Dreadfully Boring

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Parading as an action flick, this is in fact a mixed-genre outing with a heavy emphasis on romance over the thing most Hong Kong fans will be looking for: the martial arts. Despite being bookended by some fantastic fight scenes, the middle section of this movie is a long, uninteresting romance between two lovers who may be doomed, and the situations they encounter. Throw in some bull about evil angels and you have an extremely slow-paced film with a bare minimum of special effects and too much emphasis on specific comedy which doesn't translate well to the West. Consternation arises at the subtitles, which appear to have been written by a person non-fluent in English and thus don't make a whole lot of sense.Not that the film is worthless, just don't bother with the middle. My recommendation is to fast forward. The opening of the film bodes well, with a mysterious black-clad swordsman entering a futuristic jail and slaughtering dozens of prison guards in the process. Bodies are stabbed, dismembered, and a guy is memorably chopped in half vertically, stolen for BLADE II. Moments later we have yet another battle, this time in a public toilet, which mixes gore, action, and outlandish sequences of impalement and fighting skills to good effect. The next great fight is right at the end of the movie, which includes a scene where a bad guy is trapped inside a mirror and still keeps attacking our hero - just as incredible and crazy as it sounds, and pretty unique with it.The fight sequences are hard-hitting and elaborate, unsurprisingly enhanced by plenty of wire work and various special effects. The last fight sequence involves some muddled scenes of people jumping in and out of each other for no reason and taking drugs to increase their strength like in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. The fighting is solid and usually impressive. The acting is not so good, with Andy Lau failing to capture the audience's attention as the nondescript hero and Anita Mui falling at the wayside in her attempts at a sympathetic heroine - bring back Joey Wong. Blame can be laid on the script and the direction, which is more interested in technicality and looking flashy than getting performances across. Despite flaws this is good at times but sadly the boredom outweighs the excitement so I am unable to recommend it. Perhaps something has been lost in the translation.

Ugh. It's quite rare that the English title of a Hong Kong movie is better than the original Chinese one but I'm sure they gave this movie its Chinese name (which translates to '91 Condor Heroes) solely to capitalize on lead actor Andy Lau's popularity from his role as Yang Guo in the classic TVB series, Return of the Condor Heroes. Any connection between this movie and that series is loose at best and I didn't really pick up on it, especially since the plot of this movie is all kinds of ridiculous. Apparently Wong Kar Wai co-wrote this. No wonder it barely makes sense to me, ha. The direction of this movie was bad as well - scenes could go from comedy to action to melodrama in the course of a minute without any regard for flow, though the fighting sequences, choreographed by luminary Corey Yuen, were good whenever there wasn't an over-reliance on special effects. The dearly departed Anita Mui is classy in every role she plays. Yes, even in her dual role of the twin sister who gets shot in the butt. As for Andy Lau and Aaron Kwok, well, there's a good reason why they only won their respective first acting awards 9 and 14 years after this movie.

Saviour of the Soul (1991)This movie is so campy! It's like a 1960's Batman TV-episode plus melodrama and minus the plot. Both have villains using magenta-colored gas while fighting.I almost wish it was just a straight comedy because Andy Lau and Anita Mui were better in their comedic roles than they were playing serious characters. The plot was too ridiculous. The one character that I really liked was the younger sister. She was built up and then forgotten.3/10

Saviour of the soul is a mix of martial arts, shootouts and fantasy. It is obvious that it is a comic adaptation. The story isn't always clear,but it succeeds very well in keeping your attention, although sometimes i wanted to last the action sequences a little longer. There is a lot of humour in it and still succeeds in being serious when it has to. There are some special effects in it that will amaze you (without the use of digital effects which we are used to nowadays). I always enjoy the action sequences Hong Kong movie makers come up with. They really are the best when it comes to action. Saviour of the Soul is certainly a classic when it comes to the wonderful combination of action and special effects. Go see it!