Legend of Wolf
Review
Format: DVD
Stars: Donnie Yen, others

Man Hin (Donnie Yen) wanders into a village looking for a woman, but because of his amnesia he can't understand why.

Amnesia story with romance and revenge, basically. I liked it a lot. Action, romance, and lots of drama with great settings; the jungle (most of the time), and a village or two. I bought this on the Jumbo Plain DVD and it had nothing special at all on it. That's just a little warning from me. But the picture quality is pretty nice, except for in the beginning where it looks like an MPEG-1 video. There are no extras, though. Chapters, yes, but no chapter selection menu or anything like that. The subtitles were easy to read, nice and big, unlike the microprint in Storm Riders.

Ok, so you wanna know about the action. Legend of the Wolf is known for good action, and it has that, definitely. The first scene has Donnie swinging a blade around in darkness, which was hard to see due to that darkness, but afterwords he (I think it was him) jumps out a window, down onto the side of a building through a wooden plank, and then down to the ground... Ok not a great action scene, but the next one was good.



Donnie and his friend are walking through the woods looking for a temple when they run into about 30 bandits. There were some cool moments here, like when Donnie collected around 4 blades from them and threw them all over the place. He hacks and hacks, and then does an awesome looking jumping forward kick to a guy's chin and made a Bruce Lee woo sound. He kicks another, who does a backwards roll down into a pond. Then, Donnie's double (if he had one) jumps way up and does an HK spin repeatedly until he gets into the water. Awesome looking. Donnie goes berserk, kills everyone except one person, and his pal is standing in shallow water. Donnie throws his blade along the water, skips it right between the guy's legs, and it goes and stabs someone. I don't know how they got this shot, but they did. But all Donnie did here was go crazy it seemed. Some good looking moves, but it was all focused on Donnie and I couldn't see anything else really. All I saw was Donnie pounding his blade into heads and grabbing arms. Is this good fighting? Actually it was pretty good looking because of occasional slow motion and far better looking than mass slayings in other HK movies.



The next fight happens inside the temple (a small brick, run down shack, don't imagine a big gold Buddha or anything) against first a gang, which he beats quickly. One of the hits made me shiver. A guy was on the ground, and Donnie did an axe kick to his head, pushed his foot hard into his face, and twisted, making a loud cracking noise. After that, he takes on a guy with a chain wrapped around his arm. The two punch at eachother's fists (like in Shanghai Affairs), but Donnie's punching at a chain, and tosses his hand around after being pushed back and cracks his own wrist, which was pretty cool. The guy kicks at Donnie's shins, who backs up, and he basically pounds whatever gets in his way, including the brick wall. Donnie grabs a sawhorse, you know the good ol sawhorses, and uses that to his defense. It breaks, and he uses the legs to beat the man senselessly and eventually gets the chain around one of the legs. At the end, Donnie has the chain around his neck with a piece of wood in it, so he pulls the chain apart which splits the wood and it impales the guy. Any fight choreography like in the lucky stars movies or the like? No, not really. It's all just fast, with the camera on one or the other, which makes it difficult to see the middle of the two, and being able to do that is pretty important to see what goes on. But there's something different going on here. It's as though more props are being used. Donnie grabs the sawhorse, uses it for defense, it breaks, he uses the legs to get the chain, gets the wood in the chain, splits the wood, kills the guy. I hate to say this, but here we have a different kind of choreography that I actually like a little bit. It's not as good as the choreography I'm used to, but it's fast and seems to work. Let's look at the next one.



Wai (Donnie's partner from the beginning) is in the village and bandits come. So they brawl. This looks like the first brawl from Shanghai Affairs, probably because Donnie directed both this and that movie. Is the brawl any good? The people seem to stay busy, with lots of movement in the background and it's not like in Big Trouble in Little China where they just walk around and throw punches occasionally. Wai gets more involved and does a jumping full body kick into 2 guys, but when they fall against a building behind them, you see another one run up and jump into the building too. That's not how it works! But that's just a small mistake, really. Donnie gets involved from coming out of a building and does a flurry of punches on bandits while trying to get to the leader of the clan, and I don't know who the actor is so I'll have to find out. Donnie kicks one guy, who falls back, but you see something in his pants that looks like a big block of padding, which is exactly what it is. So that's how they do the falls. He kicks some more guys, and then has to run after the Bandits, who captured his girlfriend.



