Posts Tagged ‘Jackie Chan’

Movie Review: Vampire Effect

Saturday, November 24th, 2012

Vampire Effect
Directed by Dante Lam and Donnie Yen
Written by Hing-Ka Chan and Wai Lun Ng
Starring Ekin Cheng, Charlene Choi, Gillian Chung, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Edison Chen, Jackie Chan, Mickey Hardt

If you like Hong Kong supernatural martial arts films, you’ll probably enjoy Vampire Effect (AKA Twins Effect, since the two female leads are evidently in the same pop band). Modern-day vampire hunter gets cute new partner who clashes with his cute sister, who just happens to be dating an Emo vampire prince whose essence a vampire king wants to eat to unlock a vampire grimoire. Martial arts ensue.

You know, the usual.

Jackie Chan has an extended supporting role that’s pretty much unnecessary, except you get to see Jackie Chan fight vampires. He’s third-billed and gets about 15 minutes of screen time, so it doesn’t even make Top Ten Most Dishonest Uses of Jackie Chan’s Name on the DVD Cover list. (I’m looking at you, Drunken Fist Boxing.)

This hasn’t gotten great reviews, and it’s not a patch on the best work in the genre by the late, great Ching-Ying Lam. The romance subplot drags a bit. The pace and style of the film does rip off the Blade movies…which in turn were ripping off Hong Kong action films, which ripped off everything they could lay their hands on, so par for the course. But it’s funny, and the action scenes work, which is pretty much all I ask as a threshold for enjoyment for this kind of film.

The “sequel” Twins Effect II is evidently a historical martial arts epic with much of the same cast, but none of the same characters.

Supposedly the American DVD (I saw it on-demand) has some scenes chopped that hinder the continuity. When it comes to Hong Kong action films, continuity does not rank high on my list of requirements. I saw the version with lots of martial arts.

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Cyborg Karate RobotBeast vs. Future Ninja Cop

Sunday, March 18th, 2012

Cracked offers up a list of 7 words only bad movies have in the title. It’s not bad as far as it goes, but:

  1. The seven words (which may be gleaned from the title of this post) are 100% from Guy Flick titles. And, you know, fair enough. But you could probably come up with a similar list for Chick Flick titles (“Heart” and “Love” both come to mind).
  2. Even by that standard, I bet there are more crappy movies with the “Fighter” than “Ninja” in the title.
  3. Horror movies are insufficiently represented. “Dark” and “Blood” (Blood Simple and a few others excepted) would likely yield a crapload of crap. And don’t get me started on “Shark”. Has there ever been an actual good movie with “Shark” in the title?)
  4. Despite what the article says, any Hong Kong movie with “Cop” in the title starring Jackie Chan is pretty much guaranteed to be awesome.

(Hat tip: Bill Crider, though his link is a little off.)

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DVD Review of Drunken Fist Boxing (Summary: AVOID)

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

A couple of weeks ago, some friends got in a copy of Drunken Fist Boxing, the sequel to Jackie Chan’s breakthrough film Drunken Master. We thought: It’s a Jackie Chan film, how bad could it be?

The problem is, despite Jackie being featured prominently on the DVD cover, this is not a Jackie Chan film; the only footage of him in the film is flashbacks to Drunken Master, making it the cinematic equivalent of a clip-show. But that’s not the only thing that makes it a ripoff. I would say this is a crappy pan-and-scan video transfer, but there’s actually no scanning: they just chop off parts of the screen. There are times when there are obviously supposed to be two people talking to each other, but one of them is completely off the edge of the screen. Plus the dubbing is atrocious; sometimes you can’t even figure out what they’re trying to say.

See this?

See Jackie Chan’s face
on the cover?

It’s a dirty, rotten LIE!

Occasionally you get some decent kung fu (when you can see it), and a generic plot about the teacher from Drunken Master training two students, one of which is the very hot Pan Pan Yeung, when an old enemy of the master shows up in town and…look, it’s a sub-Shaw Brothers kung fu flick from 1979. The plot only exists to string together the fight scenes. And the fight scenes aren’t good enough to make up for the general suckitude.

The cheesy rip-off nature of the DVD makes this one impossible to recommend even to serious kung fu aficionados. Avoid.

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