You may have noticed that I don't write these columns very much anymore. There's a very simple reason for that - I took over our Netflix queue and I'm far less likely to rent a random martial arts flick than Chris is. I take a look at the reviews, and if it looks bad, I don't give it a chance. If there are no reviews, I also don't give it a chance. But still, every now and then I get taken in. A long time ago, I saw a trailer for something called Zu Warriors. It looked cool. It was supposed to be "Coming Soon." Over the years, I watched the release date get pushed farther and farther back. So when I saw it listed on Netflix, I decided to give up on seeing it on the big screen and just rent the blasted thing already. Then I decided to bump it up in the queue, because we needed a break from MST3K and we hadn't watched any martial arts flicks in a while. Curse my good intentions! I spent most of this movie saying "What the hell?" Chris only uttered that phrase once, near the end, to which I said "It's taken you this long?" Honestly, this is the most chaotically disjointed movie that I've ever sat all the way through. Things happen with little to no logic, there's no indication of the passage of time, and very little makes sense. Characters fall in love because the script says they should, strange magical powers abound, and a well-intentioned good guy fixes a faerie's wing with a flower petal. I repeat: What the hell? The plot, such as it is, centers around a bunch of sort of immortal people who live in magic mountains and seek reincarnation. They also have magical powers. They are of course played by major actors all martial arts junkies are familiar with, such as Sammo Hung and Zhang Ziyi. And they fly around a lot, because awesome fantasy heroes don't need to walk. Oh yes, and the good immortals are fighting a villain named Insomnia, who bears a slight resemblance to Davy Jones/Cthulhu/low budget horror villains and likes to make zillions of skulls form together into giant flaming skulls. Insomnia also has the voice of an 8 year old female cartoon character, despite having a mannish body and being referred to as "he." This being a Chinese fantasy movie, all of the heroes also have descriptive names like Red, King Sky, and Enigma. Sammo Hung's character is known as White Brows for his eyebrows, which are longer than my hair (for the record, I've gone half my life without a haircut). When I first heard Insomnia call him that, I thought he was poking fun, but all of White Brows' students also called him that. Maybe it loses something in the translation... Speaking of being lost in translation, I can't help but wonder if maybe this movie was based on a comic book or something, and they tried to condense the entire story into one film. That might explain why everything is so choppy and characters come and go with little explanation. As it is, I felt like the movie would have been a lot better if they'd removed a few minor subplots and put more focus on the main plot and characters. From a technical point of view, the movie was OK, but not great. All the actors did a good job. Costuming was unremarkable. Fight scenes weren't that exciting. The CG looked a bit outdated to me, but it wasn't horrible. There were one or two cool thing. King Sky has this weapon that's a giant metal crescent moon that flies around of its own volition. Red has these small metal wings on his back that can grow, whip around, and shoot knives out of them. The soundtrack was actually pretty good in most parts. Over all, I would not recommend this movie in the least. It felt like a huge waste of time, not quite bad enough that I ever said "That's it, I'm not watching any more of this" but not good at all.

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Copyright © 2007 By AJ Reardon E-mail AJ at: ErtheFae@aol.com Visit AJ at: www.erthefae.com