Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be checking out a martial arts film from 1977. That movie is "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion".
Now, throughout my time in doing this series, I have covered a wide variety of genres. The most notable ones I seem to cover are horror, action, animation, and family friendly films. And while there are couple of new exceptions to all this, one genre I seem to gloss over a lot is martial arts films. I guess my reasoning for this is that I just don't find many of them to look very interesting to me. And while I do enjoy films such as "Bloodport" and that live action "City Hunter" film, I just don't find myself very interested in the genre. Now that could be simply because I haven't really had a chance to dip myself more into these particular movies yet, and I feel like I would be doing some sort of disservice if I don't cover more of these films.
Which is why, tonight, I'm gonna be covering a couple of these movies, thanks to me picking up something called the "Martial Arts Classics Double Feature" on DVD, which features the movie I'm gonna be covering tonight and the other movie that I'll review later on this month. And I'm gonna start with tonight's movie, which is "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion". And I really wish I could tell you anything else about it, beyond the fact that it's a martial arts movie, however, I don't really know anything about it beyond that.
So basically, guys, I'm going into this movie as blind as possible here. And who knows? It might end up being really good. But I won't know for sure unless I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion".
6 minutes later
Guys, I know this is still very early in the film, but I need to ask: Why exactly is our main character trying to find her teacher's brother? I'm asking this because we haven't been given *any* explanation, so far, as to why she's been sent out to look for him. Again, I understand it's still early, and there's plenty of time for the movie to give out some sort of answer, but it's just leaving me a little bit confused at the moment.
10 minutes later
So, guys, I'm still kinda lost as to what's going on here. I sorta get the gist as to why our main character is trying to search for her teacher's brother, but it's still very vague. All we know so far is that two months ago, he received a letter from some guy, and has disappeared since. And now she has to find someone else in order to find out where her brother is. But as to *why* he's disappeared is something I still don't know about. I'm hoping we'll get something resembling a plot soon, but as of right now, this running around our main character is doing is kind of getting dull.
6 minutes later
OK, you know what? As much as I can say that this story is still plotless, I am willing to grant that this movie's fight choreography is fucking great! It seriously is really cool and innovative to watch. So yeah, I can definitely say it's the movie's biggest positive so far.
9 minutes later
So these guys in black were harassing this woman and her daughter, just so they can claim the young girl as their own. Moments later, this other guy comes in and tells them that he's going to teach them a lesson that they soon won't forget. And after only doing two moves, the guys just up and retreat like cowards! Wow, that was just...stupidly easy, I'm kinda surprised by that.
17 minutes later
You know, guys, I am gonna say that this, I guess, dance performance here from these girls is kinda cool. I'm not sure what the point is to it, but I can at least say that it looks sort of cool.
2 minutes later
OK, so we *finally* get a confirmation about this movie's title...well, sort of. The Jade Lion that our villain possesses is only one half of a medallion. And if he can get his hands on the second half of it, then he will become the master of the kung-fu world. I have a *bunch* of questions about this, however, I'm gonna save all that for later when I eventually review this thing.
18 minutes later
All right, guys, I'm just gonna say this much right now, this movie is still confusing as hell, and I kinda stopped making sense of it a long time ago. But if there is any other positive to this movie, outside of the fight choreography, is the fact that the movie is almost over. It has less than 25 minutes to go, and I'm just counting down the minutes until this movie is finished.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion". And the movie just ends, so there's no ending credits, it just brings me back to the DVD menu screen. So, I'm just gonna go ahead and shut the movie off here...OK. Holy shit, um...where do I even start here...? Well, uh...I can at least say that the film was interesting. Um...yeah, I'm not kidding, guys, that's *literally* the best thing I can say about this thing. I wish I could tell you that it's good, but um...that would be sort of a lie.
So, let me go ahead and try to dissect this movie apart by talking about it the best way I can. I'm gonna start with writing, which is probably gonna be somewhat of a herculean feat here, because this story just doesn't make any sense. Now, my original thought process while I was watching the movie was that there was no writing here at all. I thought this was just gonna be some pointless fetch quest where our main character, Chu Siew Yen is on a mission from her teacher to find his missing brother. Why? Well, it's almost never explained...up until the very end of the movie. Which, even then, it makes almost no sense because it comes right the fuck out of nowhere. It tries to justify a reason as to why Chu was sent out on this particular mission, because she was apparently looking for him to find out who killed her parents when she was a baby. But again, it comes right near the end of the movie, and any character development she might've had beforehand never existed. The only sort of motivation we knew about her was that she was sent out to find her teacher's missing brother that disappeared two months ago. But in regards to finding out who killed her parents was something that was never even brought up for almost the entirety of the movie, so you're left wondering as to why she was even on this journey to begin with.
And that's the movie's biggest problem overall is the fact that almost *nothing* in this movie is ever explained. The best example of this has to involve the Jade Lion. Now, as I mentioned earlier, our villain for this movie, who's name I don't fucking remember, has half of the Jade Lion, and he needs the other half in order to became the master of the kung-fu world. And no, I am not joking, that is *literally* his entire explanation. And I have a bunch of questions about this. For starters, what exactly makes these Jade Lions so special when they're together? Does it give you some kind of kung-fu superpower that makes you the master of the kung-fu world? I would love to know more about these things, but the movie never explains it, despite the fact that they decided to bring it up a little over halfway into the movie. And as for the other half of the title, the Moonlight Sword, well...I'm not even joking when I say this, but that part is *never* explained. At all. It plays no part in this movie whatsoever, and it makes me wonder if that was a translation issue when they were dubbing the movie into English? It could be possible, but I'm ultimately just theorizing there. It's also possible that it was thrown in there because the title of the movie would sound cooler, I guess. I honestly don't know, but that's just my guess, really.
