The German cover praised it as a mix between Rumble in the Bronx and Ong Bak and while I am aware that marketing tries to sell me something, I rarely felt as ripped off as with this flick.
The humour is kind of strange and rather dull. At times it felt more like a parody than a comedic martial arts movie, without succeeding in it. To be honest, many things may be worse in the German translation, but that is the one I watched and it was horribly bad.
The martial arts was underwhelming. Very many cuts, some even switched directions and left me wondering what actually happened. No real moves where shown because of this, which is why I had the impression the actors could not really fight. Whenever there was a fight that tried to resist from cutting every other second, the director decided to use too much slow-motion and unwarranted "explosive actions" (aka bodies flying away comically after being hit).
The director, furthermore, decided to use many different styles, for example artsy shots, strange close-ups, grey filters, black and white moments with some colour as if it tried to be a Sin City movie. Many cuts were disorienting, because it failed to follow the movement of the characters or showed things that could not be or should not be continued this way. Easy continuation errors, I'd think.
The Tiger Blade is not a blade, but the name of the protagonist, but we only get to know it is his moniker after a real blade is introduced as some kind of McGuffin, because it doesn't really do much. Add to that the sad point that the "magic" in the movie was unnecessary and boring and didn't make the story better.
I am willing to say that the movie may be better in the original, but the German version was laughably inept. That said, I believe it is one of the first movies of the director, so I may view it as an inspired "first try".
In conclusion, if you're looking for a good martial arts movie, great actors, a gripping story, you should look somewhere else. If you are in the mood to make fun of a movie with a group of friends, this may be it, though.
It is not horrible, it is simply far from good.
