Audience Member
whatever. the fight scenes weren't all that good. the story was all over the place too. idk. whatever on this one.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/03/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The King of the Streets is a pretty typical martial arts/action movie. The hero, Yue, is a street fighter with a past who killed someone during a fight when he was younger (never mind that the person he kills attacked him with a knife after about 20 other guys had also attacked him, I guess that's not enough for a lawyer to get him off by claiming self-defense). Eight years later he gets out of prison and wants to lead a nice quiet life, but finds that it's a bit hard to get work when you're an ex-con with a murder conviction.
After some random events, he ends up volunteering at an orphanage (along with Beck Li, which is a nice perk for him, as she's gorgeous and into quiet martial artists with shady pasts) and, of course, a gang wants the orphanage's property but won't pay the proper value for it. This forces Yue to defend the orphanage by using his street fighting skills, which he does... a lot... really, the bad guys should stop going to that orphanage, they just get their butts kicked. All pretty standard stuff.
The fights are really good. The last fight is quite the crazy affair, though I found myself wondering (as I sometimes do when one guy fights off 20+ enemies) why the bad guys behind him never bothered to hit him with the metal poles they were carrying, instead waiting for him to turn around before attacking... but that's pretty typical of these movies as well.
Then we get to the ending which is... well, odd. I'll try not to spoil anything, but I felt pretty let down by it all. The hero wins and the movie should end, but it doesn't for a few minutes while some actually very cool filming occurs and some real tension builds up. Had this been in the middle of the movie, it would have been great because it might be the best filming of the movie. Unfortunately, it's at the end, after the rising action and climax of movie; at this point, tension is supposed to be tapering off, not ratcheting up. Then it leaves us hanging about the fate of Yue while random text tells the audience about the "Legend of the Eagle." Really, it almost looks like a "to be continued" sort of scene, but I don't know that that makes sense with this movie (since ALL of the bad guys have been kicked into submission and Yue's life is pretty much just what he wants). Instead, it feels like a really cool idea that they couldn't work in anywhere else and just tacked onto the ending for no reason what-so-ever. I don't know that I've ever seen a more distracting scene at the end of a movie.
Ending aside, this is a solid, though maybe not spectacular, action movie. Beck Li is a little underused and one or two of the villains should have had some character development so they weren't just bad for the sake of badness, but it does a good job at all of the things a martial arts movie is supposed to do well... except that ending, ugh, the ending...
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Script was all over the place but the martial arts choreography was pretty incredible! Def worth a watch for the Martial Arts enthusiast.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/17/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This is hands down, one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Not just martial arts movies, but in general. It stars Yue Song, is written by Yue Song, directed by Yue Song, and that pretty much explains why.
I knew this movie would be a total turd in the opening fight scene. Badass Feng is the King of street fighting, and takes on 20 guys in a basketball court. Despite multiple hits to the head by attackers with lead pipes, he manages to fight them all.
He is thrown into jail, and we are not told why. What follows is the biggest collection of cliches in the history of cinema. He has father issues. He doesn't save a girl from muggers but she later saves his bacon at his box lifting job, where he saves a deaf orphan kid from being killed. He also saves an old granny from being hit by a car, who gives him food. Also, the main villain wants to push out an orphanage to build a resort, despite the property looking total shit.
Throw in all these uneventful plot elements with one realistic fight scene, and you get The King of the Streets. It was a solid effort on the filmmaker's part, but you need solid acting, a cohesive storyline, and a basic concept of human anatomy to know that people do not keep fighting when hit to the head with lead pipes and all sorts of other weapons.
Avoid at all costs.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/05/23
Full Review
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