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Genre: Animation
Director: Dante Lam
Cast: Nicolas Tse, Richie Ren
RunTime: 1 hr 35 mins
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films
Rating: PG
Official Website: http://www.stormrider-clash.com/
Opening Day: 9 October 2008
Synopsis:
The emperor destroys The Sword Worship Villa, central China's
top sword-maker, alleging that its people conspired to overthrow
him. The young master of the villa, Ao Jue is the sole survivor.
The Ao family has cast Jue a sword which can only be completed
and its power unleashed with the blood of the Fire Kirin.
However the Fire Kirin has been killed by Wind and Cloud and
disappeared from the face of the earth. Ao Jue can only restrain
his anger and live in exile in the West City. As the only
two people in the world who have Kirin blood running in their
veins, Wind and Cloud gets embroiled and a deadly calamity
ensues...
Movie Review:
It must be some sort of karmic law: every time Moviexclusive.com
sends your reviewer to an animated film, it turns out to be
a traumatic experience only slightly more enjoyable than a
car crash. Which, incidentally, is probably the best description
for this movie.
The brooding figures of Wind and Cloud are back, this time
in animated form. If memory serves correctly, the original
Storm Riders was a fairly entertaining romp, filled with lots
of good looking people and some cheesy CGI. While a live action
sequel is on the way, this movie is a sort of companion piece
to the movie and the original cartoon strip. But it still
obeys the laws of the original, namely, a) Wind and Cloud
must pose broody-ly every 15 minutes or so while staring at
some distant point on the horizon, as their long, soft, L’Oreal-conditioned
hair flaps in the wind, and b) female characters must be sweet,
achingly beautiful (the cute factor is optional) and have
the severe hots for our brooding heroes, following which they
must suffer and/or preferably die a noble death.
There are some striking images and fancy swordplay, with an
epic showdown between Wind and Cloud within the first 15 minutes.
Unfortunately, it’s nothing that hasn’t already
been seen in 10,000 other wu xia films. As cliché mounts
upon cliché, this particular animation begins to feel
like every kung fu movie ever made. Vengeance-obsessed Ao
Jue, who has surely emerged straight from some retro Street
Fighter revival, distinguishes himself in a random fight with
some Nameless (yes, that’s really his name) guy over
a fish, complete with a cheesy fishing analogy about the cruel,
meaningless nature of existence. It is surely not a good sign
when your audience can’t help sniggering in the middle
of what is surely meant to be a deep and meaningful soliloquy,
replete with Buddhist philosophising. Yes, we get it, the
world is a cruel place filled with needless suffering, like
your reviewer having to sit through this bad, bad movie.
Now, all of this might be tolerable if there was at least
a coherent storyline. But it has far too many mystical swords
and ancient feuds to keep track of, and Moviexclusive.com
gave up the ghost of its vain attempt to summarise the plot
about 20 minutes in. As if this weren’t enough, the
Canto-accented Mandarin of Richie Ren and Nicholas Tse has
an unintentionally comic effect on proceedings. While your
reviewer should surely have paid more attention in Chinese
class, their mispronunciation did little to add clarity to
the narrative. Sadly, the subtitles were of little help, being
fairly horrendous in the best tradition of all those 80s Hong
Kong movies you ever saw. In particular, the killer line,
“You will become a manic depressive killing machine!”,
gave your reviewer a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, as childhood
memories came rushing back in a flood of mangled grammar and
tortured syntax.
Movie
Rating:
(Wait for the live-action sequel. On second thought,
maybe not)
Review by Nicholas Yong
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