As for our characters, there is honestly no character here that has any sort of depth or personality. In fact, I can't even remember over half of their names, because they're so fucking forgettable. The only character I can remember by name is Chu, because they repeat her name so many times. But as for everyone else, I couldn't tell you a single thing about these characters or their motivations because it's all over the fucking place. It's honestly so bad to a point where I couldn't even tell you who is suppose to be a hero or a villain in this movie because the film did such a bad job in telling a coherent story. Now again, it could be possible that it's just a translation issue, and it's possible that it might've been explained better in the subtitled version. However, I can't give you a straight answer on that, and I'll tell you why in just a second. But I just want to say, first and foremost, that the writing here is just bad. It's bad on a storytelling level, because it doesn't really explain a lot of things.
Now let's talk about the acting. Specifically, let's talk about the film's English dub. To put it simply, guys, the English dub is fucking *atrocious*. Everybody sounds either wooden or they're trying to overact their lines, and almost none of it sounds natural in any way. Now, I can somewhat forgive this, because a lot of martial movies from this time period, from what I've heard, had this habit of having terrible English dubs, and this movie could most certainly be one of those cases. However, what I can't forgive is the fact that this movie, at least the version I have on DVD which contains the two movies I mentioned earlier, does not have an option to where you can just switch it over to the subtitled version. You're basically just stuck with an English dub that is roughly about 4 and a half decades old. And unless you're use to these god-awful dubs, then you're probably gonna hate this, mostly just because of it's English dub. However, I wanted to let you some of you know, firsthand, because anyone who may not have this kind of knowledge about these kinds of movies would probably not understand why they have these particularly bad English dubs. So again, I can forgive the film a bit for having a terrible English dub, but I can't forgive Warner Bros. for not at least including a subtitled version of the movie as an option on the DVD, since they're the ones who published this 2-pack and all.
Now there is another aspect to this movie's dub which ties into another problem with the film, which is the sound-mix. I have no idea who they got to dub over Chu's lines, but for some reason, every time she shouts out her lines, it sounds *really* loud. Now that could be just me having my TV up full volume, because the movie honestly sounds really quiet at times, however, it's something that I happened to notice almost *every* time that Chu's English voice actor has to shout her lines, and it sounds really grating, too. The sound-mix is also kind of an issue during the fight scenes, where whenever a character is getting hit, there's metal clanging sound that goes off, and it happens a lot, no matter whether it's someone getting punch or kicked, it happens quite often. And that could also just be part of how these particular movies were made back then when the foley artists just did what they wanted when mixing in the sounds of the fight sequences. Now I may have some of that information wrong, but it is still possible.
Speaking of the fight sequences, I actually do want to praise this movie on that front alone, because the fight choreography is honestly one of the only things that saves this movie from becoming shit. It is very fluent and really fun to watch, especially towards the beginning of the movie. One scene in particular that will really stand out is the fight sequence at the dumpling restaurant. It is very creative and it's quite honestly the best part of the entire movie. In fact, if you seriously want a reason to watch this movie, watch it for the fight sequences alone, it really is a lot of fun to watch, especially if you're someone who likes to watch a lot of martial arts movies.
Camerawork here is decent for what it is, but I do want to touch upon the picture quality, though, for just a moment. Because this is another thing that bothered the shit out of me when watching this film. Now I have no idea if this is just how the film was presented when it was being filmed, but for some reason, the filtering on the camera, at times, looks *awful*. There are scenes in this, including the fight scenes that have these odd-looking filters that just ruins the quality of the movie. Basically, you'll have some shots in this movie where with each cut, the filter looks like it's changed color. And it's especially bad during the fight scenes. There's a fight scene that happens at night where some random ninja-looking dude was ambushing one of our characters wearing a white garb, and the filtering on the camera will turn to red and then *slowly* fade out back to normal color. And then there was another fight scene towards the end, probably the final fight, where the color will change from orange, to clear white, to looking like normal again. It's really bad-looking, and I don't know if, again, that's how the film was originally made or if it was just a poor transfer onto DVD, but it just looks awful and kinda ruins a decent-looking movie. So yeah, just a heads up, if you ever plan to watch this movie, good luck on tolerating the filtering, because that shit interferes quite bit in this movie.
But other than that, guys, the lighting here is OK, and the music is also decent, but it's something you're not gonna remember the movie by. So, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion"? Um...kinda sort of. Allow me to explain. If you're somehow able to overlook the atrocious English dub and you want to watch it for the fight scenes, then it could prove to be an interesting viewing experience, at least for a once-over. I sincerely don't know if it would be worth watching multiple times over, unless if you just want to riff on it with friends on a bad movie night. Because, hey, you know what? As much as I didn't really care for the movie myself, I could see this movie potentially being used for some decent riffing material. So if you have a bunch of friends over on a bad movie night, go right ahead and riff to your hearts content. However, if you're looking for something that's different and new, then I'm not totally sure if this would be the movie for you. It might be, assuming, of course, you've had some experience with these kinds of movies. If not, then you might just want to skip over it entirely. Especially if you're someone who can't tolerate terrible English dubs. Myself personally, as atrocious as this dub was, it's not the worst I've heard. I've heard far worse English dubs than this. However, that's not really saying much to begin with. So yeah, ultimately, the movie might be interesting for you to watch once. However, I don't really think it's worth multiple viewings. At least, for me it isn't.
So...now that I've gotten that out of my system, I think I'm gonna go and watch another martial arts movie. In fact, I mentioned it earlier when I referenced movies like "Bloodsport". I'm gonna go and watch that next because it's certainly one of the finer martial arts movies I've seen in a long time. And as for the other movie on this 2-pack that I'm gonna review later this month, well...I'm hoping that it's better than what I just watched. However, we'll just have to wait and see when I eventually get to it.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment