y2mckay

While not a bad film, this isn't terribly exciting, interesting, or memorable either - especially compared to some of the beautiful and excellent martial arts films coming out of China these days. There is a fairly interesting tale of a young martial artist who comes to a distant outpost village to claim his bride from a previously arranged marriage. As expected, the girl wants nothing to do with the stranger at first, but begins to develop feelings for him after he is forced to defend her and her father from a local gang of thugs.

The premise is no different in most ways from the standard Western genre - only it's the Old West of China and they use swords instead of guns. But it moves at a snail's pace much of the time, and the action sequences are few and far between and poorly edited so that you can never really see much of what's happening. There are lots of long lingering shots of people staring at each other across the desert, riding horses, etc. etc. It all gets rather dull after a while, and the cinematography is bland and washed out, as is the print that the DVD was transferred from.

Do yourself a favor and rent something by Zhang Yimou, or even one of He Ping's later and more polished films like "Warriors of Heaven and Earth" instead.

I found it to be a fun and lighthearted comedy, with more than a few touching moments as well. The James Brown lookalike subplot was amusing, but the strongest element of the film is the Yakuza boss's attempts to reunite with his daughter, and bond with the granddaughter he never knew he had. The cast was fantastic, especially the stunning woman playing Kaori, and the super-cute little girl playing her daughter. More than anything, this is just a fun film, even if it does get pretty silly and contrived at times. And by the way, I'm a film critic, and one not easily swayed by crap movies. I'm not a James Brown fan at all, either (don't dislike him, just not a fan). Nevertheless, I still dug this movie and the soundtrack.

8.5/10

This is the danger of picking up something you've never heard of before at the video store , simply because the cover looks cool . ..

It's hard to know what demographic this movie was made for. It's like some ghetto-style Blair Witch Project Lite, with an African-American cast set in an abandoned school. It is supposedly about a history teacher and a group of students who go into the school to retrieve any historical memorabilia before it gets torn down, but end up finding something horrifying in the basement. Sounded like a good premise on the cover description, except that the story is woefully bad and completely unfrightening. It is far too poorly written and executed to satisfy any serious horror fan. It certainly has the production values of an After-school special, and could have been a good scary movie for kids, except that it has far too much profanity and gore.

I blame the writer/filmmaker James Black. His cast could be accused of bad acting, but the truth is these kids probably could have turned in some decent performances if they'd had a workable script and some good direction. Instead, they run around spouting cliche'd lines, trying to act too hip, and arguing with each other about everything. Likewise, the school where they shot this film could have been a great location for a scary film - except that they filmed everything there in the DAYTIME!! Hey, first rule of horror films, James - all the best ones take place at night. It looks like they probably shot the whole thing in one day, as a matter of fact. And the back-story of why the basement is haunted is completely ludicrous, historically inaccurate, and even a bit propagandist.

So, in short. Stay away from James Black films. Stay away from Full-Moon films. And especially, stay away from The Vault.