Asian Film Review: "Wu xia" (武俠, 2011)

On Friday night I went to see the new Peter Chan directed film "Wu Xia", starring Donnie Yen, Tang Wei and Takeshi Kaneshiro.  My expectations were muted... The last Donnie Yen film I saw was Rocky IV,  I mean Ip Man 2, which was such a POSI had almost given up on him.   The film starts out well...  Very well actually.  I was a bit perplexed why it had the title "Wu Xia" even, as it wasn't a wu xia film with wu xia characters.... 

Donnie plays a simple village craftsman who gets caught up in a robbery by two wanted criminals passing through his village.

Takeshi plays an eccentric government investigator who finds it hard to believe a bumbling villager could have single handedly defeated to wanted criminals and seems to go on a wild goose chase to prove he's right.

I enjoyed the film up to this point quite a bit. It has some beautiful Yunnan scenery,  nice historic set pieces, and the script includes a good bit of comedy throw in to entertain and the performances are good.  Takeshi's investigator, who does the voice overs including some creative animated sequences and flashbacks keeps you engaged and chuckling.

If the movie stopped right there I may have even given it a 7 if not an 8/10.... Unfortunately it descends into a run of the mill cheesy wire fu action film and the generally fun and light hearted plot is replaced with a much darker turn.... and over the top ending from a creepy antagonist played by none other than Jimmy Wany Yu (I thought he was already dead!).  It becomes more 'wu xia' than the first half, but still not really true to the genre except for the gravity defying impossible martial arts...   This part is definitely not 'fresh'...   I did NOT enjoy it much and at most I'd give it a 3 or 4/10.

Anyway long story short the whole film gets a 5/10... Not bad bad, but short of the potential created by the first half...