I now feel absolutely fine with having not watched any of the All's Well Ends Well series that doesn't contain Stephen Chow. I hadn't watched a movie in awhile, so last night I made the mistake of trying the 2011 version of the aforementioned movie. Despite Louis Koo's sort of hilarious gay act, the novel concept of Donnie Yen playing a cosmetic salesmen and my fangirly love for Cecilia Cheung, the movie was interminably boring and it wasn't long before I didn't care what happened. I think that was about an hour into it.

In all honesty, I'm not sure I can even recount the plot, because there really wasn't one. It was more of a loose collection of largely unfunny skits. And these are talented people too. It's a pretty amazing thing when a director/writer can waste that much talent in one movie. Amazing, and headache-inducing.

Mood awake Tags: cecilia cheung, comedies, donnie yen, louis koo

I have the urge to be snarky and mention all the bad actors in here, but I won't, because I actually really enjoyed this stylish, action-packed, cool cinematographied movie.  Even Donnie Yen wasn't insufferable, and Kate Tsui was so cool as the evil assassin chick.  There was also Zhao Wei's amazing smile and Wu Chun's amazing abs, so really, who cares if 3 out of 4 are barely passable actors?

Story!  Check!  Qinglong is the captain of the brocade guards.  He's a badass, but then his bro betrays him and there's this whole seal he needs to get back.  He falls in with Zhao Wei and her father's Justice Escorts, and he eventually kidnaps her and goes looking for the seal.  Kate Tsui eventually comes looking for him, and somewhere along the line he enlists the Judge of the Desert (Chun) to help him take down the convey with the seal.  Ok, the plot is barely there.  But the movie looks so damn good and the action scenes were truly awesome.  Not to mention all the stars had unique RPG character looks about them.  Like I said, stylish.

As long as you don't go into it looking for something super complicated, and you like lots of wacky smacky, you'll be fine.  It wouldn't hurt to be a fan of any of the main stars either.  (In my case, Zhao Wei and Wu Chun for purely shallow reasons)

Mood blah Tags: action, donnie yen, historical, wu chun, zhao wei