...and that's pretty much my review of Warriors of Future. Except that the CGI is pretty good, and you really need to dig into it if you want to get offended by the nationalism. Other than that, this is an absolute piece of shit somewhat redeemed by pretty explosions, some cool action action beats and mech designs, and a lot of unintentional laughs.
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| Hey, is that Crysis 4? |
So let's get the good stuff out of the way first: it is actually so bad it's good, at least some of the time; my favorite thing in it Nick Cheung as the general, a guy who's 650% gravitas, always squinting off into the distance while the camera rotates around him reverentially:
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| MAXIMUM SQUINTAGE |
This guy had me in stitches every single time he appeared. Every. Single. Time. Which is, thankfully, a lot of times, though most of them served zero purpose except to remind you he's still there... squinting.
But there's so much more. This is a movie unafraid to boldly go where everyone and their fucking grandmother have gone before. Consider the case of the bereaved protagonist, moping after his lost daughter. Will he meet a precious moppet miraculously alive in an alien-infested hospital? And will said moppet heal his broken soul? I shan't spoil it, dear viewer, but if you appreciate shameless cheese, you'll like appreciate this movie.
And it wraps up after almost exactly an hour and a half, which is downright considerate. Wish more terrible movies did that. That's including an inexplicable post-credits sequence setting up... uh, I have no idea what it's supposed to be setting up.
The action isn't half-bad. Barring a couple of hiccups, the CGI is actually at the level of a mid-tier Marvel movie, which is high praise for this sort of thing; in fact, there are several Marvel 'homages' here, specifically an overused Iron-Man-Helmet-Cam type deal, which is just as annoying as on the Iron Man movies, and an extended Captain America reference.
The choreography and the way it's filmed is a bit less impressive... so I guess it's like a Marvel film in that respect as well. It takes its cues from videogames more than anything else, overtly so; There's a little bit too much editing, too many show-off speed ramping effects, and too little style to get me excited, but it's always easy to follow and while what was happening was almost invariably stupid, it did hold my interest.
Everything is overblown; expect an overtly dramatic orchestral score, a fucking cornucopia of unnecessary, drawn-out flashbacks, slow-motion emotional moments, inspirational speeches... the works. While the movie can be mined for a ton of clearly unintentional comedy, the bits of actual 'humor' here invariably fall flat on delivery. It's not a matter of the comedy being broad - it's... basically the jokes consist of the characters bickering in the most uninspired way imaginable and bullshit screaming matches. It's dismal.
It's hard to gauge acting with a script this bad and a story so basic, so I'm giving the benefit of doubt to Louis Koo (usually very dependable, a regular in Johnie To's films) and a cast of faces that may be familiar to anyone who's watched HK cinema in the last decade.
And yes, that includes Squints McDelicious. I'd like to state for the record, though, that according to Wikipedia he was in something called "Raped By An Angel 4: The Rapist's Union". I dearly hope he played this same character, contemplating rapist worker's rights with the same thousand-yard stare.
You'll notice I haven't gone into the plot yet - hey, you're pretty observant!
In the end, I can't say I resent this movie for being as bad as it turned out to be; As I wrote of Messr. Emmerich recently, if you ordered a turd sandwich you can't really complain about it tasting like shit. To be clear, there's some fantastic Chinese cinema out there - it's when they get populist and blockbustery like this that you need to lower expectations accordingly. This one's definitely not an exception.
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