Memorable, crazy movie

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The acting in this movie is really good.

When a General his killed, his wife and various female members of his family set off to pill his military shoes. That's as close as I can get in a synopsis with going into vast detail - detail which seems unnecessary when this biggish budget Chinese film is largely combat sequences.If you like large battle scenes, lots of one-on-one wire-fu and the like, you're going to enjoy this. But if you're not familiar with lots of Chinese actresses, you're going to get confused. Assorted members of this military clan are introduced together with little identifying captions about what their swords are called, and then you never know who each one is until they - spoiler! - get killed.There is some dodgy CGI, especially at the start. It gets bloodier as it does on, and it really shouldn't because the CGI blood doesn't convince.I've decided I like Cecilia Cheung.This DVD from Poundland held my attention, but I'm not in a big hurry to see it again.

Not going to spoil it much, but the beginning, was EPIC. Its about sisters (well at least by their names they are sisters) training. There's awesome music in the background and all these fancy kind of filming. (One of them, I can't remember, is pro at archery. The film exaggerates at the beginning her skill, with her shooting bullseye while fighting, and doing a back flip before letting go the arrow and it hits like RIGHT in the middle.) The first 9 minutes is a summary basically and an overview of their lives until now. Then it goes into the 'fancy high speed camera sort of scenes' for 3 minutes. (BEST 3 minutes, in my opinion) It's kind of like Fast and furious 5 where they introduce the members in the 'team'. Anyways, I loved it, especially the beginning (like i've been saying for this whole review)the plot was interesting, and (SPOILER: some of the 'sisters' do die despite their awesome kung-fu skills) but i didn't feel sad, maybe because with so many of the 'main characters' (there are 9 or 10 sisters/main characters) the film can't focus exactly too deeply on one character. I'd recommend you to check this out, (at least from 8 minutes in the movie to around 11 minutes to see that epic shoot- which is quite cheesy) but it is one of those action/fighting movies so if your interested you should watch it :)

Let's get this out of the way first of all: LEGENDARY AMAZONS has nothing to do with Amazons at all; instead, it's a fairly straightforward and normal-for-the-genre Chinese historical war film about a legendary band of warrior women who are forced into going to war to battle an invading army. It's colourful stuff for sure, packed with unrealistic but cool-looking costumes and plentiful action; indeed, at least 70% of the film seems to be made up of one fight scene after the next, all aided with wirework and CGI effects that keep characters and weapons flying all over the place.Here's the unusual bit: LEGENDARY AMAZONS also happens to be one of the cheesiest films I've seen in a while. Chinese historicals are usually po-faced and deadly serious, like with THREE KINGDOMS or BATTLE OF WITS. Not so this film: the script is leaden and the performances so awful and self-conscious that they veer on self-parody. The worst offender is the absolutely diabolical Cecilia Cheung, who takes woodenness to new levels; apparently she's a big actress over in the East, but you wouldn't know it from her scene-chewing here.Still, despite (or maybe because of) all the unintentional humour, LEGENDARY AMAZONS turns out to be a whole lot of fun. The virtually non-stop action helps, of course, but as a whole the film has a light and vibrant feel that keeps it sweeping merrily along. It's certainly not a classic, and by genre standards it's pretty poor, but is it entertaining? The answer is a resounding 'yes'! It's a riot, and one I look forward to seeing again in the future.

When I purchased this movie from Amazon, it was with a certain amount of expectation to it; because it had Cecilia Cheung in it, plus it also brandished "impressive" and "a genre breakthrough" on the cover. Uhm, yeah, what genre are they making a breakthrough in? Having seen the movie, I sit here somewhat dazzled. Why? Well, because the movie was only partially as I had expected it to be. The good part about the movie is that it is sort of an epic movie in itself, and they managed to build up a good sense of believability with the sets and the whole feeling to the movie.The armors and the costumes in the movie were amazing to look at. There were so many small details in everything that it was just spectacular. And that is one of the better parts of the movie, because they really managed to bring the feel of the given era to life on the screen.And the battle scenes were grand and mostly epic. Lots of really nice fighting, action and choreography here. You might notice that I said 'mostly'. Yeah, because there were scenes during the fight that were painfully obviously staged and looked that way as well.The less than impressive aspects of the movie, were many of the death scenes were just hilarious to look at, reminding me of something from the old black and white movie genre. You see someone struggling, then falling down awkwardly and laying still. It was just too staged and fake, and most of the death scenes in the movie here were just among some of the worst death scenes I have seen in similar movies.Another thing that didn't really aid the movie in its progress was the way the director attempted to mix epic warfare with the petty feudal matters of a house in the royal Chinese army. It just seemed a little bit too much - delving a bit too far into being a Chinese soap opera.And finally, there were just too many characters to keep track of, and you just ended up shrugging your shoulders whenever one of the Yang family died, because you had no idea who it was or had any particular kind of 'on-screen relationship' to that person. It was like they were all extras in the frame just to add to the chaos.In overall, then "Legendary Amazons" - despite its cheesy title - is an average movie of this genre; nothing breakthrough to be had here. There are far better movies available in the same genre. And truth be told, then Cecilia Cheung and Richie Ren did little to raise the appeal of the movie. It was a fairly average experience, and hence, the 5 out of 10 rating from me.