Film: The Storm Warriors
Release date: 12th July 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 105 mins
Director: Oxide Pang Chun & Danny Pang
Starring: Aaron Kwok, Ekin Cheng, Kenny Ho, Nicholas Tse, Charlene Choi, Simon Yam
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Studio: Cine Asia/Showbox
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Hong Kong
The Pang Brothers do not waste the grandeur associated with their landmark movie. The first Chinese-language film to utilise blue screen technology, The Storm Warriors pushes the limits of special effects, but at what cost?
Lord Godless, an evil Japanese warlord, is seeking to conquer China and has poisoned the martial artists that had tried to stand in his way. Cloud (Aaron Kwok), Wind (Ekin Cheng) and the legendary Nameless (Kenny Ho) manage to break free but, following a struggle with Godless, are injured and forced to seek Lord Wicked's help.
Lord Wicked reveals that in order to beat Godless and save China, the warriors must first allow the same evilness that corrupted Wicked into themselves, harnessing the strength it offers, even it if means putting their own lives at risk...
From the outset, the Pang Brothers' MO is clear: maximum flair and minimal story. In fact, their ambition to get cracking on the more sparkly, technically-impressive portions of The Storm Warriors is such that they make the bold decision to entirely encapsulate what should probably be the first two acts of the film within a short, obligatory disclaimer, allowing them to get right into the combat without having to worry about anything so trifling as character development or the enriching of the story.
After the brief summing up of the very straightforward plot, we are introduced to the heroes and villains, none of whom are treated to any sort of three-dimensional fleshing-out but whom exist as personifications of righteousness and pure evil (Lord Godless, later in the film, even refers to himself as “evil,” lending the whole affair a childish outlook). They all serve simply as the sparks for the Pang Brothers' fireworks show which, while ultimately not ever able to compensate for the overly simplistic opening we are expected to invest interest in, does serve up quite a feast for the eye.
Being the world's first Chinese-language film to be shot in blue screen, and being based upon a comic book which placed a lot of onus on combat, it is no surprise that so much of the film's stake rests in the performance of the visuals, and in that department it does not disappoint, with many of the fights - in particular the montage depicting Lord Godless' son, Heart and his army's ravaging of Chinese innocents - proving to be immensely stylish, gratifying spectacles. The Pang Brothers indulge consistently and convincingly in the finest details of the Earthly elements harnessed for attacks by Cloud and the heroes, cleverly manipulating the subtleties of the immediate terrain of China but, problematically, leaving the nation vague and unexplored as a whole in this rather shallow exhibition of martial arts and special effects.
The film, at times, becomes comically and actually rather irritatingly simplistic, with no rules ever outlined about who is able to do what and why or when exactly all of this is taking place, giving the whole affair a feel it would be kind to label abstract. The simplicity is such that it all feels rather juvenile, with the fights - though highly impressive in the visual sense - devoid of intellectual or emotional substantiation of any kind. Add to that the fact the basic motivations driving the characters - Godless just wants to be evil while Wind and Cloud want to stop him from destroying their country - and you have something resembling a very expensive schoolyard play-fight, with the battles escalating in scale without even a passing thought about anything to do with rules or limits. You could almost imagine Wind shouting as he prepares an attack: "I counter your super evil ice attack by doing an even more powerful super fire attack, which you can't avoid!"
The Pang Brothers laden the characters with a perennial angst which makes them an even less appealing emotional investment than their lack of dimensions had already rendered them, with the film's single-mindedness reverberating down into the characters who spend the majority of the duration treating the subsidiary, less powerful characters with a dismissive disdain, isolating them and, more crucially, the audience from involvement in the story. And by the time the lengthy final battle winds down, few questions have been answered about the motivations of the characters and even fewer about why the audience had been expected to suspend their disbelief for a third act 105 minutes long.
The Storm Warriors squeezes every last drop from the brand new technology made available to its makers for the first time, and does succeed as an exhibition of special effects which, though gloriously stylish in places, is emotionally and intellectually inconsequential as a whole. DWS
No comments:
Post a Comment