THE STORM WARRIORS Review

After achieving invincibility and stripping top warrior Nameless (Kenny Ho) of all his powers, the impossibly evil Lord Godless (Simon Yam) kidnaps the Emperor (Patrick Tam) and appears without obstacle in his quest to conquer all of China.  Nameless tells warriors Cloud (Aaron Kwok) and Wind (Ekin Cheng) that only Lord Wicked (Kenny Wong) has the power to defeat Godless now, a warrior so overcome by "the evil way" he was forced to cut off his own arms to avoid becoming totally consumed. 

Wicked suggests that learning the evil way may be the fastest way for Wind and Cloud to gain the necessary strength to take on Godless, but of course there is great risk involved. Wicked determines that only Wind has the strength of character to return unscathed from the dark side, while Cloud, who is way too intense, tutors under Nameless, developing his own signature sword style.

Adoring females Chu Chu (Tang Yan) and Second Dream (Charlene Choi) - in two of the year's most thankless roles - sit on a rock and wait patiently as their beaus risk all to save the country. Meanwhile, Godless searches for the Dragon Tomb while his similarly ruthless son, Heart (Nicholas Tse), waits patiently in the wings for his moment to seize power. Much to nobody's surprise, Wind's training transforms him into a deadly tool of all-powerful evil, (to say, it gives him Bad Wind), forcing Cloud to go head to head with his spiritual brother.

It may sound like a complex story, but precious little actually happens in THE STORM WARRIORS, save for a lot of posturing and swinging of swords. For the best part of the film's two-hour running time, the screen is filled with big hair, vast, impressionistic CG landscapes and much heroic posing. Aspiring to the same visual aesthetic as Zack Snyder's 300, this lacks the kinetic energy, engaging characters or exciting fight choreography (pretty much inexcusable for a production of this scale), instead seemingly content to repeatedly over- and under-crank every last scuffle, while smearing the screen with swirling clouds of digital distraction.

The entire last half hour consists of one long stand off between the two titular warriors, as their mullets flutter in the wind, they pout at each other intensely and occasionally whip up a computer-generated energy field to hurl at each other. At one point they actually stop fighting, glance up at a remote, yet infinitely more cinematic mountain top ledge, and relocate there to continue their staring contest in more aesthetically pleasing surroundings.

The Pang Brothers have proved in the past with the likes of 2006's RECYCLE that they can bring tension, scares and humanity to an effects-heavy production, but of-late their work has become increasingly shambolic. The notable qualities of early successes like THE EYE are quickly fading from memory, to be replaced by the mounting inadequacies on display in the likes of their woeful remake of BANGKOK DANGEROUS, teen romance BASIC LOVE and intertwining SEVEN 2 ONE. THE STORM WARRIORS sadly continues this trend.

Fans of films like LEGEND OF ZU or DRAGON TIGER GATE might find something to like here, but fans of the original comic book series or Andrew Lau's original STORM RIDERS, must surely expect more than this. Watching THE STORM WARRIORS too often proves to be more ordeal than entertainment, consisting as it does of little more than a few cool-looking images scattered across two hours of monotonous, repetitive drivel.

Cross published in bc Magazine (Hong Kong)