mythical creatures, but near-superhuman heroes wielding weapons infused with supernatural energy. And so the future lords and generals of the Three Kingdoms era: Liu Bei (Tony Yang), Guan Yu (Han Geng), Zhang Fei (Justin Cheung), and their future enemy Cao Cao (Wang Kai), as they lead the resistance against imperial usurper Dong Zhuo (Lam Suet) and his undefeated general, Lv Bu (Louis Koo).
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DYNASTY WARRIORS (2021) review
Posted by LP Hugo on May 7, 2021
https://asianfilmstrike.com/2021/05/07/dynasty-warriors-2021-review/
A CITY CALLED MACAU (2019) short review
Posted by LP Hugo on August 27, 2019
https://asianfilmstrike.com/2019/08/27/a-city-called-macau-2019-short-review/
THE GREAT DETECTIVE (2019) review
Roy Chow’s long delayed (it was originally set for a Summer 2017 release) The Great Detective is based on the popular detective stories of Chen Xiaoqing, an author considered the “Conan Doyle of the East”. It follows Huo Sang (Han Geng), a brilliant private detective who, flanked by his trusty sidekick Bao Lang (Yin Zheng), accepts a fortune in gold from a powerful businesswoman (Carina Lau) to solve the murder of her aide-de-camp. The apparent culprit is Jiang Nan Yan, a gentleman thief known as the “face-shifter”: an ability to change his face has made him impossible to identify, let alone catch. Eager to help Huo and Bao is Bai Mudan (Zhang Huiwen), a bank teller and wannabe sleuth who is a great admirer of the detective. But soon the trio of investigators find themselves stalked by a mysterious blonde woman, while new murders signed by Jiang Nan Yan make the news.
Posted by LP Hugo on February 3, 2019
https://asianfilmstrike.com/2019/02/03/the-great-detective-2019-review/
DETECTIVE DEE: THE FOUR HEAVENLY KINGS (2018) review
Tsui Hark’s second prequel to his career-resurrecting hit Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010), picks up right where there previous installment, Rise of the Sea Dragon, left off: Tang Emperor Gaozong entrusting Di Renjie (Mark Chao) with the Dragon-taming mace, a powerful weapon made of stardust steel and a symbol of his promotion to the highest level of responsibility towards the throne. But Wu Zetian (Carina Lau), the Emperor’s chief consort and co-ruler of the Chinese empire, views this promotion as a critical mistake, and she orders Yuchi Zhenjin (William Feng), the head of the Justice Department and Di Renjie’s sworn brother after the events of the previous film, to recover the mace. Torn between brotherly loyalty and imperial duty, and highly suspicious of the shady quartet of Taoist fighters the Empress assigned to assist him, Yuchi nevertheless obeys orders. Yet Di Renjie is always one step ahead, and Wu Zetian – councelled by a mysterious faceless lord – resorts to framing him for an assassination attempt on a member of the imperial family. Things are further complicated by the appearance at the imperial court of a giant, deadly golden dragon.
Posted by LP Hugo on July 7, 2018
https://asianfilmstrike.com/2018/07/07/detective-dee-the-four-heavenly-kings-2018-review/
SHE SHOOTS STRAIGHT (aka LETHAL LADY) (1990) review
Joyce Godenzi, a former Miss Hong Kong of Sino-Australian descent, had a short career as a lead actress, before marrying Sammo Hung Kam-Bo in 1995 and retiring from the film industry. The few films she made as a lead actress were often associated with the successful Girls with Guns sub-genre of action cinema, which in the late eighties and early nineties had people like Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Khan or Kara Hui as its most famous faces. Her best-known film remains Corey Yuen’s She Shoots Straight, in which she plays a career-oriented policewoman who marries Tsung-Pao (Tony Leung Ka Fai), the only son in the Huang family. She has to face the resentment of her husband’s four sisters, (all of them cops under her command, which makes things more complicated) who do not approve, among other things, of her unwillingness to have a baby just yet. The elder sister Ling (Carina Lau) is also defiant of Mina’s authority on the force, and enraged that her own mother and brother are siding with Mina in every argument. At the same time, they have to put their differences aside to stop a gang of Viet-namese criminals (headed by the great Yuen Wah) on a crime spree through Hong Kong. Sammo Hung Kam-Bo endearingly crops up from time to time, surely to show his future wife some support (he’s also a producer on this film).
Posted by LP Hugo on September 22, 2012
https://asianfilmstrike.com/2012/09/22/she-shoots-straight-aka-lethal-lady-1990-review/
NAUGHTY BOYS (1986) short review
An amateurishly plotted, not even sporadically funny comedy that inexplicably casts Mars as its lead (great stuntman, not good actor) and the lovely Kara Hui as a plain jane (really?) to Carina Lau’s alpha-female. Logic is absent, the gags are uninspired, and the action (supervised by Jackie Chan’s Stunt Team) is only interesting when Hui gets in on it. The plot involves a hidden loot and a hapless idiot (Mars) hunted by his ex-partners in crime, fresh out of prison (and headed by Phillip Ko). There is a literally blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by Jackie Chan (a cameo predictably blown to deceitful proportions in the film’s DVD advertising), but in the end the only thing that sticks in the mind is a short outtake at the end where Jackie Chan demonstrates a dicy stunt to Kara Hui, who replicates it to perfection. *
Posted by LP Hugo on September 10, 2012
https://asianfilmstrike.com/2012/09/10/naughty-boys-1986-short-review/
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