This, I think, is the best part of the movie. Probably a good 100 bandits are running through the jungle, with Donnie running alongside for a moment. They show it from the side, which is really cool looking. He trips one guy, grabs his bamboo pole, kicks up a rock, pounds the rock with the pole, which goes and splits into more rocks, hitting probably 5 guys. Almost like a OUATIC stunt, but it looks real here. No wires involved or anything. He runs into the pack, pounding them as he runs forward. In the mean time, Wai is bringing villagers to the pack and takes on the rear part of the bandits. Donnie keeps swinging, and then the camera shows him from the front throwing his stick back into the followers and laying out 6 of them. Finally he grabs the guy holding his girl, takes him out, but then a sharpshooter with an eyepatch comes and runs after him, shooting at what he can. This is an intense scene where Donnie's avoiding bullets by trying to fake this guy out. So, if he can't shoot, he can throw a dagger, and he does. It sticks in Donnie's shirt first, then another one in his arm. But here's what I didn't understand. The guy has a six shooter (looks like a 44 magnum), but he must fire 25 shots before reloading. I don't like it when they do this. Anyways, Donnie beats him by getting a stick, which he uses to catch another dagger, and throwing the dagger back at his stomach.



The next opponent Donnie fights is someone who has a small patch in each hand with 3 claws sticking out of it. The fight here is extremely fast, probably undercranked a little, but it still looks cool because it's almost all upper body. They exchange punches so fast, but the camera is positioned as to show only one person at a time, which was used earlier on. So, you don't really get to understand what happens when one person punches, but instead you see the entire thing as a whole. I don't quite understand what purpose this is supposed to serve because, again, this is new to me and I'm trying to figure it out. With the old choreography (at least, pre-1998), when one person punched, you could see what the response was, so it was a cause and effect thing. Now, it's like a system or a flurry. After the flurry, Donnie grabs his thumb and cracks it, like in Heroes Among Heroes when he fought Hung Yan Yan. At this point, there's some Chin Na, which is recognizable because things slow down a little. Donnie grabs his arms and twists them back behind his head and then grabs his pinkie, breaking that. Ow. After doing this for a little while, Donnie jumps up and does a Chinese Splits Kick to his face, and he still gets up. More speed fighting, with the camera moving from one person to the next. Donnie gets into his kicking mode and throws around 25 kicks to the guy, a punch to the face, another punch, and he spits blood. But he's still ok. Donnie pounds him repeatedly, and finally cracks a big reverse jumping right kick into his chest, throwing him back 15 feet, followed by a kick to his face while on the ground, putting him into a 2.5 HK spin. What did I learn here? ... I don't know. I'll figure it out at the end of the review.



The last fight against the leader of the bandits starts off with the enemy coming at Donnie with a machete. He grabs it right as it's touching his scalp and gets a VERY pissed off look on his face. Man can he look pissed. They struggle over the blade for a while, kicking at eachother's shins, and Donnie kicks the blade away finally. So, he's pissed because the guy just did something that would piss off any guy, and throws a ton of punches which are blocked, and fast, but you can see what happens to them. Then the camera shows them flailing around in a frontal view like in Shanghai Affairs (again), and then they both do jumping kicks that push eachother away (another one in Shanghai Affairs). Donnie goes on his kicking rampage for a while, the last 2 being blocked and send him backwards. The opponent grabs Donnie's head and tries to knee him repeatedly, and then does it again, and then once more. Donnie gets mad, sets his back foot (breaking a rock, which looks pretty cool), locks the other guy's arm and nails him in the rib cage. They end up on a rock edge, and Donnie beats him in the face repeatedly until they fall into a crevice where the tide comes in. It looks pretty good because it happens frequently. Donnie keeps beating him and the guy asks why Donnie doesn't just kill him. Donnie doesn't kill the guy, but gives him a small piece of agony that no one would wanna SEE (hint hint).



Ok, so the fights were very different than what I'm used to. But for some reason I really like them, and even though I can't see where every punch goes, I know exactly what's happening at every instant, and I imagine anyone else would have a good idea too. So, Donnie directed this, and had something in mind because his older movies didn't look anything like this one, where the fights were clear and obvious. Perhaps here he was going BIG, big moves, big parts, and evolving fights that took the contestants somewhere. During the last fight, the two go all over the place. It's choreographed, but it's not. The brutal parts look real, and the fast chaining scenes are extreme and so fast you can't see what's happening, but it all fits together somehow. I guess it's beyond me, or maybe there really ISN'T a point behind it all. But, hey, I liked it. But I still think that, because I can't figure it out, Donnie should have slowed things down a bit and made things comprehensible. But I can compliment him on avoiding special tricks, even though he has a double for a couple parts (his hair suddenly gets long), though there weren't any fake kicks, no wires, no nonsense really.

Jeez, I like it. But it's not good enough to be a 10. If I can figure out what the hell he was doing, maybe I'll upgrade it. For now, because of the awesome camera work (except for when it was problematic during the fights) and good acting on everyone's parts, the scenery, the atmosphere, mood, and characters,

9/10 - Should be slowed down. This movie could have been the best out there.

UPDATE: 9/9 - I watched the fights of this movie again, and I was able to see the choreography really easily this time around. At first glance, yes, it's a bunch of pows and bams, but after watching the fights a second time around, I really liked it. As expected, I give it a

10/10 - I bought this from hearing that it was so good. It's a different kind of movie, one with a big package to deliver.

UPDATE 10/9 - Rating System Change

5/5 - A unique piece, very well done.

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