Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

trick_morr When I watch a kung-fu movie I'm looking for some simple elements. Good fight scenes, entertaining characters, a hero to cheer for and a villain to hate. Ultimately, a movie that takes me out of reality a little bit.The "hero" of the movie starts off as the mindless unstoppable killing machine who is the secret weapon of the cultist army. But then we get some backstory involving his mother and his tragic past and suddenly he is just a simple boy who is kind of cute and naive in a charming way? It's a strange shift. He is told he needs to learn Chen style kung-fu to realign his energy flow or he will die. His army and master are killed so he is free and so he travels to Chen village.The "villain" in this movie was way too easy to empathize with. The small village we are supposed to be rooting for as they are bullied by the westerners just comes across as elitist and snobby. They treat the "villain" as an outsider because of his family origins even though he lived there his whole life, and even bully him with the kung-fu they refuse to teach to him or any "outsiders" They also refuse to teach our "hero" and actually try to beat him up many times.We could probably easily respect their tradition of not teaching outsiders but no screen time is given to developing or explaining that tradition so it just seems cruel.The movie escalates into a tragedy which will draw the attention of the foreign soldiers and most likely lead to the destruction of the village, and it's all just too GRAY. In kung-fu movies I like things black and white, good and evil, right and wrong... this movie left me unsure of who to even care about or who to root for.The production value is high, so the movie looks good, visually. The fight scenes are mediocre and too few, with too many effects that just don't add to the experience they way they are supposed to. There are even cartoonish freeze frames and game-like text (reminiscent of Scott Pilgrim) which would make this movie seem like pure entertainment, but it keeps bogging itself back down in muddy reality by balancing the good and bad of each character.The ending is a cliffhanger, leaving everything mostly unresolved.In the end, its the story which is too much like the gray of real life, its the lack of clearly defined characters who I can easily love and hate, which kills this movie for me. Maybe real life is like that, but if I wanted to feel the complex tragedy of the human condition I wouldn't be watching a kung-fu movie.I just don't know what this movie wanted to be, and I get the feeling the director didn't either.

KineticSeoul When I saw the trailer for this movie I thought it had the potential to be the next "Kung Fu Hustle". Another cool and entertaining wacky/cartoony fighting movie. While the premise is similar to "Kung Fu Hustle" the narrative and build up is just so darn boring. It just constantly just tries to rely on gimmicks instead of it being well crafted and entertaining movie. In fact there is hardly any fighting in this movie. Yeah, the main protagonist hardly has any good fight scenes. It just constantly relies on pop ups which makes references to comic books, video games and other kung fu references. Which could have worked, but felt more like a random gimmick in order to make this crappy movie hip and cool. Which isn't the case, it just comes off corny and lame. And heavily relies on the 3D aspects of this movie when it hit theaters in China. I managed to sit through the build up, because I was anxious to at least see some cool climatic fight sequences. But that doesn't even happen. Instead it goes in a "to be continued" which is fine. But just about nothing about this movie is satisfying. I think it's okay to leave room for a sequel. As long as the movie itself is satisfying but makes you crave for more. That isn't the case here, this flick is far from being satisfying. And by the end you felt cheated.3/10

chaos-rampant China is changing. Because film is a major force for shaping the national character, among the most interesting things these days, is watching the Chinese scramble to reinvent (post Mao) who they are and how they fit in the modern world.Their newly-emerging documentary school chronicling the industrial rise of China is one aspect of this, and seems to have produced some pretty good pieces.Their tried and tested practice though, meant both for internal consumption and abroad, is manufactured postcards of harmony (moral, spiritual), usually anchored in fabled history, usually in martial arts.We saw that with the faddish promotion of qigong in the 90's, the Wong Fei Hung films and Zhang's Hero. We saw it again a few years ago with Yip Man. This juvenile mishmash is a tai chi showreel for the twitter generation reared on blockbuster steroids. It is another 'origins' story of martial arts, that of Yang-style taijichuan. And because the filmmaker probably felt that to his teenage audience the mid-1800's would seem like forever ago, he goes crazy on myth and movie nonsense, but careful not to upset state officials. This leads to a pretty boneheaded product. Once more, Chinese 'purity' is contrasted with encroaching Western civilization. Westerners standing in for capitalism and technology are portrayed as evil and corrupting, while the actual film is made by copying what is currently trending in the capitalist blockbuster market.The steampunk revisionism of a huge metallic beast threatening the old way of life is from Wild Wild West. The notion of a small community where everyone is a martial arts expert is from Kung Fu Hustle (and of course the story of Chen Jia Gou). The obvious video game humor is from Scott Pilgrim. The wire-fu is Sammo Hung's and a longtime staple of cinematic wushu via HK. The speed-ramps of the opening battle are from 300, with other perspectives borrowed from Scott and recent John Woo.This is all echoed inside the film as the young boxer learning taijichuan by imitating the moves.As someone who practices in the Yang-style, I advise you to steer clear of this. It has no sincerity or soul. What is of some interest, is noting the irony of this film in the current climate of aggressively expansive Chinese capitalism. Or how the Kung Fu Panda franchise is widely celebrated there.Meanwhile, Chinese martial arts have gone from their original mix and match roots of outlaw boxing, to collective standardization in the communist years, to government-promoted sport, to exhibition and health therapy. Having proved inadequate in the modern mixed martial arts world, the current move is away from the forced harmony of (usually fabricated) tradition and towards the practical cross-training system of sanda/sanshou, which in turn emulates several foreign styles.

dont_b_so_BBC First off, I would recommend Tai Chi 0-- if only I can decide whether to recommend watching in the theaters or waiting to watch it back-to-back with its sequel on DVD... Cos most of my issues with Tai Chi 0 has to do with how it tries (& fails?) to "stand alone" as an inconclusive (inconsequential?) prequel. I mean, how would you feel if you found out that the hilariously "over-sold" trailer (in English, Mandarin and various Chinese dialects) circulating for Tai Chi 0 is actually a trailer for-- and contains footage from-- both this movie and its sequel?It is also easy to see why Tai Chi 0 elicits such a wide variety of opinions-- it has something old and something new, and they are not so much "meshed together" as "layered on"... The old stuff is everything you would expect from an old-school kung-fu flick, and the new stuff is the latest fads in video-game aesthetics-- so depending on which way you lean, you might find as much "forced humor" (if you expected kung-fu drama) as "forced melodrama" (if you expected video-game hi-jinks). Nowhere as wacky and creative as Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer nor as elegant and nostalgic as Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, director Stephen Fung's Tai Chi is more of a new take on the "kung-fu film as comic-book fantasy" genre in the vein of the "Storm Riders/Warriors" franchise.And as someone who enjoys an old-school kung-fu flick as much as the latest video games, Tai Chi 0 literally pulled me around in different directions. On the one hand, I liked that the corny 1970's convention of kung-fu actors shouting out their styles/moves now comes with animated sur-titles and graphics; on other hand, the graphical "overlay" somewhat distracts from the sheer joy of watching Sammo Hung's seasoned fight choreography being pulled off by actors who's gone through martial arts training. So for my tastes, the core story and conflicts are presented too fluffily while the visual gimmicks are sprinkled on too liberally.Perhaps this is due to Tai Chi 0 being a prequel that sets up a main story and conflict which will only be seen in later movies-- despite a lengthy introduction of the protagonist's story arc early on, Tai Chi 0 is really about how the old master Chen and his daughter deal with the forced relocation of their village. And fortunately, veteran actor Tony Leung easily carried off the central drama of film as the old master Chen, while the newcomers simply played up their kung-fu movie stereotypes (feisty girl, dorky guy, etc). Tai Chi 0 starts hitting its stride in its 2nd half-- when this historically relevant but made-up narrative (the original Chen village, now a small town, is still around) comes to the fore-- and doesn't let up until old master Chen finally unleashes his kung-fu.I mean, for all of Tai Chi 0's "light touch", there's no disguising the fact that this is an old-school "blood-and-gluts" kung-fu story in a historical-fantasy setting-- with 3 on-screen deaths of named characters in the first 15 minutes and another in the later half of the movie-- and had it gotten much better writing and directing, I'm sure I wouldn't have missed any of post-production stylistics one bit. Cos the final and best fight in the movie for me involved nothing more than getting Tony Leung into 2 months of Tai Chi boot camp, some good old-fashioned wire-work, and a big wind machine. But in contrast, one of my favorite bits was the protagonist running around the village like a first person RPG video gamer searching for a quest reward... See what I mean about this movie tearing me apart?If I sound like I'm quibbling, I am.... Tai Chi 0 is quite enjoyable, if not really memorable, and does a good enough job setting up the sequel. But as a kung-fu film, it is just nowhere as coherent or satisfying as the classics-- cos where Stephen Chow or Ang Lee would take great care to introduce audiences to the "reality" of their kung-fu fantasies and set things up for dramatic/comic effect, Stephen Fung crams the protagonist's entire back-story into the first 15 minutes of the movie before dropping him into a side role-- and then randomly (cleverly?) adds glowing eyes, X-ray film perspectives and even a First-Person Sequence?!So in the end, pardon me for submitting this review but reserving my vote until I get to see the sequel...