Legendary Amazons

source: Legendary Amazons

If you have ever seen a Chinese action film you know they have several things in common. First is that they love bright colors. The martial art fighting special effects include slow motion and sped up sequences which feature indifference to the laws of gravity and physics in general. The English translation sounds like an old Japanese Godzilla film. Fighters are the Chinese version of our old western movies. They can shoot 2 spears from one bow and get two kills. A sword can go through 3 people with one thrust. When word reaches the Emperor that General Yang has died defending the western border, he commands his son to lead an army to protect the land in what appears to be a suicide mission. The son's fighting sisters join him in order to afford him protection. There is also a dragon staff somehow involved in the tale, and like most Chinese films, there is something I lose in the cultural exchange. The story does have a plot you can follow. I found the fight scenes to be inane. The ending credits included outtakes. The reason why I watch Chinese pop culture films is for the themes, i.e. what is the message they are sending? In this one the message is China can defeat the overwhelming evil armies of the west. Family is important, but the people of China are also family and of greater importance. Women have their place in society as equals with men (i.e. stop killing girl babies). No sex or nudity. There was something that sound like the F-word.

Not going to spoil it much, but the beginning, was EPIC. Its about sisters (well at least by their names they are sisters) training. There's awesome music in the background and all these fancy kind of filming. (One of them, I can't remember, is pro at archery. The film exaggerates at the beginning her skill, with her shooting bullseye while fighting, and doing a back flip before letting go the arrow and it hits like RIGHT in the middle.) The first 9 minutes is a summary basically and an overview of their lives until now. Then it goes into the 'fancy high speed camera sort of scenes' for 3 minutes. (BEST 3 minutes, in my opinion) It's kind of like Fast and furious 5 where they introduce the members in the 'team'. Anyways, I loved it, especially the beginning (like i've been saying for this whole review)the plot was interesting, and (SPOILER: some of the 'sisters' do die despite their awesome kung-fu skills) but i didn't feel sad, maybe because with so many of the 'main characters' (there are 9 or 10 sisters/main characters) the film can't focus exactly too deeply on one character. I'd recommend you to check this out, (at least from 8 minutes in the movie to around 11 minutes to see that epic shoot- which is quite cheesy) but it is one of those action/fighting movies so if your interested you should watch it :)

When a General his killed, his wife and various female members of his family set off to pill his military shoes. That's as close as I can get in a synopsis with going into vast detail - detail which seems unnecessary when this biggish budget Chinese film is largely combat sequences. If you like large battle scenes, lots of one-on-one wire-fu and the like, you're going to enjoy this. But if you're not familiar with lots of Chinese actresses, you're going to get confused. Assorted members of this military clan are introduced together with little identifying captions about what their swords are called, and then you never know who each one is until they - spoiler! - get killed. There is some dodgy CGI, especially at the start. It gets bloodier as it does on, and it really shouldn't because the CGI blood doesn't convince. I've decided I like Cecilia Cheung. This DVD from Poundland held my attention, but I'm not in a big hurry to see it again.

Excellent movie with awesome action, extraordinary pictures and contain unforgettable specials effects. Cheng Pei-Pei is as talented as always and Cecilia Cheung is still talented and beautiful .Thank you to the great Frankie Chan for this beautiful movie and thank you for all the movies you have done and played in the past with all these grand Chinese stars movies like Chen Kuan Tai, Ti Lung, David Chan,Derek Yee and many others stars. From a fan who love you and who love the great movies in which all of you had shined in the past.

I can't really like this oriental style with its dancing struggles, nor the female empowerment made me fall in love with this film, uninteresting...

With all the talent and the script that thing film acquired was destined to be great. But no. It was terrible. I don't dare explain why it went so wrong. Apparently the director hasn't even made a good film in over 2 decades, so why would they choose him to make a big budget film? The biggest problem in this film were the 'mothers' and 'grandmothers'. Seriously they all look the same age, they are all young and most likely late 20s to early 30s but no, this film makes them out to seem a generation apart. Just no. In all my viewings of Asian films, this one takes the joke out of that. Continuity seems to be a major problem in this film, one second the lady warriors are taking off 2 chain mail suits and suddenly 10 seconds later they got two thick chain mail rope of about 50 metres, how is that possible? The one thing i hate about Asian films is the over dramatic fight scenes where the fighters seem to fly 10 metres because screw logic and the physics law, there is no reason that it should be added. I'm not sure if the actors reputation went in decline after but if it didn't then thats good, they put a real performance but the director - terrible. Just quit. Seriously I don't know how i managed to go through that film especially after trying to make myself quit. Warn you, don't watch it especially if you have OCD.

When I purchased this movie from Amazon, it was with a certain amount of expectation to it; because it had Cecilia Cheung in it, plus it also brandished "impressive" and "a genre breakthrough" on the cover. Uhm, yeah, what genre are they making a breakthrough in? Having seen the movie, I sit here somewhat dazzled. Why? Well, because the movie was only partially as I had expected it to be. The good part about the movie is that it is sort of an epic movie in itself, and they managed to build up a good sense of believability with the sets and the whole feeling to the movie. The armors and the costumes in the movie were amazing to look at. There were so many small details in everything that it was just spectacular. And that is one of the better parts of the movie, because they really managed to bring the feel of the given era to life on the screen. And the battle scenes were grand and mostly epic. Lots of really nice fighting, action and choreography here. You might notice that I said 'mostly'. Yeah, because there were scenes during the fight that were painfully obviously staged and looked that way as well. The less than impressive aspects of the movie, were many of the death scenes were just hilarious to look at, reminding me of something from the old black and white movie genre. You see someone struggling, then falling down awkwardly and laying still. It was just too staged and fake, and most of the death scenes in the movie here were just among some of the worst death scenes I have seen in similar movies. Another thing that didn't really aid the movie in its progress was the way the director attempted to mix epic warfare with the petty feudal matters of a house in the royal Chinese army. It just seemed a little bit too much - delving a bit too far into being a Chinese soap opera. And finally, there were just too many characters to keep track of, and you just ended up shrugging your shoulders whenever one of the Yang family died, because you had no idea who it was or had any particular kind of 'on-screen relationship' to that person. It was like they were all extras in the frame just to add to the chaos. In overall, then "Legendary Amazons" - despite its cheesy title - is an average movie of this genre; nothing breakthrough to be had here. There are far better movies available in the same genre. And truth be told, then Cecilia Cheung and Richie Ren did little to raise the appeal of the movie. It was a fairly average experience, and hence, the 5 out of 10 rating from me.

This is a pretty bad movie with some crappy acting and story. I am not sure if it's intentional or not but the whole thing just comes off humorous, especially because of the acting. The story is nothing interesting just men warriors losing a battle and women warriors picking up arms to fight in their husbands place. The whole movie is a cheese fest, even the action is super cheesy and looks so fake...Although it's entertaining to watch. Watching the fight sequences is like watching someone play "Dynasty Warriors". The only thing that makes this movie watchable is the fight sequences even if their is no logic when it comes to physics and cheesy. Which might work if it's a comedic kung-fu movie that doesn't take itself seriously but has a cleverly integrated plot. But that isn't the case for this movie and when it tries to integrate some story into it. I was like "okay this is boring and dull, lets get back to the cheesy action". I am not fond of Cecilia Chung these days as an actress and she is pretty bad in this movie. There is quite a lot of characters in this movie but they are so underdeveloped I didn't care who lives or who dies. As a matter of fact I wasn't quite sure which character was dying or fighting even though some dramatic movie plays with other characters weeping or have the sad face. Just watch for the cheesy action scenes and not the story or the acting and you might be fine watching this. 4/10

Let's get this out of the way first of all: LEGENDARY AMAZONS has nothing to do with Amazons at all; instead, it's a fairly straightforward and normal-for-the-genre Chinese historical war film about a legendary band of warrior women who are forced into going to war to battle an invading army. It's colourful stuff for sure, packed with unrealistic but cool-looking costumes and plentiful action; indeed, at least 70% of the film seems to be made up of one fight scene after the next, all aided with wirework and CGI effects that keep characters and weapons flying all over the place. Here's the unusual bit: LEGENDARY AMAZONS also happens to be one of the cheesiest films I've seen in a while. Chinese historicals are usually po-faced and deadly serious, like with THREE KINGDOMS or BATTLE OF WITS. Not so this film: the script is leaden and the performances so awful and self-conscious that they veer on self-parody. The worst offender is the absolutely diabolical Cecilia Cheung, who takes woodenness to new levels; apparently she's a big actress over in the East, but you wouldn't know it from her scene-chewing here. Still, despite (or maybe because of) all the unintentional humour, LEGENDARY AMAZONS turns out to be a whole lot of fun. The virtually non-stop action helps, of course, but as a whole the film has a light and vibrant feel that keeps it sweeping merrily along. It's certainly not a classic, and by genre standards it's pretty poor, but is it entertaining? The answer is a resounding 'yes'! It's a riot, and one I look forward to seeing again in the future.