Been waiting for this movie for a good couple of weeks. Jet Li and Jackie Chan!! What’s not to like!? Yarr, it’s got a corny title. Want to know what’s the Chinese title? Translated, it’s “King of Kung Fu”. Sheeesh!!
Jackie is a talented stuntman with very flashy and entertaining kungfu. But seriously, he’s old, and he can’t be a match for Jet Li, a real Wushu master. This was my misgivings.
But a name popped up in the beginning credits. Collin Chou. Seraph from Matrix Reloaded. The evil Vietnamese gangster fighting Donnie Yen in Flashpoint. He has a vicious and ruthless fighting style! My hopes for the movie soared immediately! But why didn’t they give him a more prominent spot on the poster! He deserves more recognition!
The movie has two obligatory oriental beauties to lend it an air of mystique. A displaced traveler on a quest. An item of power that has to be taken to a mountain. An evil warlord with purple eye-shadows.
Nonetheless, the kungfu made up for all this. And the Monkey God too. I was happy to see the Monkey God as an element of the plot.
The drunken master faced off the shaolin monk. This fight was very entertaining to watch, but it didn’t have the intensity of a Donnie Yen fight. Jackie Chan is old. You just can’t get that thought out of your head, no matter how well he disguised it.
There’s the ‘traditional’ scene of the kungfu master abusing his student. Very nostalgic.
Then a pretty decent Jet Li vs Collin Chou fight. In between, there’s plenty of random theatrics. The gwailo, and the girls were just forgettable supporting-dancers in the background. No need to pay them any attention.
The Karate Kid ending was really stupid. But the movie has already earned a lot of good will, so I can overlook it. Besides, I DID enjoy Karate Kid when I was two decades younger. So I can tolerate this homage.