The greatest movie ever made..!

A Major Disappointment

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

When a General his killed, his wife and various female members of his family set off to pill his military shoes. That's as close as I can get in a synopsis with going into vast detail - detail which seems unnecessary when this biggish budget Chinese film is largely combat sequences.If you like large battle scenes, lots of one-on-one wire-fu and the like, you're going to enjoy this. But if you're not familiar with lots of Chinese actresses, you're going to get confused. Assorted members of this military clan are introduced together with little identifying captions about what their swords are called, and then you never know who each one is until they - spoiler! - get killed.There is some dodgy CGI, especially at the start. It gets bloodier as it does on, and it really shouldn't because the CGI blood doesn't convince.I've decided I like Cecilia Cheung.This DVD from Poundland held my attention, but I'm not in a big hurry to see it again.

Not going to spoil it much, but the beginning, was EPIC. Its about sisters (well at least by their names they are sisters) training. There's awesome music in the background and all these fancy kind of filming. (One of them, I can't remember, is pro at archery. The film exaggerates at the beginning her skill, with her shooting bullseye while fighting, and doing a back flip before letting go the arrow and it hits like RIGHT in the middle.) The first 9 minutes is a summary basically and an overview of their lives until now. Then it goes into the 'fancy high speed camera sort of scenes' for 3 minutes. (BEST 3 minutes, in my opinion) It's kind of like Fast and furious 5 where they introduce the members in the 'team'. Anyways, I loved it, especially the beginning (like i've been saying for this whole review)the plot was interesting, and (SPOILER: some of the 'sisters' do die despite their awesome kung-fu skills) but i didn't feel sad, maybe because with so many of the 'main characters' (there are 9 or 10 sisters/main characters) the film can't focus exactly too deeply on one character. I'd recommend you to check this out, (at least from 8 minutes in the movie to around 11 minutes to see that epic shoot- which is quite cheesy) but it is one of those action/fighting movies so if your interested you should watch it :)

This is a pretty bad movie with some crappy acting and story. I am not sure if it's intentional or not but the whole thing just comes off humorous, especially because of the acting. The story is nothing interesting just men warriors losing a battle and women warriors picking up arms to fight in their husbands place. The whole movie is a cheese fest, even the action is super cheesy and looks so fake...Although it's entertaining to watch. Watching the fight sequences is like watching someone play "Dynasty Warriors". The only thing that makes this movie watchable is the fight sequences even if their is no logic when it comes to physics and cheesy. Which might work if it's a comedic kung-fu movie that doesn't take itself seriously but has a cleverly integrated plot. But that isn't the case for this movie and when it tries to integrate some story into it. I was like "okay this is boring and dull, lets get back to the cheesy action". I am not fond of Cecilia Chung these days as an actress and she is pretty bad in this movie. There is quite a lot of characters in this movie but they are so underdeveloped I didn't care who lives or who dies. As a matter of fact I wasn't quite sure which character was dying or fighting even though some dramatic movie plays with other characters weeping or have the sad face. Just watch for the cheesy action scenes and not the story or the acting and you might be fine watching this.4/10

Finally! After the glut of big-budget historical war epics that have seen tears and bloodshed, at last we get one that injects some levity into the heavy-handed genre. Yes, there is humour aplenty in director Frankie Chan's latest take on the classic 'Lady Warriors of the Yang Family', apparently titled 'Legendary Amazons' as a nod to the Shaw Brothers 1972 movie 'The 14 Amazons'- and if you're thinking how such a story would lend itself to comedy, wait till you've seen this adaptation. A prologue establishes the war between the Song Dynasty and the Western Xia Dynasty, the former led by General Yang Zongbao (Ritchie Jen) outnumbered against the latter's troops launching a fiercely fought border incursion. Facing imminent death, General Yang ties a bundle of hair to a pigeon and sends it off to his wife Mu Guiying (Cecilia Cheung). How ingeniously amusing! What are the odds that a bundle of Mu's hair carried on the pigeon would be a message of defeat? And what are the odds that the Xia enemies would have on hand a pair of eagles that is, we may add, too quickly shot down as soon as they are released to catch the said pigeon? It gets even better- as news of Zongbao's apparent death spreads around the Yang family clan, with nary a man except for Zongbao and Guiying's son Yang Wenguang (Xiao Mingyu), the whole gathering of women gathered for his 18th birthday celebration start weeping uncontrollably as if on cue. Then, just as quickly, it is decided that the wilful Wenguang- whose earlier childish act of blowing up a wall in the house compound just to get out- will be appointed to lead the Yangs, and with that, fireworks start exploding into the night sky. What a brilliant show of over-the-top humour! But nothing can quite prepare you for the hilarity as the Yang clan set off to war in obedience of the imperial edict. The first confrontation finds the Yangs outnumbered against their enemies, splitting into five separate divisions to divide up their enemy and hopefully defeat them guerrilla-style. Their tactic is ultimately undone when the reckless Wenguang gets duped by the Xia's into saving his father- but even before you chuckle at his foolishness, you'll find yourself tickled silly as his mother Muiying challenges him right on the sideline and usurps his status as marshal. Somehow, we never recalled the family fighting amongst themselves as a centrepiece of their heroism, but hey it makes for good amusement. Just as comical is the Yang women's defiance of gravity, leaping into the air and performing some quite marvellous stunts that they can very well parlay into lucrative public entertainment after the war. We have Frankie and old-school villain actor Fung Hak-On to thank for that, with some generous help no doubt from Jet Li's master Wu Bin credited as 'kungfu consultant'. No kidding! We were however unable to identify who was responsible for the numerous heroic deaths we witnessed throughout the film, because we'd like to thank that person for the hilariously fake blood spurting out and the exaggerated dying. Inspired too is the casting of the film. Lead actress Cecilia Cheung, who was reportedly paid a cool NTD$30 million to star, has a heretofore unknown gift of acting shocked that will make you burst out laughing. You have to also hand it to the filmmakers for assembling such a professional cast of actors- including veterans Ritchie, Ge Chunyan, Yukari Oshima and Kathy Chow- who are able to keep such straight serious faces in spite of the hilarious mayhem unfolding before them. When you're having so much fun, you probably won't be bothered by the messy and quite incoherent script (written by Frankie, Liu Heng and Ma Honglu) that can't quite make up its mind if certain characters- wounded or killed- should stay that way. And here we would like to ask for your pardon for our insolence thus far- it's probably clear to you that we were being sarcastic all the way, but we thought comedy must have been the sole intention of the filmmakers going by how atrocious the film really is. If you have to know, it's histrionic, over-the-top and melodramatic every step of the way. The acting is equally ridiculous, with Cecilia taking the cake for being quite possibly in line for the worst actress of the year. And what of the plentiful action scenes? They are, like the script, chaotic and illogical- worse still when you can so evidently tell the green screen behind which their landscapes were filled in. We'll leave you with quite possibly one of the most ridiculous scenes we've seen this year- a makeshift bridge assembled with two chains of metal shot from one end of a cliff to another with human steps made up of soldiers on their backs clinging onto both chains, all for the sake of their Empress Dowager-like commander Taijun (Cheng Peipei) to get across. Need a good laugh? Then we'd recommend 'Legendary Amazons', one of the most unintentionally laugh-out-loud movies you'll find this year. At least it makes a genre breakthrough by showing how you can do comedy in the midst of a big-budget historical war epic.