Dong wu shi jie

Truly one of the most insane things I've ever seen. If you love rock paper scissors, Michael Douglas phoning it in, and random CGI monster violence that serves nearly no purpose to the plot, this is the movie for you! In all seriousness, this does feel like a movie attempting to cater to perhaps the widest swath of film watcher demos I've ever seen: action junkies, weirdo gore heads, car chase aficionados, romcom fans, mathy puzzle junkies, anime kids, CGI freaks; certainly there's some Venn diagram crossover but to stuff it all in? INSANE. That the movie is pretty damn enjoyable on the whole feels like a minor miracle, but here we are. I liked it! When the pretty clever ending setup a direct sequel? I was excited! Look, life is kinda crazy. Sometimes you don't want a deep, contemplative work of art. Sometimes you just wanna watch a little 'Surviving the Game' style roshambo and enjoy the ride.

Well first I gotta give it to the visual effects guys .. WOW ,.. even though it had little to do with the real story of the plot .. it added an amazing colorful style that transfer you into a Chinese Deadpool effect... and the set itself was all classic musty dirty cage fight style .. loved it.

The story might sound ridiculous at first ,,well it might be .. but still they presented with such thrill and edginess it actually looked like one of these famous poker movies like "21" or "Casino Royale" i really didn't htink i'd enjoy it that much .. i mean it might have been a bit long .. but that's how the chinese production usually works .. anyway .. the surprise is .. there will be a second part of the movie ..

The cast were phenomenal ,, Yi Feng Li was so convincing and did really well .. Michael Douglas did good too .. being the old evil guy .. the movie had a lot of nationalities in the cast .. and they all did wel-.

Final thought ,, you might think it's silly , but it is not .. it is recommended.

Well that's one way to make rock, papers, scissors fun... This movie was a bit silly with the whole premise of deadly child's game but it was fairly enjoyable. Nothing that excited me to my core but it was just below 2.5 stars. Not too bad but not too good either. Only reason i'm giving it 5 stars and not more is that it could've done much more with the plot and premise, but oh well...

We have seen deadly childgames actually be exciting with an example such as "Squid Games" but this was just... bland. It hurts me to say because I usually am a sucker for asian movies like this, but this just didn't hit that very well with me.

The movie surprised me, I had no idea that the Chinese could be directing something like this. The movie was absolutely amazing, the actors fit perfectly with their roles, also I liked that they used a variety of languages.

Animal World got some great publicity because of the train scene that went viral across social media, a martial arts clown battling monsters through train carriages! Memorable stuff. For this reason that's what I assumed Animal World would basically be, I was mistaken and in a good way.

It tells the story of a young man who finds himself in tremendous debt and forced to play an elaborate game of rock paper scissors hosted by Michael Douglas to save himself.

Okay fine the premise sounds a bit ropey but in fact it's the concept that makes this such a remarkable film. It looks like a AAA Hollywood film not the Chinese movie it is, it's well cast, very cleverly written and I was gripped more than I have been by a film in quite sometime.

So the clown? the cgi monsters? the incredible over the top fight scenes? Well they're the weakest part of the film! Not because they're bad, in fact quite the opposite they're incredible stuff. No the problem with them is that they're entirely unnecessary, they detract from the movie rather than contribute to it. Instead of seeing more (Because there isn't much) I'd rather they had not included that at all, maybe make a separate movie altogether for that stuff.

Such a clever well constructed film with entirely forgivable flaws.

The Good:

Some incredible visuals

Solid soundtrack

Michael Douglas

Fantastic concept

The Bad:

Side concept is unnecessary

Unfinished story with no assurance of a sequel