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Reviewed by: pjshimmer
One of the most wanted titles by me, Black Panther Warriors was not going to sit in my collection once I got it. And guess what? I've seen (part of) it before - when I lived in China, about 8 years ago. Must have been when it came out. It all came to mind when Brigitte's master started fighting with his umbrella. Man, I was just thinking about that scene the other day, without knowing it was in this movie, of course. But holy cow, I can't possibly dislike the movie now (nostalgia, ya know)!
Well, I must tell you, the first couple of minutes are extremely confusing - and it doesn't get any better until the end. Granted, the whole film is fast paced, but the beginning was so fast that you couldn't make out who is who, what they're doing, or what's going on. This immediately disappointed me, and it was not until I realized that I had seen this movie that I became excited again. Overall, the plot is extremely confusing and out of place, so you will need to think and rewatch to understand. Either way, some of it just won't make sense, because you can't make sense out of something that doesn't make sense. And if anything, it's a campy screwball film, which is very out of place mixed with serious scenes. The trashy humor is at an all time crude, and it's pathetic. Dicky Cheung is always crying about licking boobs, so Simon Yam offers his breasts, and guess what, Dicky Cheung does it.
However, the fantasy action is most innovatively refreshing. If there is one reason to watch the film, it would be for the top notch action. It puts just about every other modern HK movie to shame in that respect. The beginning opens with great style and action, and although the story is crap, the action just about makes up for it.
One note about the languages. In the Cantonese version, Tony Leung backflips whenever somebody speaks Mandarin. Well, of course we can't have that in the Mandarin version, because then he would be doing backflips FOREVER since everything would be in Mandarin. So instead, he does backflips whenever somebody speaks (poor) English in the Mandarin version.
Also, this has to be the only movie in which the theme music is played about 90 times during the show; yet you still wish they played it more. It is that pleasing to the ear.
If this film doesn't amuse/intrigue you, then you haven't watched enough HK movies.
Reviewed by: mrblue
This is one big mess of a movie. It makes most of Wong Jing's films look sedate by comparison. The plot has a group known as the "Black Panthers" (no relation to the militant African-Americans) sent by the police to retrive a box which contains their security software. However, the group has two problems: 1) they spend a lot of their time trying to get into bed with each other and 2) they're generally just stupid.
A lot of the movie's (thankfully short) running time is taken up with really bad jokes, where Clarence Fok tries to create a Stephen Chow-like atmosphere, with rapid-fire dialogue and lots of pop culture references. For instance, Tony Leung's character is a parody of Andy Lau in Saviour of the Soul, complete with a cheesy blue shirt that never manages to stay all the way on. The problem is that most of the jokes aren't funny and the actors seems to be trying way too hard to deliver the lines -- "restraint" is not a word in this movie's vocabulary.
You, however, should show some restraint and not waste your time with this clunker. It's a pretty big disappointment considering the talent involved. What was Brigitte Lin thinking? There's not even any decent action to keep the viewer compelled to watched. Like the rest of the movie, it's over-clocked and poorly co-ordinated.
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