A Playful Misconception, A Childhood’s Dream

You know you’re no longer youthful when you avoid going to movies that start after 9pm, and go home straight after.

You know you’re no longer youthful when the Chinese chiropractor, after noticing something’s wrong with your body, asks if you’ve been sleeping late when in reality you hit the sack at 12am every night.

Those who say 12am is late, yeah, you too are no longer youthful.

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This is a very old way of storytelling. It could have worked a decade ago but certainly not now. Luc Besson’s story really needed some fresh ideas because everything, from the characters down to the burger in the brown bag, was unoriginal.

This movie was more like it was written for John Travolta so that he could have some fun. And probably only Travolta had fun. Jonathan Rhys Meyers was emotionally vapid. I haven’t seen enough of him to judge his acting capabilities but here he looked really bad. Wait, he actually looked good with that trench coat but his acting was bad. Although that final scene at the airport with that ridiculous looking tight jeans, everything was bad. But I have to credit his command of Mandarin. It wasn’t all there but he sounded really convincing.

Honestly, I just don’t see the point of this movie. Why make something which has been overly done? It’s Lethal Weapon all over again. But worse. There’s no continuity, there’s no logic. The car chase scene made no sense when they had to see who was in the car and achieved that easier than shooting it with a bazooka.

And Travolta just can’t convince me he could move that fast, putting down 5 thugs in a matter of seconds. I’m not buying it.

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It has been some very hot weeks but this past couple of days felt like burning. The cloudless sky is a light blue till way after half past six in the evening.

Today though, on the 15th of the Chinese calender and the last day of the Chinese New Year celebration, the moon looked the brightest and the roundest and the largest. Even the rabbit in it looked clearer.

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Thank goodness there’s Donnie Yen. He has single-handedly brought back Chinese martial arts to the silver screen now that Jackie Chan and Jet Li are cutting them down. I have to admit that some roles suited him better than some others but fortunately he’s a competent actor as well.

14 Blades technically did not require Yen’s expertise in martial arts because there was almost zero choreography. Anyone else who is fit could have taken up the role, but Yen made it looked better than what anyone else could.

The story reminded me a lot of the old traditional Hong Kong series, the ones I watched when I was a kid. It definitely needed that two-hour running time in order to have a storyline that felt complete. Hence the reference to Hong Kong series. An impressively well written piece by writer-director Daniel Lee. I’d keep my eye out on his next project. He was even able to make Zhao Wei likeable because I never liked her in her past few movies like Hua Mulan and the Red Cliff series. So kudos to Lee.

His talent didn’t stop there with Zhao. He also made Wu Chun into one hot property of a hunk. Wu Chun has never looked as manly as he did here and the way Lee showed him off was very subtle, not what we are used to see from other over-stylised directors. Wu however still needs some work on his Mandarin pronunciation.

But of course everything still rested on Donnie Yen’s shoulders. And by now everything just looks easy for him. I do look forward to his Ip Man 2.

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Jackie Chan did good. Both with the acting and with his screenplay. I’m very surprised that this didn’t suck one bit.

Although the story was in no way fantastic as it was pretty much linear throughout, but what it did was entertain.  What Chan did with the characters was very smart. He’s the one who dislike fighting and Wang Leehom was the one who had the most fight scenes. What lacked here though was the choreography which wasn’t able to look good on camera, and that perhaps was the fault of the director Sheng Ding. Both the director and choreographer should have gelled better to make the fight scenes look more flawless.

Leehom I thought delivered really well. The character suited him and he pulled it off impressively yet again. But for the other characters, especially new actress Lin Peng’s, they were too one dimensional to have any depth. But the great thing about this was there’s no unnecessary subplots to weigh down the story. There’s no distraction. It’s all very straightforward.

So with Chan taking himself out of the spotlight from the fight scenes and going for a more low key and subtle performance, it worked very much to his favour. One sure thing was that there’s no way he could disappoint his audience anymore, even the slapsticks were cut down a lot. But when there were, they really brought out the laughter.

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It’s been so cloudy the past two days but it just wouldn’t rain. At least it’s not too hot today.

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It has a very classical story, it’s almost like everything jumped out from one of those classic Penguin story books. But having said that, everything was just too predictable. Once you can see the ending, it’s just a matter of going through the motion. No mystery was left and, for a science fiction story like this one, didn’t bode well.

Furthermore, the CGI didn’t get enough investment. Sure we saw how the man transformed into a wolf, but we never got to see what it looked like in full form, in its entirety, in all its grand mysticism. The wolf did a lot of running, and all we saw was either very close-up shots or very distant shots; both of which never showed any detail.

So when the story wasn’t any good, and the CGI wasn’t any impressive, what’s left? Luckily the acting wasn’t too bad, except for Benicio Del Toro’s accent which he lost more than a few times. I could only wished Hugo Weaving had more to do. Every he spoke he seemed to have an innate ability to draw the audience in with every word uttered.

I read somewhere that the director actually shot two different endings. The other being having the other character dies instead of the one we got to see. I think the alternate ending would have been better, could have invoked more emotions on the audience.

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Long title, and I’m a bit confused. When I watched the movie, it only showed “Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief” on the screen. But “The Olympians” is on IMDb.com.

Anyway, that’s not important. What’s important is how poorly this movie was written. And such a pity too. It had a good cast, a good direction, a good premise, a good plot, but it was just so poorly written and that’s so frustrating.

I’m a fan of Greek mythology but throwing in a Hydra here and some hell hounds there weren’t enough to sway me. The movie started very well for me but it all went downhill from there, especially when they reached Vegas. That was so so bad. The Vegas sequence was as if they ran out of budget for more CGI effects.

Consistency was the biggest issue here, making it another one of Hollywood’s more inferior product that had one aim and one aim only – to wow the crowds with special effects. The movie was filled with loopholes; from the sudden use of “Homeland Security” by Alexandra Daddario (who I thought was cute enough to drool over, but only time will tell) whose character said that she grew up in the camp and only went outside twice, to the disappearance of Medusa’s head that got lost as the movie progressed.

I’ll give credit where they are due and the effects were really impressive. From having Pierce Brosnon as a Centaur to Uma Thurman as Medusa, everything looked impressive on screen. The acting was good, especially for the new kid on the block, Logan Lerman, who really carried this movie almost on his own. And to have demi-gods in the present era was one heck of a good idea.

But the lack of explanations and logic throughout the entire movie was just ridiculous. Why must it be the son of Poseidon who stole the Lightning Blot? How was it that Percy just needed to touch water and he knew how to wield a sword? How was Annabeth, the self-proclaimed master of strategy, so useless in planning in every single fight they encountered? How did they know Medusa’s head still work even after she’s dead? Hell, why were there so many demi-gods to begin with? Are the gods all so horny? Absolutely nothing was explained and the movie just skipped and skipped all the detail that would have made the movie more interesting. But no, everything happened by coincidences.

I can’t believe they still write movies like this, as if the audiences were retards. This movie had potential, but alas, what a pity.

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