Legendary Assassin (2010)

Too much of everything

Just perfect...

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Legendary Assassin is the directorial debut of both Wu Jing and Nicky Li. Nicky Li is a former fight choreography and stunt member of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team, who has had collaborated with Wu Jing in several projects like Fatal Contact and Invisible Target. And as debuts go this one is very solid to good.What I like about this film the most that it moves along in a nice pace where not a minute is wasted with redundant sub plots or other distractions. Every event or character interaction is functional. Through the non action scenes we get to know the main character and kind of what makes him tick. I say kind of since not much background is given on Bo Tong Lam (Wu Jing). But he is not your typical good guy as he is capable of cold blooded murder if the title didn't gave away this already. After assassinating a big crime boss (who was hiding out on a small island) he is forced to stay on the island since there are no ferries coming in because of a typhoon alert. It is this moment where he makes a connection with Hiu Wor (Celina Jade who you might recognize from Arrow where she played Shado). He gets to spend some nice moments with her and her colleagues and this was very pleasant to see because they make you care about the characters despite them just having met.And since you care it does intensify the action. It's such a simple device to do this and yet many similar films fail to do this. So I am glad that Wu Jing understood this. Now he does make some mistakes by making the film a little too serious and dramatic but I guess that you can't escape from tragedy in Asian films. But first and foremost it's done in service of the action and that is a good thing. It makes you involved and will make the action have more impact. The action on it's own is what you can expect from Wu Jing or Jacky Wu and is hard hitting and stylish. Sometimes wireworks are used but very sparingly.Overall this film delivers on the action and makes me want Wu Jing to do more projects. Wolf Warrior was excellent, let's hope the sequel to that will be too.

I rented "Legendary Assassin" because I liked Celina Jade on "Arrow," and because I was looking for a special actress to appear in my movie. Celina, who is Amerasian, has great international appeal. A friend of mine was absolutely convinced she was Latin. However, as much as I liked Celina as "Shado" on "Arrow," her role was pretty one-dimensional. However, in "Legendary Assassin," Celina is extraordinary, managing to be beautiful, cute, funny, sexy and sad in a single role. Not to mention, Celina has a singing voice that rivals Christina Aguilera, which is no small feat, and her "Legendary Assassin love theme" is a bravura performance. You should watch the music video, because the song, which plays over the end credits (and is featured on the radio, in one sequence) is never performed in its entirety. Lead actor Jacky Wu (Wu Jing) is a skilled martial artist. Unfortunately, his opponents are not and the fight scenes are just so-so. Far worse is the story, dialog, and the acting of almost all of the supporting players. Kara Hui, who is not too bad, is still totally unconvincing as a menacing villain. Jacky Wu may be a good actor, but his character is so wooden, one would never know. Almost everyone else has been encouraged to overact, typical of terrible direction. Almost every scene, except the first, is listlessly shot and edited. Even the opening credits are inept. However, Celina brightens every scene she is in. She will make a wonderful leading lady in my movie and will, hopefully, become the international star she deserves to be. Oh, one other positive note. In the movie, Celina has a beautiful Persian cat.I rate "Legendary Assassin a "5".

Good looking but otherwise not very good action film about Bo (Jacky Wu aka Wu Jing) who goes to an island near Hong Kong and kills a mob boss and removes his head. Since a typhoon is rapidly approaching he finds himself stranded on the island. While looking for a place to eat he runs in a women played by Celina Jade, who takes him in after he rescues her cat. things become complicated when she turns out to be a cop, the dead mob boss is discovered by more mobsters who have come to the island and he ends up waiting out the storm in the police station as a witness to another crime.Fast moving action film suffers because other than the final battle in the rain the action sequences are unremarkable (and full of obvious, not very well done, wire work). The numerous fights kind of come off as almost rehearsals thanks to poor camera shots which reveal how little contact was made. Celina Jade isn't really believable as the cop who's capable of holding her own against the bad guys since from her first action scene we're asked to believe she had to be rescued from the clutches (literally) of a bad guy she will moments later fight to a stand still. The film tries to have it both ways and ends up having it no way.I won't pick on her performance since its clear she had problems that didn't really allow her to do more than look pretty.Not a horrible film, its just one that needs to be reedited to make it seem more real.Give the film points in that I made it to the end, and maybe one more knowing that if I ran across it on cable I might actually watch it again. Its a film that belongs in that weird twilight zone of not really good that you'd choose to watch it again, but would if you ran across it, even though its not really good that you'd recommend it or admit you saw it, since its not that bad, but the same time its not really good either, but its not bad enough to dismiss as total trash that you can really make fun of.somewhere around 5 out of 10, maybe 4 out of 10 or...

2008 would be a good year for HK style action films if it was just for "Ip Man" which takes the traditional kung fu film of the early 1980's and updates it. Here we have an updating of the typical police action film of the late 1980's. Looks like 2008 has been a banner year.Combining gangster genre with the sort of police action that Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock would be in, we have a well shot, exciting police drama with great kung fu action (no guns) and some light comedy. What takes this above the average film from the 1980's are the character touches that usually didn't happen in the older films. I found a lot of the films from that era to be boring or too stupid but this film held my attention for the full 80 minutes.Good acting, great to excellent action choreography, fine direction and photography. I highly recommend this film.