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While I adore Hong Kong cinema and have enjoyed pretty much every sub-genre of film-making to come from that part of the world in the last half century, mainland China is another story. The only consistently quality genre of films that the mainland seems able to make is the historical epic, full of sprawling battles, horses, and martial arts. Everything else is a letdown and MONK COMES DOWN THE MOUNTAIN follows that trend. The narrative is barely focused and involves a monk who is kicked out of the Shaolin Temple due to his misbehaviour. Said protagonist is played by the guy who was the villain in KUNG FU KILLER, Wang Baoqiang, and he's an entirely unprepossessing chap, lacking the charisma and grace to make a role like this work.
The plot just sort of ambles along endlessly, throwing in digressions involving supporting characters (the usual martial arts masters, a doctor, a CGI monkey in one random interlude) and plenty of CGI-enhanced fight scenes. I love martial arts fights and some of it is okay here, but too much of it is wire work assisted with flying and gravity-defying feats which aren't to my taste. The supporting cast is better, but underutilised: Lam Suet as a cop, Jaycee Chan as an underwhelming antagonist. The guy who played the Bruce Lee lookalike goalie in SHAOLIN SOCCER is here too, along with Tiger Hu of MAN OF TAI CHI fame. Best of the bunch is the criminally underrated Yuen Wah, playing another badass late on in his career; don't let the occasional bit of doubling fool you, Wah still has it and is by far the best thing in the entire movie. A shame the rest of the film can't match him.
score 3/10
Leofwine_draca 7 January 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3614504/ |
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2-4-2021 04:11:07