It had been a fruitful and eventful week. Maybe it's my age craving in, I decided to stay home today (OK, it's Sat) after some nights out. I went for 2 movies these week. 1st of all, it's The Island on Wed and then it's 7 swords yesterday.
OK, The Island. Hm...... not really a fans of Mr. Bay due to his over-the-top plot and bombing-blasting scenes in his movie.... (yeah... Armageddon n etc???) but surprisingly, I think the movie starts of intellectually hahaha.... Yeah, it's kinda boring especially if you're not really interesting on the premise of the movie, clone. And Mr. Bay tried to spend the 1st half explaining to audience on the cloning thingy with some nice eerie scenes of the cloning process and also poking fun on the "perfect" lifestyle of McGregor and Johannson. But suddenly the pace change altogether whereby Mr. Bay back to his usual style and blast it all!!!! I guess he's having fun at tat but hey, he's still Mr. Bay ok? The actors need not be too meaty in their acting as what you expect from action movie? However, Steve Buscemi is his usual self stealing the scene with his minor 10-15 minutes appearance. McGregor get to exercise his comic muscle in his portrayal of 2 Ewan. British accent is as elegant as usual.
And 7 swords. Lots of my friends brought up a valid topic. Who you wanna watch when you watch this? I mean some go for Mr. Cruise in War of the World, etc.... but in 7 swords??? The bygone era Leon??? S even said he spoilt the movie. But I guess there're still Charlie Yeung and Donnie Yen. Emily n Sophia said go for Mr. Tsui Hark hahhahaha..... The movie itself is OK. I think it's always a big problem when you want to adapt the martial arts novel into a movie. It's a tough job given the time frame you have the most is 2.5 hrs... Yeah... 7 swords is 2.5 hrs though you still felt that it's not well-utilised as there're lots of loopholes etc - loopholes or not, it's hard to say sometimes as HK movies tend to leave sth for the sequel, tat's another story. To add salt to the wound, there're 7 main characters with their respective swords, not including the baddies! Somemore there's a subplot with characters of the Kung Fu village as well. Too short a time in fact. We made a mistake of watching the movie at 10.50pm which spanned till 1.20pm!!!! And out of 10 of us, 4 slept someway in the movie! Leon is forgettable in the movie. However I admire him for taking the roles coz obviously he's not the main lead. Charlie had even more roles than him. And in the making I saw just now, he's #3. The Korean actress (forgot her name.... Kim sth) is actually taking too much time of the movie. She took lots of airtime actually. No complaints of her actually but more to Tsui's script. Donnie comes off as the main fighting star, esp when compared to Leon n other non-KungFu-esque actors. At times, I felt the 7s are not being given much airtime, as well as their respective swords!!! And to give the movie title as 7 swords!!!! Ini aku memang tak paham. Aft the movie, I only remember the shape of Donnie's, Charlies, Leon's and Duncan's sword but only Leon's sword's name. I think this is a failure. It's like ice lemon tea without lemon or tea! Another mistake is a miscast! How in the world Mr. Tsui can think of getting Michael Wong Man Dak to play the Qing Dynasty King????????? The moment he blurted his dialogue kills off the character already. Mr. Tsui, this is another mistake after your "The Legend of Xu". But I felt it's watchable.