Movies 2008 #25 Forbidden Kingdom

The Forbidden Kingdom Speaking directly to the makers of this film, and quoting Yngwie Malmsteen in the process, I say, “you’ve released the fucking fury.”

Why? Well, as far as I can tell nearly fifteen years of my life, countless hours of watching films and probably 100,000 words on the subject were kicked square in the nuts when I finally sat down to watch The Forbidden Kingdom.

Seriously, it ought to be illegal that a film featuring two of the best screen fighters of all time should turn out to be this bad.

There are two things working against this film.

For starters, as cinema, it’s a piece of crap.

No joke.

Pure garbage.

I rarely turn off films before they’ve run their course, but I was tempted to shut this one off within about five minutes. Seeing the the goofy protagonist and then Jackie Chan in “old man” makeup was enough to turn me off to the film and it only got worse from there. Between the unwelcome “Hollywod” touches and the bizarre pandering to Hong Kong movie fandom, there couldn’t have been a stretch of five minutes of this film that didn’t produce an audible groan from my lips.

A perfect example of both might have been the truly screwed up usage of “Come Drink With Me” as some sort of snappy “asta la vista, baby” style catch phrase. Name-checking King Hu’s classic might just have earned two or three seconds of good will had it been used in a clever way. Instead, it was just weird and cheesy being trotted out as a bizarro twist on “welcome to the party pal!”

The other thing wrong with this one is the fact that it was made at least 14 years too late. Had this film been made in Hong Kong in 1994, at the end of the last great Hong Kong martial arts movie cycle, I would likely still be talking about it. In 1994, these guys produced Fist of Legend and Drunken Master 2, respectively. Had they joined forces at the time might head might have exploded.

It might still be exploding.

Instead, we get… 2008’s The Forbidden Kingdom. Under better circumstances, both are still capable of producing great work, but both are still past their prime. In circumstances like this I really pine for the days when they were regularly making my jaw hit the floor.

Maybe they’ll try again, except this time they’ll do it on the other side of the Pacific (or even the Atlantic- Luc Besson and crew could do something with these two…)