.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

Detective Sergeant of Serious Crimes Unit, Jun (Donnie Yen) detests crime and his lifelong nemeses are a Vietnamese gang of three brothers - Archer, Tony and Tiger. In order to further infiltrate the gang and fight them from within, Jun has planted a mole, Wilson (Louis Koo), who has managed to gain the complete trust of the gang. However, Wilson's dual role is exposed and resulting battles leave him handicapped for life. The day before Tiger's trial, Archer turns up at the hospital to wipe out their only witness, Wilson.

After the superb movie that was SPL (Sha Po Lang) and the disaster that was Dragon Tiger Gate (Loong Fu Moon) was wondering what this Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen colloboration would be all about.

Apparently it originally penned a prequel to SPL, but didn't quite make it. I guess it's a pseudo sequel with Donnie playing the same character - Inspector Ma.

The movie is basically Donnie Yen pornography to put it in no uncertain terms, if you aren't a great fan of him (yeah we know he can't act) it's definitely worth watching for the action and fight scenes.

It reminds me of the excellent 80's heydeys of superb action/martial arts movies coming out of hong kong. Bone crunching fights that make you flinch when the blows land, none of this fancy smooth fighting from the modern movies that doesn't look like it hurts.

We need more of this, more pain, more Tony Jaa.

There's a thought, Tony Jaa versus Donnie Yen - hell of a movie that would be. Back it up with Wu Jing and Colin Chou and you have a hell of a fight.

Anyway back to the point, there is virtually no plot to this movie, some normal cop stuff, beauracracy and villains love their mothers. Other than that...not much.

Louis Koo plays a pussy AGAIN...then the action starts.

Colin Chou plays one hell of a badass, the first fight scene has some incredible intensity.

Donnie plays his character well enough, he can't act for shit, but he's an EXTREMELY convincing fighter on screen..it looks painful.

The last 30 minutes contain one of the craziest fight scenes ever, apart from the fact Colin Chou just seems to become a rechargeable dummy for Donnie to kick the shit out of (whilst being an incredible tough guy for the rest of the movie) it's an awe inspiring fight to watch.

The action is superb, it's non-stop pretty much.

The other characters are nothing much worth mentioning.

If you are looking for something deep and meaningful, don't bother with this.

If you want to see Donnie Yen strutting round like a model and destroying loads of people in crazy fights...THEN WATCH THIS NOW.

I highly recommend it and completely enjoyed it, one of the most enjoyable movies of the year so far.

I give it a nosebleeding (watch the out-takes) 8.5/10.

PS. If you want to read a damn funny review - read here.

Hong Kong Police Detective Chan has devoted his career to putting the notorious triad boss Wong Po behind bars. While escorting a witness with damning evidence of Wong Po's wrong doing to court, the police van is rammed at high speed by a car driven by the ruthless assassin Jack. The wreck kills the witness and his wife, but spares the witness' young daughter. Detective Chan is left with a piece of glass in the back of his head. When the glass is removed, doctors notice a tumor in Detective Chan's brain. He doesn't have long to live making Detective Chan all the more determined to bring down Wong Po.

Plenty have people have mentioned this movie, especially after I watched Dragon Tiger Gate (Loong Fu Moon) and found it fairly crap..now I see what they were talking about.

Donnie Yen can create amazing fight sequences and this movie is one hell of a testament to that.

It's a fairly typical gangster vs cops HK movie, it's dark and quickly paced and it's not only about action, it's also about consequences of your actions..

Sammo Hung plays an evil, sinister, crazed but cool mafia boss and he plays it amazingly well, no hint of humour or lovable Sammo there.

The fighting is spectacular, and some is not even choreographed, they were just told to go for it and it really shows!

Especially the fight in the alley between Donnie and Jacky Wu Jing, wow, amazing! During the making of the movie, Donnie actually broke 3 batons on Wu-jings head filming that sequence.

There's a good mix of traditional martial arts and some UFC style grappling/ju-jitsu.

The finale between Donnie and Sammo is nothing short of spectacular.

If you haven't watched this movie, I highly recommend it.

It's fast paced, gripping and the action is fantastic.

SPL feels one of the olden time HK movies, when they used to be good, you know like A Better Tomorrow and that era, when HK movies were still explosive, gripping and exciting. The way this movie is put together is raw, the fight scenes aren't slick, they are Ong Bak/Tom Yum Goong style bone-cruching, face cracking, blood splattering, like the guys on screen are really actually trying to kill each other.

I give it a face busting 8/10.

Dragon Tiger Gate is a martial arts academy established by three youngsters, Tiger Huang , Little Dragon Huang and Black Dragon Shi. Adopted as children by kung fu master Huang Jianglong, they aspire to impart the spirit of Chinese martial arts to the world. The final showdown between good and evil is a spectacular battle that makes the walls of Dragon Tiger Gate quake.

Yeah I've managed to catch up with quite a lot of movies lately!

This is a typical hong-kong style action kung-fu movie starring Donnie Yen, Nicholas Tse and Shawn Yu.

The action was also directed by Donnie Yen himself, which shows as he is now experienced and mature in his style, the action elements and choreography was very good through-out the film with some pretty unique and exciting displays of fighting and interesting use of weapons.

Honestly speaking though, he still has a long way to go to catch Yuen Wo Ping.

Apart from that, I love any movie that has nunchukas in it!

The movie itself was adapted from some very famous Hong Kong manga (comic books) so the story and plot is already laid out, even though you don't really need a phd to understand it, it's the same old basic good vs evil thing with very little deviation.

As you can probably guess, the story itself is nothing special...the romantic elements are actually quite pukeworthy and the rest you can guess as it goes along.

Basically I only suggest you watch this movie if you really enjoy good well crafted fight scenes, as I do, so I did enjoy this movie.

Donnie Yen once again manages to appear eternally youthful and carries out his role very well, not that any of the three leads have tough jobs as apart from Shawn Yue they both play fairly silent reflective types.

I found Nicholas Tse was a little soft and girly for the role he was supposed to be playing, I would have preferred someone else.

Shawn Yue was adequate as the more bubbly and confident Turbo.

You don't really feel for the characters and the flashbacks are a bit annoying with upright 'moral' overtones.

The final villain is a bit of a joke too, the fight scene is quite good though.

Overall the movie is a nice piece of comic book escapism which could really use a good producer/director.

I'd say watch it for the fight scenes (especially the first big one) and give it a fairly mediocre head kick of 4.5/10.