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This is not a review. This is a warning. DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE!!!!11oneone It's so important that I tell you this that I am sending this in as a late article for this month's issue of Collector Times. You see, I wasn't even planning on writing an article this month. I was planning on having a nice, relaxing holiday weekend and watching a silly martial arts movie with my husband and a couple of friends. What I ended up doing was sitting through EIGHTY-TWO MINUTES OF PURE TORTURE!
This movie wasn't just bad. It was stupid. It was painful. It was an inane waste of time. It caused suicidal tendencies in my friend Alex, who exclaimed at least six times "I want to shoot myself." It caused me to lose quite a bit of my sanity. Every moment of the movie killed a little bit of my soul and a few brain cells as well.
Allow me to sum the movie up: Three guys (supposedly the 3 Donkeys, though no one ever called them that, I dubbed them the 3 Jackasses and it fit better) with no real redeeming qualities, decide they want to catch the gang of the evil bad-guy Dead Eye (his named was supposed to be Scarface, but no one ever called him that) so they can make some money. Their kung fu sucks so they decide to get trained by the CRAZY GUY WITH SUPER KUNG FU! The problem with this is two-fold. One, he's no more crazy than any other sadistic old kung fu master. Two, his kung fu wasn't super; it was average and pretty boring. Oh, and there was also the fact that the usual "sadistic master tormenting students while teaching them kung fu" segment was about 30 seconds long and highly unimaginative.
There were many other problems with this movie. One was that there was no option for subtitles, only some of the worst dubbing ever. Everyone sounded like retarded cartoon characters. Another was that the fight scenes sucked. The kung fu was average, and you could usually tell that the actors weren't coming even close to hitting each other. Don't even get me started on the terrible sound effects that accompanied every fight scene.
As is common in martial arts movies, the plot was practically non-existent. In many movies I can forgive this fact - as long as the martial arts are good and the main characters are likable. In this case, the martial arts, as I mentioned before, SUCKED, and the main characters were tolerable. Barely. Sorta. The problem was that the movie jumped around too much, side plots were never resolved, and many scenes were just excuses for extra fight scenes, which still sucked.
The other problem was that half the time, this movie seemed like a gay porno with all the sex scenes cut out. I have never seen so many homosexual and/or effeminate men in one martial arts movie! First, there was the brothel owner who -when faced with a protection racket- declares that he will demonstrate his "girl fu" to the thug (I swear to God, I am NOT making this up). This involves wearing feminine hats, making girly noises, and at one point even peppering the thug with yellow daisies. We couldn't believe our eyes.
It gets better, though. A few scenes later, our "heroes" encounter another lackey who is very clearly gay. He starts flirting with one of the protagonists, and his martial arts involves making stereotypical gay noises and trying to kiss his opponents. We couldn't help but give it such politically incorrect titles as "Fag Fu" and "Queer Fu for the Straight Goon."*
I'm not even going to get into all of the fights in which supposedly heterosexual men straddle each other, practically rub their groins in the opponents face, and hold each other. I kept waiting for the three-way orgy between the main characters at the end, with a sense of trepidation and dread. Luckily, it was not to be. The bad guy gets beaten to death, sad Chinese music plays, and the mercifully short credits roll.
Did I mention that the movie was poorly filmed? Everything was too brightly lit and washed out. People wearing white outside completely glowed. This made it very difficult to follow the fight scenes, which we feel may have been an intentional attempt to cover up very bad fight choreography. It didn't work. It did work to obscure the end credits, so I can't give credit to the proper people.
In closing, I would like to reiterate. DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. You will do this, because I am AJ, and what I want, I usually get (sorry, it's about the only good thing I took from that movie).
* We're not homophobes or anything, and don't intend any offense. This movie inspired us to new lows, and we really couldn't help the puns.
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