After all the hype of Jaa headlining a pure no holds barred action movie again, sad to say this is just your run of the mill chinese web movie that spends nearly the entire front half on sandpaper dry rich family drama with cardboard characters. Jaa only shows up to kick ass, and several the action scenes don't even involve him! At least for Jackie's Foreigner you had Campbell's assured direction and Brosnan when the man wasn't present. Here there…
Never thought 2015's Veteran would be one to get a long gap sequel. Starts off with similar energy and team dynamic but quicklu levels off into a mildly interesting but also somewhat tired student mentor slog about the role of online influencers on the justice system. Cues the viewer into the inevitable "twist" very early on, leading to a dull jog to the end waiting for the lead to catch up in a non-mystery pretending to have the weight of…
Panned at time of release and a box office failure, Bunraku is the kind of bloated visual comic book feast with A-listers hamming it up that general audiences have come to embrace a lot more in recent years. I’m sure if it were released today, the reception would be a lot more forgiving.
For me, Bunraku is a movie caught between two worlds, neither which it ever fully commits itself to. The first is a precision piece of pop art…
The genesis of the Hong Kong cops and robbers genre before it morphed together with the wuxia bloodline and the stunt spectacle into the more familiar heroic bloodshed. There were crime films before this but none as harrowing or as stylistically influential. You’ll find some trace if not entire chunks of Long Arm of the Law—solidified into tropes—in nearly every film that fits under the Hong Kong crime cinema banner for the next three decades to come.
Having just watched…
