Su ren te gong

Chinese try to make an EXPENDABLE movie and fail terribly. Just awful. Sad to see her go the way of Bruce Willis and Nicholas Cage, no script too bad.

The Rookies is an action film from China that can best be described as a live action cartoon that most definitely should not be taken seriously!

Leading man, the gorgeous Talu, is an extreme sports nut who hilariously gets involved with a secret organisation who soon invite him to be a part of their team.

Reluctantly agreeing (until the money piles up) Talu sets off thinking he is the new James Bond and meets his team mates in Europe. Their main mission of course is to stop the bad guy who has a chemical weapon that turns everyone into plants...

And that isn't even the daftest part!

I can understand why most viewers would see The Rookies as a bad movie, but it's hard not to laugh the whole way through it - and a lot of those times, genuinely. It's also hard not to be entertained as director Alan Yuen rams as much visuals, insane stunts, fight action and madness into every scene!

In fact, if this had been made during Hong Kong's golden age of cinema, it would be regarded as one to watch...

Hollywood A-lister Milla plays the stone faced leader of the secret organisation, and while she doesn't bring anything overly exciting to the show, does her best Bridget Neilson impression with a few action scenes on her behalf.

I rate all my films by their entertainment value and The Rookies certainly entertains. Just switch off your brain before it starts and enjoy the ride...

Milla Jovovich ... I mean she enriches everything she does ... doesn't she? That's a rhetorical question of course. Unfortunately she is not the main focus here ... and you will probably feel the same way - especially after she has that really great action scene near the start of the movie.

That aside and also the weird fact that Prime (Germany) decided to either have the movie dubbed in German or have the english track only (every chinese actor being dubbed, almost hillariously so, when we have a translator for Milla as one example) - which did not work in the movies favour let me tell you that much ... all that aside, the movie has some really nice action and stunt set pieces.

And these are the things that really safe the movie ... the jokes are way more miss than hit ... but if you like silly things, you may find more things enticing here than most of the other viewers.

Obviously most of us came for Milla.... but we stayed for the fun and the cool gadgets plus the bond-vibes...

Look its not the best movie of the year but it definitely had its best bits... I enjoyed it, i was aware of the poor dialogues and narrative

but i loved the version of Alice/Milla she was like a Bond/MIF/Spy-vibes and i also understood why she only had a small screentime but the little she had was enough for me.

Feng was charming and Miao Miao was likable, the whole team was good, most jokes were a lil goofy and amateurish but overally bearable.

I also loved their tech/gadgets, practically interesting, the floating safety bag (as i called it) the transforming car, even the helicopter at the end was very fancy.

Finally the action sequences were very good, way better than what i have seen in holiday, the car chasings a little exaggerated but very interesting.

It also had a heart and a soul.(a lil bit) which i appreciated.

Overally its a alright*

I would describe this movie as a poorly crafted spy movie for kids, with an overblown budget and one of the worst scripts ever written for it's type. The pacing of this movie is off, and so is the editing at times. The dialogue (of varying noticeable-qualities when Milla is talking vs the dubbed English on the Blu-Ray) is terrible, which doesn't help the over-acted characters. When a bad guy says "hot tamales!" you know what you are in for.. Milla's cringy participation must have been backed by a big paycheck, but it's a role that is not beneath her movie history of garbage. The rest of the seemingly-super-famous actors are equally as bad.

The tone is all over the place (and the emotional parts are laughable), and there's nothing particularly memorable aside from the mess that it is. It goes off the rails on what I think is the last bit.

Beautiful locations and color usage, though! The movie is gorgeous and wonderfully crafted visually (except some CGI). Some decent parkour and post production (animations).

But is it worth watching? No. After a while, you stop laughing against the movie and being surprised by its nonsense.