Jung wa ying hong (1999)

Jung wa ying hong: Directed by Andrew Lau. With Ekin Cheng, Shu Qi, Kristy Yeung, Nicholas Tse. Hero Wah goes to study under Master Pride. When he returns to his parents, he learns that they have been murdered by a band of evil Westerners. After impregnating his wife Jade, he ventures to New York in search of his parents’ killers.

“Its really hard to write a review for this kind of film. On the one hand AMCH wants to be a credible story led film. OK, So what about the story. Well it is a strange affair. On the one hand, the hardship the Chinese felt, the bad guy and his ninja squad and a lot of the quest to find hero were pretty good. But on the other hand too many loose ends are left and some things seem to happen for no reason. Whatu0026#39;s with the weird gay subplot with herou0026#39;s best friend? Whatu0026#39;s up with shadow? Why didnu0026#39;t he try and kick invincibleu0026#39;s ass, instead of letting u0026#39;bossu0026#39; get his handed to him (I know they were played by the same person, but, hey)? And what the hell happened to Herou0026#39;s daughter (I accept that it sort of implies thatu0026#39;s his latest quest, to find her, but they could have let us know. And why did he blow up the one man who knew where she might be?)?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAs a martial arts film it is a strange beast. The only actual bit of traditional kung fu is when hero is showing off his talents to his prospective teacher. The rest is mostly wire work and hardcore CGI, which, for the most part, is pretty good. Shadow zips around, the Ninjas all have captain planet style powers and the face off between Pride and Invincible is awesome. But there just are not enough moments like these. I suppose ructions all the time would take away from what the director is trying to achieve (a man who hates fighting and death), but just one or two more or the existing ones eked out a bit would have been nice, if only to break up the slightly laborious pace.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOn the whole, though, it is hard not to like AMCH. The sets are fantastic. The costumes and cast are all uniformly good and the cinematography is superb. The plot holes are forgivable and if you want to see non-stop kung fu action, go rent an old Shaw Brothers flick. The good far outweighs the bad, as far as Iu0026#39;m concerned and the two-disk set is a proud edition to my DVD collection. Its far too easy to cuss up this film, simply because the typical western audience for a martial arts movie donu0026#39;t seem to be ready to try something different. Shaaaame”