Kowloon Walled City

Future Hong-Kong classic!!! After the legendary thriller Limbo and the action flick Kill Zone 2, Cheang Pou-soi is here with a high octane crazy martial arts flick that is getting rave reactions everywhere (74% on IMdB, many sites giving 4/5 or 5/5, 87/96% on Rotten Tomatoes). It is one of the most expensive Hong-Kong films of the last ten years and is packed to the ceiling with stars. It is also an adaptation of an Andy Seth comic book and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this insane ride. Every kung-fu fanatic will be purring with bliss and you've never fucking seen anything like it!!! There are a lot of characters, a lot of motivations, and the storyline didn't really blow me away, but visually it's a very impressive piece of work where the action side of things is amazing. The action sequences are long (the whole second half is one incredible action set-piece!), featuring well-known Hong-Kong veterans like Louis Koo and Sammo Hung. The main character played by Raymond Lam is also excellent and the villain played by Philip Ng was ultra crazy invincible. The action has great cinematography, brutally elaborate choreography, it's nice to see that there are almost no ordinary dummies here, but every dude has mastered martial arts perhaps since he was a kid, so every henchman here could play a bad guy in another action movie and I applaud that tremendously. Besides fists, there are also slashing weapons and I enjoyed the duels with sickles, hammers, machetes and knives immensely. It has an incredible drive and the action scenes can properly raise the pressure and give chills. The ending is a bit over the top (it is a comic book adaptation after all), so don't look for any realism here, everyone has incredible stamina, surviving the impossible, especially Philip Ng getting hit with hammers and doing next to nothing with it. But when you get over it you enjoy it immensely, but I can understand that some people might be bothered by it. it's just over the line at times. I'll gladly repeat this insane action orgasm. 9/10. (25.06.2024)