Mojin: La légende perdue

From the two books of huangpizifen and Jingjue ancient city, the director creates a horror and horror story from the abandoned Guandong army fortress. The performance of the three main characters is good, and the play and special effects are also great.

3D effect is good, it's a scolding name for the effect of washing garbage. I haven't seen who the actor is for a long time. Big Golden Teeth should be the best performer. In the plot aspect, the plot develops smoothly, breaking through customs and fighting monsters, but unfortunately, there is a lack of a boss in the end, just a little less hallucination.

The visuals were very nice, the acting was decent, it was an entertaining action-adventure. It also made fun of mindless communist youth in the 60s and took pride in Chinese history and mythology. I am sure a lot of things were lost in translation, but I enjoyed the watching.

The plot is simple: a team of heroic grave robbers return to the place of their first major traumatic event. They explore a weird underground tomb guarded by zombies and curses and flames and in the end find closure and unity as a team. The acting was probably the worst part of the movie, or maybe the main character, who was an arrogant idiot telling everyone what they need to do and forcing them to do it if they didn't want to, while he attempts unsuccessfully to sacrifice his life when it actually isn't necessary. I liked that the story was focused on the characters, even while they go through endless (and mostly non-sensical) action scenes.

Bottom line: it gave me a feeling of hope for China's pop cinema. After all, we just need a steady stream of good accessible movies to start understanding their culture. Americans did it and look where it got them.

Fighting a hopping ghostly entity in action comedy flair is an old trend in Chinese cinema, mostly dealing with silly version of vampire. As the visual technology advances this kind of premise resurfaces recently, the closest comparison would be The Mummy with oriental atmosphere. Mojin might seem too flamboyant or slow at first, rightfully so since the blend of horror and action only shows its effectiveness later on.

Story follows a reluctant adventurer Hu Bayi (Chen Kun) as he is drawn to a mystery from 20 years ago. The pacing is unfortunately sluggish at first act, relying heavily on slapstick comedy for a bit too long. This kind of loud banter is used frequently in Chinese comedy, or even in Korean or Japanese flicks, but the outlandish approach may not resonate too well for audience from the west. It's admittedly a niche flavor and culture-oriented taste. Furthermore, the drama factor simply shines towards the end.

After it sets the tone, it gets increasingly better. By incorporating few mythological embellishments and creepy characters, it even manages to be unexpectedly eerie beyond the original cheesy nature. Action and effect fare much better. There is a polished visual here, though it's not the level of high tier animation and it needs the help of artistic design to create appealing set pieces, especially since it dabbles mostly on barren terrains.

Credit must go to Shu Qi as the love interest Shirley. She looks very gorgeous, donning the popular Lara Croft visage and it's nice to have such character when raiding long lost tomb. The action also comes to fruition on second half as story shifts from silliness to tight narrative and eye-catching sequences. Humor works better as well, breaking away from the stand-up comedy and presenting a couple of nice gags even when the pace becomes faster.

The movie's later parts are better than the rest, more so considering it's a fairly long movie with considerable build-up. However, when all the pieces fit together Mojin - The Lost Legend is an adequately fascinating adventure.

In all fairness, it is a far better production than I've seen many times, a good plot, good actors, script, director, overall, a movie to entertain, maybe even to recommend.

I must say, a lot of the lines were quite funny, they got me laughing, and not just one or twice. Visually, it is beautiful, peaceful and calming effects, that got you focused only on them when they were on, good use of CGI, plenty of Asian culture references, a little of the American view towards it too. I had fun watching it, the end is as always over stretched but lucky for me, I got used to it by now.

I graded it 6 stars out of 10, it succeeded on many levels, but there was room for better.

Cheers!