Sunday I attended the US Premier of the special effects, CGI overloaded film The Storm Warriors at the New York Asian Film Festival. All I can really say about this movie is that it was loud, explosive, intense, and shall I dare say, Godly? The Chinese have managed to come up with an over the top movie that combines the visual styles of 300 with the fighting styles of Avatar: The Last Airbender. For those of you that don’t know anything about either of these movies just watch the trailers for both films by clicking on the film names. If your imagination can’t support those two concepts together then watch the trailer for The Storm Warriors, also embedded after the jump, before completing this review so you can understand exactly what I am talking about. If you are still intrigued then please read on because The Storm Warriors is a simple yet wild Chinese ride that will surely fulfill your crazy martial arts desires.
The film is directed by The Pang Brothers and is based off a Chinese martial arts comic book, Fung Wan. The Storm Warriors is a standalone sequel because of how radically different it is from its predecessor, Storm Riders, a movie based off the same comic book series. This film tells the story of Lord Godless (Simon Yam), a Japanese warlord who is attempting to invade China but has to deal with a few assassins whose aim is to kill him before he can take over their country. After Nameless (Kenny Ho), the most powerful Assassins that is willing to fight gets hurt, Cloud (Aaron Kwok) and Wind (Ekin Cheng) vow to avenge their fellow assassins and Nameless to protect their country from tyranny. Cloud decides to learn a new sword style while training with Nameless in order to boost his power while Wind decides to take the evil way to significantly increase his power and quickly take out Lord Godless as per Nameless’ request. He ends up training with Lord Wicked (Tak-bun Wong) because Nameless was too weak at the time. Will Wind and Cloud be able to join forces to destroy Lord Godless or will China fall to the powerful and Godless invader?
The awesome stuff: If you are looking for a shit ton of ass kicking then this is your movie because, for some strange reason, it can’t seem to go more than five minutes without some sort of fighting or battle. Not only are there a ton of fight scenes but the opening scene will blow you back into your seat whereas the climatic final battle is on a scale of planetary proportions with blades fighting everywhere, earthly elements shifting, and enough loud ass rock/metal music to keep the testosterone boiling to the beat.
Simon Yam was great as the over the top villain who refused to give up. He was extremely powerful and ridiculously cocky with the result being the perfect comic book villain that was more brawns than brain. Additionally, Simon Yam was at the screening and he did a quick discussion after the film in which he talked about his dislike of the film due to its inability to have an ‘emotional touch.’ You can check it out here.
Lastly, I thought the names were hysterical even though they were relevant to the story. This could be a good or bad thing depending on the person but I will give you a complete rundown of the character names and you can decide if you like them or not. Cloud, Wind, Nameless, Heart, Piggy King, Earth, Sky, Chu Chu, Lord Wicked, Second Dream, and Lord Godless. I know, some are pretty funny.
The mediocre stuff: As far as the directing goes, the Pang Brothers did an ok job. It wasn’t anything special since the entire movie was all special effects. I couldn’t exactly tell what the directors did in terms of guiding the actors but they did a good job working with the martial arts choreographer to get some really cool fights to take place on screen and work with the CGI. Overall, the hand to hand and sword vs. sword fights were much better than the fights where it was just elements battling each other. I think the Pang Brothers could have done a better job orchestrating those elemental battles but they did work nonetheless. Also, some of the CGI was a bit faulty and you could tell what was fake and what wasn’t. It didn’t happen much but when it did you totally noticed it.
As for the acting, Cheng and Kowk’s performances weren’t too bad but it wasn’t worthy of placing it under ‘the awesome stuff.’ I thought Kwok did a better overall job but much it had to do with the fact that he wasn’t consumed by evil and looked like something out of a horror version of Twilight. Their performances were solid but nothing award worthy.
The not so awesome stuff: The plot is very simple and is something we have seen over and over again. Personally I can deal with this but I believe other people may find it a bit dull if they are looking for a captivating story. Additionally, while subtitles have come a long way there are still a few noticeable errors in the translation and this movie is no exception. It only happened once or twice but when it did it made the entire audience laugh even though it wasn’t intended. I personally enjoyed that but again I need to be honest to those who do care.
Overall
Although the movie is simple and shallow, I found myself enjoying it because I needed a movie where I could just sit back and watch people kick each others’ asses and not have to think about what was going on. While I think there is a very limited market for this in the states due to its dulling nature and out of this world type fighting, and that it is subtitled, it can still be a movie totally worth watching if you ever need to distress and take a load off.
If you don’t want to think, have an obsession with martial arts, don’t mind out of this world battles, shallow plots, or funny names then you have to check out the EPIC movie that is The Storm Warriors.
Rating A plotless out of this world martial arts epic that that can make you yell “THIS IS SPARTA!” or make you snicker “what the hell is this shit?” Depends on you.
Trailer
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