I had a urge to watch this film since I saw the awful trailer for it online. I know, I know, I am a glutton for punishment but I have always enjoyed the laughable badness of B-movies so decided to give it a go, especially since "Lost" actor Dominic Monaghan is in it.
How can I describe my experience watching it? I was bored, I laughed quite a bit, I got confused when action jumped to strange places, and I thought, "What the hell was this director thinking?" as the film's end titles rolled with the awful music accompanying them.
I won't even want to mention Monaghan's performance in this film because I am sure this is a film he hopes disappears off his resume, especially now he is on "Lost". I will just say that he seemed to do the best he could in this bad movie and leave it at that.
This film was a big old mess. It dragged in the action which is bad for a martial arts film. The fight scenes were awful, the dialog was awful, the John character spouting poetic at the beginning and end of the film was awful, and even the clothing was awful. It was a bad rip-off of the movie "The Warriors" simple as that....and a bad attempt to copy the film.
I did think that the film had beautiful lighting and the colours were very beautiful as well. High definition digital can be beautiful to look at. Too bad the movie wasn't good itself.
I tortured myself twice because after I watched the film through, I thought "What the hell was the director thinking?" so watched the film with his commentary. It seems he is fully aware he is making a bad B movie and that is what he set out to do. He was so earnest about it that I found myself liking bits of the movie after he talking about the "Whys" of them. This is why I gave the movie a "3" in rating. The director did do his very best to make a bad movie with the limited budget he had.
But, it is a bad movie so if you don't want to be bored, and don't find amusement in awful films, give this film a pass and rent something better.