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| BLACK PANTHER WARRIORS. Starring - Alan Tang - Brigitte Lin - Simon Yam - Yuen wah Tak - Tony Leung. Director - Clarence Fok. Black Cougar is approached by Inspector Chu to test the newly installed security on the police department. He is given the task of retrieving a silver box locked deep in the heart of the department. Knowing the task to be a difficult one Cougar begins to assemble a team of specialists known as ‘The Black Panther warriors’. Together they pool their attributes in order to gain easy access to the box for Cougar. Unfortunately Cougar is double-crossed by Inspector Chu and he is soon caught. But this is not the work of Chu; he is merely a pawn of Bloody Wolf, the brother of Cougar presumed dead for over 15 years. Black Panther warriors is an action/comedy manga in motion movie. I am a big fan of live action manga titles such as Future Cops, City Hunter and Dragon from Russia so I was really looking forward to BPW. A strong cast has been assembled for BPW featuring the beautiful Brigitte Lin, the cool Simon Yam and the devilishly evil Yuen wah Tak to name but a few. Now you would think that these guys with all their movie knowledge would be able to pull off a corker, unfortunately the story is that bad that not even the guys who fixed up Steve Austin (the six million-dollar man) could help with this pile of donkey snot. Nothing in this movie feels right at all. The action is simply too far over the top, with the director Clarence Fok paying little attention to his star studded casts abilities. Now who in their right mind would employ Brigitte Lin and Yuen wah Tak then barely touch upon their characters or martial arts skills? Clarence Fok would, as he chooses time and time again to ignore them in order to show us what too many roman candles tied to a wire looks like. Impressive…Not. When we do actually get to see some fight sequences we find the camera placed too close to the characters to actually see what is going on and when we do get a clear view the director insists on speeding the film up. Why? Only he knows. The comedy isn't quite up to the mark either with most scenes being simply too stagnant to be amusing, with one exception when we are treated to a segment showing Simon Yam, Tony Leung and Carrie Ng trying to outcool each other, now this is funny stuff. Shame the rest of the movie couldn't reach this standard. Initially BPW shows some promise as we are introduced to the characters one by one, but this is about as exciting as it gets. We are even treated to a couple of sub plots including one where Simon Yam’s character explains that he wants no money for his part in the BPW but instead he wishes only to know who killed Yin Yin. Strange then that the only other time we hear of his request is towards the end of the movie when he decides not to know after all. What the hell was that all about then and why hint at the relationship between Cougar and Chin Chin only to leave it unresolved and unexplored? Whilst not being the worst movie I have ever seen BPW is a long way short of even being average. A truly missed opportunity of which Clarence Fok must shoulder the majority of the blame. 4****stars. |
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