Title: The Storm Warriors (風雲II)
Director: Danny Pang, Oxide Pang
Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Martial Arts
Ten years after the last installment movie called Storm Riders, the sequel, Storm Warriors emerged on the silver screen with its original main casts. This time, a new super powerful enemy came, called Lord Godless (Simon Yam) and his son Heartless (Nicholas Tse). They both managed to capture several powerful martial artists including Striding Cloud (Aaron Kwok) and Nameless (Kenny Ho). Whispering Wind (Ekin Cheng) came to rescue them and they managed to escape under the cover of the rest of martial artists who sacrificed themselves. In order to combat the invincible Lord Godless, Wind started to follow the path of evil while Cloud learn martial arts from Nameless.
Okay, I must say this out loud...this movie sucks! Even with the superb casts eg. Simon Yam, this movie sucks big time... and the Pangs (directors) had the nerve to say that the movie is very good. I should have watched the Princess and the Frog!
Sure, the graphics are okay, but it lack the sense of power. I would not say that the graphics are even beautiful... they are just above average. Even when Nameless, Wind and Cloud use their most powerful technique... gathering power and such, I just can't get the sense of power from their techniques, it looks just like swirling smoke and wind to me.
Next, is the acting skills... oh my God... they are just terrible... the conversations doesn't have a flow and the soundtrack is boring. And the romantic scenes are best is they do away with it. I don't feel anything at all when the gals died... not to mention that I have seen that scene coming several thousand miles away. Basically, the gals are really insignificant in the movie.
It's all just so cliche... I've figured out who is the final boss 20 minutes in the movie... no, it isn't Lord Godless, who is rather pathetic for a person who claimed to be invincible. I've never read the comic on this one, so maybe the director is trying to stick to the comic as much as possible. The directors also tried to mimic the effect of a comic book in fighting scenes and I think they failed miserably. Instead of awesomeness, I just can't help but laugh at the childish and amateurish executed scenes.
Generally, I love martial art movies especially those that shows ancient China... but this one, I'm sorryloh... it's really a crappy movie for one with such a big budget. And the ending... OMG what the heck is that? Let me ask you, if your best friend killed your girlfriend would you still sacrifice yourself to save him? I might still accept the 'saving' part, but sacrifice oneself to save the bastard who killed my gf? That just doesn't make any sense! :P... I know, I know, it's normal for this kind of stupid sacrifice in comic books... but the problem is, in the movie, it didn't give me enough reason to believe that the sacrifice is worth it while in comic books, I usually cried in these kind of flashbacks.
Observation: I still can't figure out why the weak point of Lord Godless is in the arm... I thought it was the fist/palm.
Bottomline: Find a better use of 2 hours.
Bamboo Ranking: 1.5 / 5.0
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