Viewed in
2011
Formats
Movie theater (digital)
Premise
Andy Lau stars as an exiled detective who's brought in to solve mysterious self-combustion deaths on the eve of Empress Wu's coronation during the Tang dynasty of Ancient China.
Liked
The creative martial arts fights.
Disliked
The uninteresting story/characters.
Thoughts
It's a decent Asian action flick.
I enjoyed the fight scenes. Action director Sammo Hung got some creative stuff out of traditional feudal Chinese settings, such as a buck-infested temple and the innards of a 60 foot Buddha statue. My favorite scene was the underground bazaar channeling the River Styx. While there were traditional weapons like swords and arrows, some cool stuff was used, like whips and a weakness-seeking mace.
There were a lot of computer graphics, but mostly used for creating landscapes and special effects, leaving actual martial arts to still feel genuine with wires and stunts.
Unfortunately the story and characters did not match the interesting action. There was a cool albino character and Lau always lends gravitas, but none of them had enough charm to get me to keep caring about them as the convoluted mess of double-crossing and suspicions began to confuse me. I definitely felt cheated near the end as resolutions of minor characters/suspects led to red herrings. Once you apply Ebert' The Law of Economy of Characters to a small role played by Tony Leung (the other one), well, things got predictable.
Considering the pedigree of Asian/martial arts talents of Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Sammo Hung and Tsui Hark, I was underwhelmed at the end.
What I would change
The English-translated title that made it sound like a cross between Harriet the Spy and Percy Jackson.
