2/10
extremely shallow
9 July 2013
I managed to sit all the way through this bargain-bin schlock only because watching clips of martial art movies provides a minimum level of entertainment. The animated framing device and the annoying, "Yahoo web clip"-sounding voice narration that link the clips together provided virtually no insight into history of kung fu movies. The intellectual level of the narrated "analysis" is about on par with a thesis-lacking essay from a below average student in high school. The historical analysis presented amounted to basically just putting a random movie on screen and mentioning who starred in it. Attempts at linking films together to provide a sense of historical development were largely absent and completely inept when present. The film might have worked better if it stayed in strictly chronological order but it jumps back-n-forth in time so much that it leaves the viewer confused. The film is shapeless and shallow. The writers seem to only have had a superficial understanding of subject matter and it just seems like a couple of kung fu geeks somehow managed to convince somebody to fund this. In this end, this is a movie built to ride of the coat-tails of the films it covers. Given the history of exploitation of kung fu stars (something mentioned in the film) makes this rather ironic.
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