So I am drunk. But I was not drunk upon viewing of this feature film. I was sober and I watched it despite being quite tired. I fell asleep once, twice, several times during this movie. It wasn't that boring, I was just fucking tired bro-han. So I watched it and now we're here, what's the point? The point is that I watched and now the review comes. This movie was okay. Wanna know the plot? Here it is: kung fu.
Kung Fu man stars in Kung Fu: movie 691. In this movie, kung fu master 1 fights a buncha grunts and kung fu master 2, as well as evil kung fu guy. There is reason a b or c, and there is side character xyz. What I'm trying to say here is that this movie has no discernible plot or things that happen. It's action from minute 1, through to minute 107. Yes, it is an hour and 47 minutes long. Yes, several of those minutes could have been cut out. But no, they weren't and thus the pacing is quite off too.
Essentially you have a blind guy and a deaf mute. These guys are brothers, and they are good. They fight the evil guys, which are a guy with huge grey sideburns and his gang of henchmen. Somewhere, a guy has robot hands. The good guys know a guy with robot legs. The robot hands guy is explained, the robot legs guy not so much. So robot legs and good guys, as well as lovable idiot, all team up against grey side burns and company. Does that make it clear to you? It better.
This was produced by the legendary Shaw Brothers, and directed by veteran martial arts film dude Chang Cheh. This movie has other names for it up the ying yang, and I'm not going to go into details. But essentially it's just kung fu, and yes, the action is passable. It's ok. I'm not going to give it a huge rating or whatev, but there are several moments in the film where I was surprised and impressed with the kung fu, timing, and stunt coordination. This is part of the Five Venoms story line, kind of, which is compromised of several movies, I'm not going to research how many. I didn't initially know that this was part of that, and now I do. In retrospect, it makes sense since this feels somewhat incomplete, and that it's part of a series makes a whole lot more sense.
I think that the "problem" is that there weren't any likable characters. and there was a lack of a main character. You know how I said robot hands was explained? Yeah. He was. I thought he was the main character. 35 minutes in I said, "where the hell did the main character go?" Cause they spent a lot of time initially on him. Not on the deaf mute/blind brothers. They are hardly given a backstory at all. Then they are the stars later. Uh, ok???!
I definitely wasn't paying the strictest attention, and like I said, I fell asleep, so I'll chalk some of it up to my fault. But the action is occasionally impressive, and the movie does entertain.
I'll give it a whatever rating of 2.5 stars. I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment