Woke up this morning and felt that after struggling for the whole night till 1:00 AM with Windows Vista, I think I deserve a break even more. Details on the Vista thing later but first, here are the movie reviews.
STEALTH
I would like to start my review with a lesson I learned:"Don't turn on the computer during a storm."
This movie is pretty much ok lah - not too bad. Another one of those US Navy and Air-Force movie lah, you know those that had filled our cinemas and TV sets - Boy, I'm sure it will bring back good-old memories for my dad during his air-force days.
The story begins where it is a time where new hi-tech toys are required for modern warfare and three pilots where chosen out of 10,000 to fly futuristic looking stealth fighters (F/A-37 Talon). Two minutes into the movie and you can these warplanes in action taking out SAM sites, destroying un-animated transport vehicles and sending missiles into caves. And they consistently score a 100/100 points in their missions wan.
Now of course, having people to fly fighter planes seemed like a cruel idea because planes can crash and people can die. Therefore, to minimize the casualties, some smart-alec came up with an Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) - in layman terms, an Atificial Intelligence (AI) stealth fighter lor or in lay-layman terms, a plane flown by a computer lah.Without a pilot, the fighter can be neutral, free from making moral judgement and only knows how to fulfill missions - sounds like a cool idea eh?
After returning from the training mission, our three heroes were sent to the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Philiphines sea and were introduced to their fourth wing man - EDI. Their mission is simple - teach EDI how to do the cool flying stuff but somewhere in the middle, there was an emergency and they had to go bomb a target (check out the maneuvres). Now-now, that's a very bad thing to do when you have a student around. So they put EDI on 'observatory mode'.
While returning from the mission, they were caught in a storm and EDI was struck by lightning. *Reminds me of my fried modem* Guessed what happens then? *He started downloading MP3s from the Internet*
I have to say that the movie pays emphasis on details. You can really experience all those breath-taking fighter maneuvres (including dog-fights) and feel the sound of their afterburners raking the skies. I applaud the movie for not making the stealth fighters look so invicible - otherwise, they will be like that modified bell helicopter with black top and white bottom. ;) The fighters although look futuristic, they still can be shot at, can take hits, can malfunction and can crash! And our heroes get stiches for wounds on their face - even for a lady. How about that?
However, half-way through the movie, the story seemed to have shifted to the pilots and their commanding officers, hence, it becomes a more 'human' movie rather than metal-and-steel. That's when all the fighter scenes start to reduce and things were a little 'not-nice anymore'. Nevertheless, I'm sure you will enjoy this movie if you like jets and men (or women) in uniform ;)
I shall give it a 3.5 star. And remember to watch it in THX! You wouldn't want to miss the sound of those engines.
To conclude, remember one thing ...
"3 is a prime number and good for luck. 4 is a bad number and the consequences are that your whole team could be wiped out."
SEVEN SWORDS
Ah... then come Seven Flops, Uh! I mean Seven Swords. The movie starts off with two irrelevant Korean speaking characters waking up under a snow mountain. Two minutes into the movie and you can see some sadistic, face-painted, shogun-like warriors, chopping off people's head and cutting off their arms and legs. Then, there is this slim semi-botak (bald) lady who enjoys killing and licking her blade.
*Of course like all chinese movie in cinemas, it will have to go through the ritual of getting censored for the first few minutes into the movie (like Kung-Fu Hustle, Breaking News and etc.)*
Then come this old-man (QinZhu) who is supposed to be skilled in martial-arts but doesn't want to kill people. So guessed what happened to him? While trying to escape the cluthes of the sadistic army, he stumbled upon a village girl - YuanYin. She looks like a poor hobbit who can't even save her @$$, uh! I mean her donkey but somehow, she could managed to kill one of the henchman. Now trouble will come to her village!
Confident with the old-man's advice, she went up to Mount Tian to look for help. With some bing-bang, she stumbled upon a group of swordsmen. And then we were given a speedy introduction of all the new characters in less than 1 minute and the name of their swords - Unlearnt, Dragon, Transience, Star-Chasers, Celestial Beam, Deity and Heaven's Fall. The fellowship is now formed and QinZhu is the Gandalf equilvalent - QinZhu the Brown.
You may wonder, what do the swords do? The answer: Duh! Who are these swordsmen? Answer: Duh!!! The characters in this movie are poorly introduced and the story line is lousy (damn lousy). The movie completely ignores the principles of kung-fu and focuses only on sword-fu - throw anyone a sword and they become instant martial-art heroes (loose the sword and risk being tear apart with your head, arms and legs tied to 5 horses - Ng-Ma-Fan-Si). Even pretty-face YuanYin can become an instant martial-art hero with the Heaven's Fall sword and ZhiBan, her village-mate, can become instant Conan-the-Barbarian brandishing the Deity sword.
The whole movie feels like a crappie version of Lord Of The Rings. Some characters in the fellowship were not properly introduced and it feels like they were just there to fill the numbers. And what is wrong with all the women in the movie? They all act so stupid, fall in-and-out of love so quickly. There is this Korean girl that is so used to being a slave, she can't stand living as a free human being - Duh!
There are also times where the movie tries to be artistic but it failed miserably. Not even close to what was offered in Warriors of Heaven and Earth. I think even the old Swordsmen movies were more entertaining - atleast we get to see Jet-Li in his Tuk-Koo-Kao-Kim stance and pretty Brigette Lin. But maybe, this movie expects the audience to have read the novel before watching it. Anyway, the only bonus in the movie is Leon Lai (leng-chai Lai-Meng).
So there you go - 1 star from me (or 5 rotten tomatoes). I will recommend that you skip this one unless you have a lot of free time. And don't mind the THX, it doesn't support that.
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