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).
DYNASTY WARRIORS (2021) review
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RAILWAY HEROES (2021) short review
Yang Feng’s directing debut Railway Heroes follows the resistance fighters of the Shandong Rail Corps, who relentlessly fought the Japanese invaders during the Second Sino-Japanese War, from 1937 to 1945. A team of railroad workers led by Hong (Zhang Hanyu) conducts sabotage operations against Japanese trains headed for the battlefront in East China, with station operator Wang (Fan Wei) as their source of intel. It’s a much more somber take on that time in history than Ding Sheng’s Jackie Chan vehicle Railroad Tigers in 2016, but not necessarily a more realistic one. Therein lies the film’s problem: it never chooses between being a rip-roaring, over-the-top semi-patriotic spectacle like Dante Lam’s Operation Mekong and Red Sea for example, or being a realistic, reverent historical account like, Feng Xiaogang’s Assembly. There’s merit in choosing the middle ground, but what results in a long simmer of a film. It’s beautiful to look at with its almost monochrome snowbound cinematography (courtesy of the director himself), never less than entertaining thanks to the unimpeachable charisma of Zhang Hanyu and Fan Wei in roles they know like the back of their hand (the rugged leader of men and the jovial yet wily bear, respectively), and it’s capped off by a stunning and bloody action scene across train cars, yet there’s fire missing in the belly of this steel beast. The supporting cast is largely unmemorable and barely fleshed out (either selfless Chinese fighters or smirking Japanese devils), and there’s neither enough action scenes to get the pulse racing, nor enough historical detail to educate. Thankfully, wide-eyed patriotism is confined to a single scene of resistance fighters being sworn into the Communist Party – amusingly, it might be the film’s most bombastic moments, with composer He Min’s fine score thundering away like the Avengers are landing in East China. ***
ALL U NEED IS LOVE (2021) short review
Ten Hong Kong production companies and two dozen Hong Kong celebrities unite forces, for free, in All U Need is Love, an ensemble comedy shepherded by old hand Vincent Kok, for the benefit of local film industry workers painfully impacted by the Covid crisis. From these best of intentions emerges a scattershot collection of mediocre vignettes as we follow Hongkongers quarantined in a hotel: Eric Tsang and Tony Leung Ka Fai reprise their horny characters from Pang Ho Cheung’s classic Men Suddenly in Black, looking for a sexcapade within the hotel’s limited roster of young females; hotel manager Michael Hui grandstands while trying desperately to escape quarantine (one of his attempts is foiled by a random Jackie Chan appearance, in his briefest fight ever against Ken Lo), Julian Cheung and Louis Cheung trade threats but warm to each other as rival gangsters forced to share a room… There’s more, but nothing much worth mentioning. In 75 minutes the film hurries clumsily to the conclusion that love conquers all, but keeps dropping cameos (Louis Koo, Francis Ng, Raymond Wong, Yuen Qiu as – you guessed it – the landlady from Kung Fu Hustle…) because who would keep watching anyway? But it’s a benefit film, hurried into production under strained circumstances, so it’s hard to pounce on it too hard. It’s like 1991’s The Banquet all over again, only with much fewer stars. (no rating under the circumstances)
A WRITER’S ODYSSEY (2021) review
The third most successful film of Chinese New Year 2021, albeit a wide margin behind the first two, Lu Yang’s A Writer’s Odyssey (also known as Assassins in Red) follows Guan Ning (Lei Jiayin) a shell of a man desperately looking for his daughter, who was kidnapped six years before. One day, he’s approached by Tu Ling (Yang Mi), the mysterious right-hand woman of tech magnate Li Mu (Yu Hewei). Tu knows everything about Guan: not only his life’s tragedy, but also his almost paranormal abilities – to throw very precisely at impossible angles, to not feel pain… She tells him she has found the trace of his now teenage daughter, and can help him be reunited with her, if and only if he assassinates Lu Kongwen (Dong Zijian), the author of Godslayer, a fantasy novel being serialized on the net, and whose plot turns seem to have a direct effect on Li Mu’s health. In parallel, we follow the adventures of Kongwen (also Dong Zijian), Godslayer’s lead character, as he journeys through the war-torn kingdom of Ranliang to avenge his sister (a too briefly-seen Tong Liya) by killing the land’s evil despot Lord Redmane, protected by an army of red-armored assassins.
COUNTERATTACK (2021) short review
In his directing debut Counterattack, Vincent Zhao stars as Lu Ziming, an elite mercenary who goes on the run in the jungle after being framed for the murder of an oil tycoon in the fictional country of Kunlang; with him is a female reporter (Jiang Yiyi) holding the proof of his innocence. With its jungle action, drone fetish and armed gweilos, Counterattack is cut from the same cloth as Wolf Warrior, another martial arts actor’s directing debut. But while Wu’s film was a big screen hit that relaunched his career, Zhao’s film is a much cheaper affair (no ‘Yu Nan, Ni Dahong and Scott Adkins’-level supporting cast here, and smaller-scale action scenes), and went straight to VOD. It’s still very much a vanity project, with Zhao playing a one-man army repeatedly noted for his handsomeness, and estimated to be “in his thirties” (he was 48 at the time of shooting). The plot is amateurish, a simplistic frame-up followed by an even more simplistic, well, counter-attack. The action, choreographed by Ha Siu Lung (a frequent assistant to Lee Tat Chiu), is mundane, skimpy and awkwardly edited, often making it look like Vincent Zhao has no experience in martial arts (no easy feat). It’s a lot of jungle stalk-and-slash in the first half, followed by compound infiltrate-and-kill in the second half: clearly, Zhao is a Rambo fan, and he even sews himself up like Sly’s iconic Vietnam vet. The latter scene is actually the best of the film (damning with faint praise), a rare moment of intentional levity as Lu Ziming bites on a squeaky toy while removing a bullet from his shoulder – his repressed cries of pain morphing into plastic squeaks. A sequel is teased in a cartoonish epilogue, but Wolf Warrior II needn’t worry for its place in the record books. *1/2
Asian Film Strike