I hate being suckered in by a trailer. It is just the ultimate punishment for watching DVDs. This film showed up as one of those on a different Japanese action film (I forget which). My friends and I said 'wow, this looks interesting. It does not make any sense, but it looks interesting.' So I decided to rent it a short while later and was forced to deal with the pain that everyone who was tricked into watching this movie already has. The reason for why this is so bad will be revealed at the end of the review. In the meantime, jump into the world of insanity that is...
In fairness, the movie begins with one of the most awesome images ever. A big battle is taking place in a field when one of our heroes- Wind, I think- comes into battle. Warning: the following sentence may cause your head to explode. Wind rides into a battle on a giant, flying manta ray! Go ahead and picture that- I'll wait. After a couple of blows, one of the enemies grabs the flying beast's tail and chucks it into a far-off mountain. Of course, everything goes downhill from here. People fly around on wires, swing their swords and causes sparkles to shoot out. It's all very flashy and very shallow. The rest of the movie's plot is nearly impossible to follow, so this one will be a little brief- at least by my standards.
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-Wind & Cloud meet up and do battle. Naturally, they do it on the surface of a lake.-A bunch of guys that dress alike show up and fight.
-One guy with powers shows up and is distinguishable because he has a goatee.
-A second guy with a goatee shows up about 10 minutes later and ruins that.
-People go from being enemies to friends and back again.
-At one point, several men join forces to...turn into a giant sword and fight a CG dragon.
-One character (don't ask me which) is revealed to really be a villain...that was never mentioned before. I do know that he's evil.
-Wind & Cloud finally join forces to defeat the man in his ice cave.
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Okay, here is the big reveal. Wind & Cloud is a television show from China. The movie version is a super-condensed version of it. The show has 30 VOLUMES and runs approximately 1,350 MINUTES over a 10-DISC SET. The movie is about 150 minutes long! Who thought that was good?!? Stay tuned for 24: The Movie, which is Seasons 1-7 and runs 90 minutes long. The End.*
Way to totally kill a good idea, huh? The action is silly and ridiculous, but the story is impossible to follow. People join forces and battle each other mere minutes apart. I wanted to love this so much, but my brain just hurts watching it. If you want good action like this, check out Dragon Tiger Gate or the works of Ryuhei Kitamura (i.e. Versus, Death Trance). Those have real plots that were made to be followed.
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Next on the agenda, a forgotten Wes Craven movie gets some attention. Basically, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer is turned into a robot and chaos ensues. Stay tuned...
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