Audience Member
good chop sokky actioner
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Terrible story, terrible plot, terrible acting, terrible cutting, seriously don't bother about this movie, it's so terrible in everything.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Well, from where shall I start with? How about general bad casting (except Cheng Pei-pei), weak story lines, narrative, & characters description, terrible scenes & action design, dreadful acting (the come back performance of Cecilia Cheung in particular) plus voice-over... lame, in short.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Chinese "girl power" is what this historical action film is about. Produced by Jackie Chan, the film is actually decent thanks to its core female cast and battle sequences.
While this film will not have the epic capacity of John Woo's 2009 Red Cliff, this is still an enjoyable action film. After nearly a decade away, Frankie Chan returns to the director's chair and co-wrote the film while Jackie Chan serves as a producer on the film. What is interesting is that this film is a remake of the 1972 Shaw Brothers film The 14 Amazons and thus, the film's core cast is all female and for the most part, it does work here.
Making her return to film after a five-year hiatus (which included motherhood) is Cecilia Cheung in the role of Mu Guiying, the widow of General Yang. Cheung may not have been the ideal choice to play the role, but somehow she manages to pull it off decently. What drives the film is that each female lead character is trained in a different style of combat. The likes of Kathy Chow, Li Jing, Yang Zi-Yong, and the returning Yukari Oshima are just some of the composition of the female ensemble while the legendary Cheng Pei-Pei plays matriarch She Taijun with a costume.
Action-wise, the film's battle sequences are well done. With a stunt team that included the legendary Fung Hark-On, Mang Hoi, director Chan, Ng Ban, and Zhang Hai, they are well shot and edited. There is some wirework and at times, it has the feel of perhaps a wuxia pian. Nevertheless, the weapons work is quite well done along with some nice hand to hand combat action often seen in this subgenre of Chinese action films.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
Full Review
Audience Member
An extremely uneven and corny show with seemingly an unending cast of lady generals that die heroically but without getting the audiences involved in the drama, or the lack of it.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/15/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Awesome costumes and action, laughable CGI and green screen. Good direction, weapons and cast, plus beautiful women. Great blooper reel during the end credits. The music is lame and the film seems to drag in parts, but it's still a lot of fun. Learned some Chinese history researching the setting. In the 11th century, before the Mongols seized China, the Song Dynasty fought the Xia. Today, almost a millennium later, Ningxia is an autonomous region in China, with Xia's capital still the capital of the region.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
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