Trying to protect their village, a snake-handler who's secretly afraid of snakes must round up the snake supposedly responsible for killing a brutal warlord's even crueler son who was accidentally killed by the villagers forcing him to confront his fear and stop the snake to save the village.
This was a rather enjoyable feature with a lot to like about it. One of the finer features with this one is the wholly intriguing starting point that provides a fairly solid starting point. The rural village lifestyle involving the sacred snake-hunting ceremony that makes them eligible for marriage involving who caught the biggest species as a final specific point for the process to be completed, ensuring that everything takes place in a formal tradition. This all getting interrupted by the corrupt officer and the resulting skirmish when they fight back against him resulting in the village getting an ultimatum to catch a giant snake or have the whole village be killed that allows for a great series of personal connections to become developed while the helping to build the secondary storyline involving the need to overcome his courage to capture the snake and save his reputation that all makes for a fun setup to everything. The other fun aspect of this one comes about from the strong action present involving the villagers trying to catch the snake or other creatures around the jungle. Starting off nicely with the encounter in the cave that launches his traumatic fear of snakes in fine detail, the later scenes of the group out hunting for the snake where they focus on trying to get away from encroaching wolves or tigers out in the jungle which are fine examples of their skill set so that the big battles with the main snake rampaging through the village have some weight behind it as the sense of spectacle involving the snake slithering through town flipping victims into the air or breaking up hard-hitting martial arts fights gives the film plenty of exciting elements. These are generally enough to make for a highly likable feature here while there are some issues holding it down. One of the main issues here is the immensely confusing nature of the authority making his presence known in the village. The initial idea of him arriving to check on the missing son only to find him dead with the blame on the snake forcing him to find the culprit, but the way it goes about doing this is so needlessly convoluted simply to make him a secondary human villain to overcome next to the snake. This could've been handled in a much cleaner manner than what it does, which is also the case for the personal rivalry that exists between the two throughout here. The constant flipping of allegiances from wanting to help him against wanting to expose the fear of snakes is done more to drive a particular scene rather than any coherently kind of logic solely for his comeuppance later on, which all told are the main drawbacks found here.
Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.
