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Directional debut for Keanu Reeves which was partially based on stuntman Tiger Chen's life story. Since the story was inspired by a Chinese character, the movie was co-produced by Hollywood and China in Cantonese and Mandarin languages with a little English. Keanu Reeves appeared in a negative role and his friend Tiger Chen as himself.
As the Keanu Reeves's first movie as a captain it is evident that he had faced tough challenges to capture in some of the scenes. Clearly the fight choreographies were the best parts of the movie. Since his friend Tiger Chen is a stuntman they had no troubles in those areas. Those who love martial arts will like this movie for its awesome stunt sequences. Drama portions were little sloppy, due to the similar fashion storyline that already we had seen in some of the earlier releases.
It is not a finest martial art movie of the year, but fights were the movie's highlight. I can't appreciate Keanu Reeves direction, but somehow he handled everything nicely from this movie being a junk. He's a good actor than a director, though he may improve in his next project, but I don't know.
I expected this movie to be fast paced, exciting one, but what I got was opposite. The reason was the story of individual character did not fit into as a single movie. For example, Tiger Chen's master and his story, Hong Kong Police and their criminal chase, all these looked a bit weird together. Removing commercial elements could have made it a better movie.
This is not the first time a western director flew to the east to make a movie. It has been done many times in the past in movies like 'The Last Samurai', 'Kundun' and the recent one '47 Ronin' et cetera. So no wonder Keanu Reeves made this with his best friend Tiger Chen. The question is, is this movie worth to have a peek? I would say it was not the best nor the worst.
6.5/10
7/10
