Hitting the streets on November 15th from Funimation Entertainment is the fantasy action/adventure film, The Treasure Hunter (Ci Ling). It’s the latest Taiwanese feature from director Yen-ping Chu (Kung Fu Dunk) and stars Hong Kong Film Award winners Jay Chou (The Green Hornet) and Eric Tsang (Bodyguards and Assassins) along with Cliling Lin (Red Cliff).
“Qiaofei (Jay Chou) is a relic expert with a gritty past. When his mentor’s daughter is held hostage over a map with a deadly history, the rugged warrior whips into action! Chaos erupts as he swoops in to the rescue and scours the sands for legendary riches buried deep in China’s northwest desert. Chased down by the shadowy Sandstorm Legion and challenged by countless greedy, bloodthirsty foes, Qiaofei faces danger at every turn to find the tomb—but some treasures aren’t meant to be found.”
I’ll start off by saying that this film is a mash-up between any treasure hunting movie (think Indiana Jones, National Treasure, etc.) and The Mummy except the fact that the quality in this flick is nowhere even close to those gems. The special effects are rather iffy, the acting quality varies and the story is a little bit too farfetched for my liking. Plus, the fighting includes a lot of wirework which takes away from the realistic nature of the main characters and makes some of them equals with the fantasy characters which, in a film like this, seems completely wrong in my eyes.
It may seem like I’m bashing this film, and to a certain extent I am, but I can say that there are some very entertaining moments in The Treasure Hunter, especially anything involving Eric Tsang. Even Jay Chou has some very funny moments because of his blatant carelessness to everything that’s going on around him. Also, even if I’m not a fan of the wirework, there are a few quality action scenes that will get your heart pounding, but for most of the time it is nothing special. Although I still can’t figure out why Jay Chou was fighting a guy who used toilet paper as his special weapon or how he was able to channel his inner Charmin power, that was a bit ridiculous.
The DVD doesn’t come with any bonus features; it is a bare minimum DVD which can also be purchased on Blu-ray if you have a crazy desire to own it after reading my review. I will say that it will probably be required viewing for any fans of Jay Chou since I know how loyal they are. Plus, he is one of the bright spots in the film and one of the few reasons I would ever recommend it.
Overall, The Treasure Hunter is a large scale action fantasy adventure that was sloppily put together. The movie looks pretty good when there aren’t any crazy special effects but because of some poor effects blending, inconsistent acting, and not very good direction, the film doesn’t turn out to be as fun as it really could have been.
Rating: A mess that never lives up to its potential (3.5/10)
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