Chin san chuen suet

Sammo Hung is one of the VERY few actors who is a joy to watch in front of the camera AND he's a pretty damn good director as well. This well done period/fantasy piece is no exception. Andy Lau (another favorite foreign actor of mine) is Fei, a common fisher-man who falls in love with the Emperor's daughter, who is bethrothed to the King. The king is secretly loved by his adviser who was sent to kill him. It's a tad convoluted, yes. And the part with the whale is rather silly. But all in all, it's pretty good. Not among the best of these type of movies though.

My Grade: B-

DVD Extras: Commentary by Hong Kong film expert, Ric Meyers; 'Alternate Ending' (which really is just the same ending, but instead of fading to black for the credits, it goes to whale outtakes); Cast Filmographies; Trailers for "Dragon Inn", " Duel to the Death", "the Master Swordsman", "the Duel", and "My Schoolmate, the Barbarian"

"The Moon Warriors" (aka "Zhan shen chuan shuo") has every ingredient to be a masterful epic Wuxia movie. It has an impressive cast list, a well-established director, beautiful scenery, good props and costumes, lots of action and good choreography...

...but it ultimately failed to be more than a mediocre movie given the fact that the entire movie seemed nothing more than a scramble of bits and pieces of different story lines put together in a fairly incoherent assembly in order to make a movie. There was no overly coherent red line throughout the course of the movie, and it was a chaotic mess as the story jumped all over the place.

I watched "The Moon Warriors" for the first time around the mid- to late 1990's. I wasn't overly impressed back then, but had purchased it solely because of Maggie Cheung starred in it. And now returning to the movie about 20 years later, I am sad to say that the movie still isn't all that impressive for me.

What is impressive, though, is the cast list for "The Moon Warrior". They had managed to acquire some really big talents for this movie, which includes Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui. And that is one of the main reasons for watching this movie; the cast ensemble.

The martial arts and fighting sequences were also quite good and well-choreographed. And this is essential to this particular genre of movies.

I do also enjoy the details in movies, such as seen in the props, sets, landscape, etc. And there was a lot of nice touches to this movie, both in costume and sets.

But the storyline was just killed off by a way too scrambled and confusing directorial attempt at making something epic. And it was a shame, because "The Moon Warriors" really had all the right things served on a silver platter in order to be a very outstanding movie.

I am going to have to settle on a mediocre five out of ten stars for this 1992 Hong Kong movie, although it pains me somewhat, as I am a big fan of both Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau.

Moon Warriors is a beautifully filmed period kung fu drama starring handsome Andy Lau as the rural and naive yet impeccably good and incorruptible (not to mention invincible) hero, who befriends the rightful crown prince who's trying to regain the throne from his evil younger brother. Of course, both brothers and everyone they associate with are over-the-top kung fu masters... :-)

The story is not very nuanced, nor very original, nor particularly good - but it is saved by the excellent actors, the excellent action scenes, the cool kung fu, and, yes, the whale! Andy Lau's character, Fei, is friends with a small orca that he plays with in the water and who saves his bacon in some crucial scene towards the end. The whale scenes are beautiful and totally feel-good! It's made even better by the extra scenes on the DVD, where the whale's good nature is highlighted in scenes where it, for instance, waves to Andy with one flipper as it swims by. Clearly, all involved had a great deal of fun!

My rating: 7 out of 10.

Sammo Hung has an impressive record in front of the camera, but here shows his equally praiseworthy directorial skills.

Hampered in his filming by the fact that some of the cast were available for short periods (Maggie Cheung was only on set for 2 days!) meaning that there there is only one brief scene where all 4 main cast members are together on screen is an achievement in film-making. Arthur Wong is the cinematographer and deserves a lot of credit for the beautiful images captured on camera, in my opinion not matched in the genre apart from Hero (2002). With no CGI the frequent - but not excessive -wirework had to be shot in way so that the wires were not visible and this is pulled off extremely well. The action itself is very creative which is no surprise when you have Sammo Hung, Ching Siu-Tung and Corey Yuen (known as Yuen Kwai in some of his earlier films) who are widely recognised as three of the best action choreographers in the business. They manage to make Andy Lau et al. convincing action actors despite their lack of formal training.

Andy Lau plays the hero and makes a good job of it, though his killer whale sidekick is cute but ridiculous. As filming with the killer whale took place at some aquarium/theme park if you look closely you can see the 'rocks' are made of plastic! The late lamented Anita Mui, along with Kenny Bee and especially Maggie Cheung provide excellent support in a complicated love triangle subplot.

The music appears to have been given more attention than some other films in the genre and the songs sung by Andy Lau and Sally Yeh compliment the story perfectly. The other music is by the late James Wong whose work will be familiar to many Hong Kong action film enthusiasts and includes The Swordsman, Iron Monkey and the Once Upon a Time in China series.

One minor criticism is that though the storyline is epic in nature, the film is hampered somewhat by armies being made up of about a dozen extras, reducing their impact somewhat. This is no surprise considering the small budget of the film (particularly Hollywood standards). The film is also a little short, but tight scripting by Alex Law manages to largely overcome this flaw.

Overall I would highly recommend Moon Warriors, a film that is largely forgotten, but deserves more recognition as although it has several flaws, including a ludicrous scene with a plastic killer whale, there is much to enjoy here if you are a fan of the wuxia genre.

Moon Warriors is pretty alright if you're into the wuxia pian genre. It's much better than most HK action movies from the mid 1990s like the Dragon Chronicles, the Sword Stained with Royal Blood, etc etc... yet it can't compete with films such as Dragon Gate Inn, Ashes of Time (both starring maggie cheung, who also appears as "merlin" (what a weird name) in some versions of Moon Warriors), or the eyecandy swordsman 2. Anyway, I was wondering if any of you guys have noticed the weird subtitles on some copies of the DVD. For some reason I don't understand, Andy's character is called "Philip", and his loyal killerwhale buddy's called "Sea-Wayne" (which ended up being the biggest inside joke among my group of friends). Anita Mui appears as "Moonie". Why is it that some of the characters have such ridiculous names? I mean, it's not very consistent since the rest of the cast got chinese names. Anyway, it's a pretty entertaining action flick, give it a try if you want to have a laugh or if you're a fan of Andy, Maggie and Anita.

7/10