You won't be disappointed!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

In SHAOLIN, a fantastic first act with stunning action sequences and compelling drama is drastically offset by an uneven remainder of the film in which cliché plot elements and bad direction painfully take over. Director Benny Chan's story of the destruction of the Shaolin Temple is impressive to watch and easy to appreciate from every technical standpoint, but the narrative falters as it progresses, resulting in muddled and inconsistent pacing - a pity given the big budget and ambitious designs. A great group of performers along with excellent action choreography are complemented by vast production sets and camera-work to create a truly epic feel. An exciting carriage chase and sweeping coverage of Shaolin monks training highlight the superb visual spectacle. While Andy Lau delivers a fine all-around performance as a warlord-turned-monk (a character with a strong and emotional story arc), his costars suffer from what seems like hastily-written characters despite also providing bravura acting. For instance, Nicholas Tse's villainous General Tsao Man becomes much too cartoony with his emo-hairstyle, evil smirks, and stilted dialogue, while Jackie Chan's moments become as forced as Wu Jing is underused. The script sacrifices its focus on narrative strength at times for cliché segments of over-sentimentality, which appear merely to provide stirring nationalism that has become much to prevalent in contemporary Chinese cinema - a crippling and extremely unfortunate hindrance to not only this film but the entire industry itself. Nevertheless, SHAOLIN delivers the goods in terms of action and scope; simply an entertaining film that sadly could have been so much more.

The story line is really good and presented very well. The actors make the movie believable and entertaining: Five Stars to the cast. I am not sure of the historical context but it appears to have been based loosely on actual events...need to do some research. Violence was, in my opinion excessive...and was not needed to the degree presented to get the story across. While the movies disclaimers state that no animals were injured during filming, I have severe doubts of that claim. There are three scenes in which horses are tripped - one down a flight of stairs - and having raised horses, I know there is no way the animals could have survived those falls uninjured. Rating a 4 because of the violence.

There's just no need for stories that have been already told in a simpler and fresher way in 30 years of kungfu movie. This is not an action movie because the action is scarce and mediocre (there's should be a rule setting a minimum of martial arts, in terms of quantity and quality, in a martial arts movie). Is not an historical movie. It's not a kungfu movie, because the martial art scenes are nothing special. The movie is slow, with excesses of drama and floods of fake dark blood. The plot is unreal. The cameo of Jacky Chan slowly turning into a second Sammo Hung has been seen hundreds of times in hundreds of movies and has noting to do with the rest of the movie. With gems like Ip Man around, there's no one single reason to waste time on this pure nonsense. A boring melodrama, with poor action and an excess of histrionics.

I give this movie 5 stars, but that is just because of the action and the beautifully choreographed scenes. The Buddhist wisdoms are thrown at you as if it were by a TV reverend on coke. I am not at all against healthy morals in a movie, but the way this movie tries to stuff you with them is getting irritating. This movie is more religious than the Vatican. The music is also very annoying, not because it's Chinese, but because it sounds cheesy (and often sounds very western). The Chinese government can be proud. This is excellent stuff to feed your masses. It will keep them docile and loyal and hey, if we can feed them a healthy portion of distrust to western society... couldn't hurt either. Americans and westerners in general are all after our precious Chinese riches. However, Jackie Chan was refreshing as a not-martial-arts-man and the bad guy isn't bad either. The film definitely has its moments and if the above doesn't scare you off, you might very well enjoy it.