Movie Review: Storm Warriors, The (風雲 II)

Poster

My Rating: 1Stars

This afternoon I saw the movie The Storm Warriors at UA Cinema, Times Square, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Not one of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

This is a sequel to the 1998, The Storm Riders (風雲), also staring Aaron Kwok and Ekin Cheng; two of Hong Kong’s big-time 90’s pop singers. Both movies are based on the Chinese comic book written by Wing-Shing Ma, and directed by the twin directors Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang.

The twin directors were not bad when they directed Bangkok Dangerous (2008), although with Bangkok they have the Oscar winning Nicolas Cage to carry the movie. This time with Storm Warriors they had over-the-hill HK pop singers who pretend to be actors. In this movie Cheng and Kwok had the same facial expressions that they always had in movies they appear in.

The movie has a weak plot which is important as the rest of the movie are not able to support the movie to maintain the interest of the audiences. The story began with a warlord capturing the elites of martial artists around ancient China forcing them to follow him, and passing on their martial art secretes. Failing this the movie jumps to the warlord’s hunt for a magical bone, whose location is only known by the emperor of China. In the mean time the good guys have decided that the only way to defeat the warlord is to have one of its lead martial artist go to the “dark” side. Yes, the scene literally mimicks Spider-Man III, and of course Star Wars in regards to the “dark” side.

They did spend a lot of money on special effects, but unfortunately, I few the various elements of the movie just do not compliment each other. I feel the editing, direction, cinematography, stunts, special effects and sound tracks all fight for the audience’s attention. I particularly do not like the editing, which made the movie appear even slower than it is already is. Adding to that the inappropriate sound track, it actually distracts from the mood set by the scene/directions, making the whole scene awkward.

I never give Hong Kong movies much hope of being able to impress me, but The Storm Riders (風雲) was okay so I thought I give this one a try. After watching The Storm Warriors my opinions about Hong Kong movies has worsen.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere

2 Replies to “Movie Review: Storm Warriors, The (風雲 II)”

  1. Ya, I watched too at The Grand Cinema Elements @10th. The first official showing day. A lot of peoples agree that this episode totally sucks, especially the lack of story line. For my personal point of view, this movie is just like a game's cinematic scene, so this movie for me is not that bad, it's 'okay'. I just hope go inside to see fighting scene anyway.

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