Review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny 2016 Full Movie: The story is plain and simple with few surprises. As tradition dictates there is plenty of Asian martial arts going on. The fights are a little on the slow side and clearly intended for a rather low content rating. You never see anyone get really hurt. Sure people die but the deaths are quite bloodless. Personally, I would have preferred a bit more hard-hitting action. The fights almost became a bit comical at times. I would say that the characters are okay.
Not the best actors I have seen but I found them to be adequate. I did like the good guys. The bad guy could have done with a bit more charisma and the witch or whatever she was supposed to be felt underwhelming and underdeveloped. One thing that annoyed me was this unrealistic flying around by some of the characters. Sure, it looked somewhat cool and very elegant but come on! Suddenly it appeared like the character became weightless and just floated through the air.
Not very convincing. On the whole, I did enjoy the movie but, as I indicated above, it was not really a wow kind of movie. I have actually added the predecessor to my shopping list since that one got so good reviews. Speaking of reviews, on all the review sites I have looked this movie gets a rating of about 6 out of 10. Of course, one site just had to stand out. Rotten Tomatoes! Their so-called "critics" gave it a rotten rating with an abysmal score of 19%. What the f...? I know those self-appointed "art" critics are too full of themselves to be taken seriously but that is a new low. Anyway, end of rant!
I had no idea what this movie was about when I sat down to watch it on Netflix yesterday. I certainly had not watched its predecessor which, as I discovered afterward, seems to have received quite high ratings. To me, this was a fairly decent movie quite adequate for a little Monday evening TV session. I would probably have been a wee bit disappointed if I had spent money and effort to see it in a movie theater though.
I did like the overall story and the cinematography. It did feel quite a bit like an old western in an Asian setting. Make the sword a shipment of gold, the setting in the old west, add the hero and the gang of good guys with pistols instead of swords, do not forget the bad guy with his cronies and you have a good old-fashioned Western. That is not a really bad thing as far as I am concerned. The Asian setting and the Asian honor culture adds a lot of elegance to the movie.
The story is plain and simple with few surprises. As tradition dictates there is plenty of Asian martial arts going on. The fights are a little on the slow side and clearly intended for a rather low content rating. You never see anyone get really hurt. Sure people die but the deaths are quite bloodless. Personally, I would have preferred a bit more hard-hitting action. The fights the most became a bit comical at times.
I would say that the characters are okay. Not the best actors I have seen but I found them to be adequate. I did like the good guys. The bad guy could have done with a bit more charisma and the witch or whatever she was supposed to be felt underwhelming and underdeveloped. One thing that annoyed me was this unrealistic flying around by some of the characters. Sure, it looked somewhat cool and very elegant but come on! Suddenly it appeared like the character became weightless and just floated through the air. Not very convincing.
On the whole, I did enjoy the movie but, as I indicated above, it was not really a wow kind of movie. I have actually added the predecessor to my shopping list since that one got so good reviews. Speaking of reviews, on all the review sites I have looked this movie gets a rating of about 6 out of 10. Of course, one site just had to stand out. Rotten Tomatoes! Their so-called "critics" gave it a rotten rating with an abysmal score of 19%. What the f...? I know those self-appointed "art" critics are too full of themselves to be taken seriously but that is a new low. Anyway, end of rant!
I remember liking the first one. There was a certain beauty to its surrealism, and its story was simple and tragic. Everything the first one did right, its sequel did wrong. My god, this was a terrible movie.
Both movies feature physics-bending, unrealistic combat, as you would expect, but there's a major difference in how it's integrated. The first only asked for a suspension of disbelief at the outset, and then used its special action sequences as a device to tell a story. Instead, this sequel uses the "story" (and I'm being generous in calling it one) as a device to show off a series of ridiculous action sequences. If that weren't bad enough, this movie asks you to further suspend disbelief at every turn and gives you no reason to feel invested in anything that happens in between these showy displays of jump cuts and impossible acrobatics.
This movie was so bad, I feel that even writing about it is wasting more of my life I could be spending doing literally anything else worthwhile. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
I did like the overall story and the cinematography. It did feel quite a bit like an old western in an Asian setting. Make the sword a shipment of gold, the setting in the old west, add the hero and the gang of good guys with pistols instead of swords, do not forget the bad guy with his cronies and you have a good old-fashioned Western. That is not a really bad thing as far as I am concerned. The Asian setting and the Asian honor culture adds a lot of elegance to the movie.
The story is plain and simple with few surprises. As tradition dictates there is plenty of Asian martial arts going on. The fights are a little on the slow side and clearly intended for a rather low content rating. You never see anyone get really hurt. Sure people die but the deaths are quite bloodless. Personally, I would have preferred a bit more hard-hitting action. The fights the most became a bit comical at times.
On the whole, I did enjoy the movie but, as I indicated above, it was not really a wow kind of movie. I have actually added the predecessor to my shopping list since that one got so good reviews. Speaking of reviews, on all the review sites I have looked this movie gets a rating of about 6 out of 10. Of course, one site just had to stand out. Rotten Tomatoes! Their so-called "critics" gave it a rotten rating with an abysmal score of 19%. What the f...? I know those self-appointed "art" critics are too full of themselves to be taken seriously but that is a new low. Anyway, end of rant!
I remember liking the first one. There was a certain beauty to its surrealism, and its story was simple and tragic. Everything the first one did right, its sequel did wrong. My god, this was a terrible movie.
Both movies feature physics-bending, unrealistic combat, as you would expect, but there's a major difference in how it's integrated. The first only asked for a suspension of disbelief at the outset, and then used its special action sequences as a device to tell a story. Instead, this sequel uses the "story" (and I'm being generous in calling it one) as a device to show off a series of ridiculous action sequences. If that weren't bad enough, this movie asks you to further suspend disbelief at every turn and gives you no reason to feel invested in anything that happens in between these showy displays of jump cuts and impossible acrobatics.
This movie was so bad, I feel that even writing about it is wasting more of my life I could be spending doing literally anything else worthwhile. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment