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sovay.
Jade Warrior is a Kalevala x Chinese mythology crossover movie. Or to put it another way, a Finnish kung fu flick.*
Yes, I know.
And it works. It totally works. Even the wirework scenes, which are not many. Indeed, this has some of the most beautiful fight scenes I've seen in a while, including one that managed for once to sell me on a belligerent courtship, as the sparing slides into dance sliding into ... something more, which then gets aborted in a significant way. Ouch.
But as to the story: Kai, a hippy-ish blacksmith living outside modern Helsinki, is not dealing well with his girlfriend walking out. Said girlfriend sells off some of his leftover stuff to a secondhand hardware shop named after a legendary Chinese device with a name and function suspiciously similar to the Sampo of Finnish myth. The shop is run by two amateur archeologists who recently found bog bodies of a man, a woman, and a canister engraved with archaic Chinese. Clippings of Kai's hair in tempering material left in his stuff partially open the canister -- and when his touch opens it, the man of the shop starts speaking in Chinese, greeting Kai as the son of a smith and demanding he forge the Sampo. Cue a reincarnation fantasy, in which past-life mistakes must be redeemed.
Fortunately, this being not a Hollywood movie, this is not always done in ways you expect. Ditto, too, the visual language of the special effects, though someone in the production clearly likes Jackson's LotR. But the aurora stuff, that's not typical. I especially like that the young woman, in both times, is strong and an active fighter.
Good material intelligently treated. Not at all a waste of two hours, if you can find it. Or the hours.
* The Chinese setting is a couple millenia before the usual period for wuxia, but maybe it can still be called that? Some wuxia combat tropes are used, but not much else, and those may be supra-genre.
---L.
sovay.Jade Warrior is a Kalevala x Chinese mythology crossover movie. Or to put it another way, a Finnish kung fu flick.*
Yes, I know.
And it works. It totally works. Even the wirework scenes, which are not many. Indeed, this has some of the most beautiful fight scenes I've seen in a while, including one that managed for once to sell me on a belligerent courtship, as the sparing slides into dance sliding into ... something more, which then gets aborted in a significant way. Ouch.
But as to the story: Kai, a hippy-ish blacksmith living outside modern Helsinki, is not dealing well with his girlfriend walking out. Said girlfriend sells off some of his leftover stuff to a secondhand hardware shop named after a legendary Chinese device with a name and function suspiciously similar to the Sampo of Finnish myth. The shop is run by two amateur archeologists who recently found bog bodies of a man, a woman, and a canister engraved with archaic Chinese. Clippings of Kai's hair in tempering material left in his stuff partially open the canister -- and when his touch opens it, the man of the shop starts speaking in Chinese, greeting Kai as the son of a smith and demanding he forge the Sampo. Cue a reincarnation fantasy, in which past-life mistakes must be redeemed.
Fortunately, this being not a Hollywood movie, this is not always done in ways you expect. Ditto, too, the visual language of the special effects, though someone in the production clearly likes Jackson's LotR. But the aurora stuff, that's not typical. I especially like that the young woman, in both times, is strong and an active fighter.
Good material intelligently treated. Not at all a waste of two hours, if you can find it. Or the hours.
* The Chinese setting is a couple millenia before the usual period for wuxia, but maybe it can still be called that? Some wuxia combat tropes are used, but not much else, and those may be supra-genre.
---L.
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no subject
Date: 10 June 2011 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 10 June 2011 07:36 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 10 June 2011 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 10 June 2011 07:43 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 10 June 2011 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 18 June 2011 04:39 am (UTC)I really am glad you liked it.
no subject
Date: 18 June 2011 03:52 pm (UTC)---L.