Saturday, September 13, 2008

How Good is Your Kung Fu?

This on the list and probably the last for tonight. I'll be watching 88 Minutes after this, but will probably head to bed afterward and do the review in the morning... So...




The Forbidden Kingdom

Forbidden Kingdom opened up in theaters bringing in $21,401,121 it's first weekend. It went on to make $52,075,270 national and a total of $111,604,290 world wide

The movie follows a young man, Jason, who is a fan of martial arts films. He spends a great deal of time in an old Chinese Pawn shop, searching for bootlegged martial arts movie...While there he finds a staff, one he has seen in his dreams... When he takes it he is whisked away to the forbidden kingdom, charged with the task of returning the staff to the Monkey King.

You may remember in an earlier post I mentioned wishing to see this film in theaters, but was never able to. I wanted to see it for the reason many did... If you ask around who people thought the greatest Martial Artist was in film alive today you would probably get a majority of two answers, Jackie Chan or Jet Li... You may get Stephan Chow, but those people are just being smart.

This film is the first time these two greats meet... and of course fight. And is probably the single reason most people saw the film. But the movie itself is great none the less, taken from a western fairy tale the screen writer told his son, based of the Eastern tales of the monkey king, it takes bits and pieces of old martial arts and mixes them nicely to come out with a great family film.

That's right, this film is great... But it is a family film, which may deter some fans going in expecting Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or House of Flying Daggers. The film plays for young and old... It's visually stunning and well paced... It's all around well made and I highly suggest it to pretty much anyone who enjoys an good old fashion fairy tale.

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