His devotion to the mission is real, but the fight scenes are not

14 Blades -- MEHHH

So.. you've got Donnie Yen, Vicky Zhao, and Sammo Hung (albeit he only has less than 5 minutes of screen time total), in ONE MOVIE!!! Okay, some of you might be asking, “who the hell are they?” If you’re one of those people, then you might not want to see this movie. This Hong Kong movie exists purely because the studio knows that these 3 big name actors together in one movie will have a huge pull at the box office.

The premise of the movie is just as original as any other martial arts movie. It goes something this:

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During the late Ming Dynasty, the Chinese imperial court was plagued by corruption as eunuchs usurped state power, taking advantage of the incompetence of the reigning emperor. The Jinyi Wei, the government's secret police, trained in clandestine combat since childhood, was first founded to take orders directly from the emperor, but are now under the control of the eunuch faction. Jia Jingzhong, the chief of the eunuch faction, orders Qinglong (Donnie Yen), the Jinyi Wei chief, to kill the Imperial Councilor Zhao Shenyan and obtain the councilor's safebox.

When Qinglong obtains the safebox, however, he finds that Jingzhong was using him to obtain the Emperor's Seal. Now betrayed and branded a traitor to the government, Qinglong must find evidence to prove his innocence before Jingzhong uses the Emperor's Seal to usurp the power and use it for evil.

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So pretty much, the main character's gotta save the world. And unless this is the first time you've watched this kind of movie, you know that while he's at it, he's going to fall in love with some girl, and find that there is more to life than his own mission. I'm sorry if I ruined the plot for you, but one more information can't hurt: the girl he falls in love with is Qiao Hua, played by Vicky Zhao, who left all her fighting skills back in Hua Mulan, as she is a total wimp in this movie (she tries to act tough, but her bark is much louder than her bite).

Other than the cliche storyline and Vicky Zhao's wimpy character, I have 2 big problems with the movie. The first is that the movie takes itself way too seriously. It was too long (almost 2 hours) and had too much dialogue for a simple action flick, but falls vastly short of a sophisticated thriller due to its extremely cheesy dialogue (I swear I could’ve written it when I was in 3rd grade).

My second problem is with the fight scenes -- they were filled with CGI, which did make them visually pleasing, but I felt that the excessive use of CGI took away from the martial arts element of the movie. I blame the casting for this, because even though it was without question that Donnie Yen is a great master of martial arts, there is no one else in the movie who can fight as his level, so to compensate, CGI was used to make the fight scenes look cool.

The last showdown is between Donnie Yen and Kate Tsui, a Miss Hong Kong pageant winner with no experience in martial arts. Her character, Tuotuo, fights by stripping down her clothes so that her enemy slashes at her stripped clothing instead of her. Again, great visual effect, but horrible martial arts.

The movie does, however, offer some kind of entertainment. The sheer ridiculousness of the CGI enhanced fight scenes cracked me up multiple times (a reaction was I felt was actually intended by the director), and I truly enjoyed Donnie Yen’s acting in this movie. Yes, I said acting, not fighting. Donnie’s Yen usual cool demeanor was perfect for Qinglong’s character, a super badass, zero bullshit tolerant agent of the government who knows of no other path other than serving to complete his mission. As a whole, it is a decent movie to watch after you spent 10 hours in lab and just want to eat some Chinese food and enjoy some mindless movie and take your mind off of the deadline of your projects that’s coming up 2 weeks later.