My
brother is the one who really loved this movie and to a certain extent I can
see why. Amongst the film’s strongly redeeming features sits breathtaking
action and kung fu sequences, dazzling costumes, and a fine soundtrack. As far
as the story goes, meh there’s not that much to it really and half the time you
don’t really get where it’s going or indeed where it’s been or where you stand
with it. This is all not to say that this is a bad film though, it’s just
better suited for a certain kind of audience: one that obviously doesn’t quite
include me. I’m at the door of the cinema watching because I’ve nothing better
to do.
Jason is just a normal adolescent boy who spends most of his time at a
pawnshop in Chinatown buying martial art movies. Until one night when a group
of thugs take advantage of his friendship with the shop owner and pull a
violent robbery, shooting the owner and causing Jason to fall from a building
as means of escape. Jason then wakes up somewhere right out of his martial art
movies and he discovers that the only way to get home is to travel the land and
return a magical staff to its rightful owner: the Monkey King imprisoned in
stone for five centuries. With a misfit team of a drunken kung fu master, a
girl on a revenge mission, and a wandering monk to help him, it becomes
apparent that the odds are slightly against Jason, as he can’t go home without
defeating the Jade Warlord and his army…and he doesn’t even know kung fu.
So
let’s bag the problems with the story first shall we? Weak, that’s the best way
to describe it, weak. The dramatic path of the story, and there was the
potential for a lot of a drama and a moving relationship story, was just
glanced over and only hinted at, in my opinion leaving the entire movie without
much substance. What this movie is is an attempt to represent modern culture,
in particular Western culture’s fascination with Asian cinema and ideologies,
and then make a martial art movie, possibly traditional or fairytale (I don’t
know I haven’t watched any of these kinds of films before) fused with Western
cinema: the reluctant hero and the quest narrative. At its core, you could even
go so far as to say that this was a yet another spin on The Wizard of Oz just with less singing and more kung fu fighting.
The fight sequences are breathtaking, as I mentioned before. Not surprising
considered that the cast is made up of some of China’s finest kung fu heroes.
What I particularly like is the fact that you don’t have to be a real fan in
order admire and appreciate how beautiful a style of fighting it is.
Going hand
in hand with the action are the amazing costumes that feature. Seriously, they
are just dazzling every single one of them!
Starring Michael Angarano, Collin
Chou, Deshun Wang, Morgan Benoit, Yifei Liu, Bingbing Li, Jackie Chan, and Jet
Li, The Forbidden Kingdom is a fine
movie, but better suited to certain tastes. Filled with beautiful scenery,
brilliant fight sequences, action, adventure, drama, and comedy, it’s cool for
what it is but I didn’t think it was all that.
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