SpuffyWeb
Sadly Over-hyped
Moustroll
Good movie but grossly overrated
Spoonatects
Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
bs3dc
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.
Matti-Man
MOON WARRIORS is without doubt one of the best examples of Wuxia (not "sword and sorcery" as some reviewers have labelled it) cinema. Wuxia, as I've noted in my other reviews, is a genre akin to the Japanese samurai movies, in that it is about honour, loyalty and the code of the warrior as much as it's about kick-ass fighting. There should always be a bit of romance in Wuxia movies as well, something that's almost always missing from its sister genre, kungfu films ...If the story seems a tad corny to Western sensibilities, that's probably because Wuxia films take their inspiration from the traditional writings of the Qing and Ming dynasties. But then, STAR WARS (a film that MOON WARRIORS resembles) is pretty corny too, and we don't love it any the less.Starring a whole flock of Hong Kong pop singers (Andu Lau, Kenny Bee and the late, great Anita Mui), MOON WARRIORS is chock full of astonishing moments. The "ninja" attack as Yuet (Anita Mui) and her ladies-in-waiting fly their kites and the 14th Prince's (Kelvin Wong) incredible skill with the bow when he ignites the logo that reads "Heaven and Earth" (not his name as another reviewer writes).It should also be pointed out that Sammo Hung also cast his female leads against type deliberately. It would have been more obvious to have cast Maggie Cheung as the delicate princess who knows martial arts but has never used them before and Anita Mui as the hardened assassin. But Sammo is a film-maker who avoids the obvious.MOON WARRIORS has just about everything - great action, epic storyline and it's achingly romantic - and seems to work best for those who are not kungfu film fans and thus have no preconceived expectations.But the killer whale - what was Sammo thinking of?
stan-shapiro
I really enjoyed this movie. For me it's an HK sword-and-sorcery classic. Kelvin Wong as the 14th Prince is a "Baddie" extraordinaire and features in some brilliant, utterly over the top action scenes that had me in stitches. Maggie Cheung is also good and adds lots of good moves to the action and character to the plot. The movie is well-paced, good to look at, well-directed and has some original touches that have been emulated and extended as the genre has become more popular and more lavish. I didn't like the English dubbing - it murders the dialogue, and prefer the original soundtrack with English sub-titles. Simplistic storyline (What d'you expect - it's Chinese Sword and Sorcery) and occasionally sentimental, nevertheless, if you like the genre, well worth seeing.
Iron Hand
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
