Long nga

The awesome Wu Jing has been making quite a name for himself lately with the almighty success of his Wolf Warrior films, and deservedly so! Looking back on his directorial debut, Legendary Assassin, you start to wonder what his fascination of wolves is all about with the image of the animal carried alongside him on the Hong Kong DVD artwork and the wolfs tooth he wears around his neck throughout the film.

Had he thought about it (I guess) and knew how big the following two films were going to be, this would have been a great closing chapter - albeit with a connecting rewrite, stronger characters and fight scenes.

But hey - no doubt Wolf Warrior 3 will be along soon enough (at time of writing)!

When I first saw Legendary Assassin, I really enjoyed it. I loved Wu Jing in Fatal Contact and many other roles, so it was nice to have him back as leading man and good guy once again. There is a certain charm and return to the 90's HK film style of sorts, with fun and hard hitting fight scenes, simple storyline, odd comedic moments and lighting of shots. A repeat viewing many years later still did entertain me, but I just felt something more spectacular could have been done with the talent behind and in front of the camera.

Wu Jing's character of the assassin drifter was cool and intriguing although it might have been nice to find out a bit more on him. The idea of him stuck on an island after beheading a top mob boss and dodging his henchmen as a typhoon creeps in, was quite exciting and might have served better as the closing act. Alas, it is not - which then leaves us with a short and unimaginative, though painful looking, stunt filled fight against 100 henchmen and the (hardly) threatening dead boss's wife. Its not that the fight is disappointing as such, but just a lot of the same moves over and over unlike the big end battle of a classic Jackie Chan or Sammo Hung flick that had incredibly choreographed moves that had you cheering at the screen! Legendary Assassin is still most definitely worth the watch, and shows the promise of what we have now witnessed of Wu Jing as a director and star. And maybe now because we know what he can do, this lets us see what was missing here...

Still - plenty of fun to be had!

I may call this film kind of refreshment, even if we agree it has cheep plot concept all the way from the start. What I like about this film is that it is opposite of now-days Hollywood failure attempts to make a good film from the great investments. This film looks like attempt to make a second rate Hollywood movie but it finally got into more than that. Good directing, very good camera, pretty good SF martial arts effects (even though I don't like such fairy tale kung-fu picture) and excellent acting. What I also like about this film is charming and natural style of film making, kind of discrete and cute sense of humor, easy to swallow but still not underlined as a movie trademark. All in all, it is far from dull film and solid entertainment in the sleepy nights.

Tagline: An empty directorial debut from Wu Jing…

Review by Neo: Wu Jing first comes into my attention when he first starred with the beautiful Christy Chung in Tai Chi 2 (aka Tai Chi Boxer). Since then it took him exactly a decade before he showed his head again. For whatever reason, he was one of the best things in the extremely engaging SPL and followed it up with plenty of leading and supporting turns. There is no doubting that this lad does have potential, but as a director, Wu Jing is too simple in scenes that should be more complicated and far too exaggerated in what should be more straight forward film-making. Having a bad story is alone a poor beginning, but that's not to say that Legendary Assassin is plain bad news. There are plenty of fight scenes that are alone worthy of the starving action fans' attention, including the restaurant fight which included a cameo by Ronald Cheng. A decent film at best, average acting, some quality fight scenes, but in the end, Legendary Assassin disappoints as it just never seems to take off.

The movie is basically starts off with Wu Jing hobbling to a mysterious island off the coast of Hong Kong to state the obvious for the purpose of killing someone. In the process and somehow, he met up with this cute looking police girl (played by Celina Jade) and from there one fight follows another and before you realise, he is back in Hong Kong, gangster, police are chasing after him and eventually the cliché of a hero fighting to save his girl which is so obvious that it does not require a mention.

So what's wrong with Legendary Assassin? The answer is simple, whenever there is a problem we should always try to find out by going to the root of the issue. The problem is the story, and then it comes down to some originally directing and the fact that this is an action film, where adrenalin is meant to be rushing. However, this is not the case and the result is leaving the audience with disappointment and perhaps something better from Hong Kong's lone action cinema new generation hope with Wu Jing. As mention before, there was one brutal fight scene that is of interest, in the restaurant fight during the heavy wind and rain, but apart from that those good moments are far and few in occurrence.

Going on to the acting, there is no question that Wu Jing is yet to experience what it is like to actually act. Here he is as stoic as ever or perhaps as wooden would provide a better description. While he graces the screen whenever he attempts to fight, his character is rather boring to follow. It is a shame as he was so cool in SPL, as the silent assassin and there were times in the past couple of years, where I called him the young Jet Li. Then again, Jet Li used to act rather stoic in his early days before alighting the screen with some dazzling displays like Fearless, Hero (he was stoic yes, but there was depth with his underlying performance) and more recently in the critically acclaimed role in Warlords. Let's hope this lad will continue to improve and seriously one must mention if he is half as successful as Jet Li, it will be pronounced as some sort of success. Turning to newcomer Celina Jade, she is actually likable and decently natural for a first timer. There was plenty of rawness in her acting, but somehow he manages to pull through to become one of the few good things about the movie. On another note, she looks great in uniform too. However, supporting players like Alex Fong and Ronald Cheng, either overacts or leaning towards annoying than likability.

All in all, Legendary Assassin is really a disappointment and even a step back from Wu Jing previous starring vehicles like Fatal Move or even Fatal Contact. Maybe Wu Jing needs more time and work with more different kinds of director before donning the hat of a director. Maybe Wu Jing need to start stretching his acting a bit more or even take a leaf out of Donnie Yen's unashamed style of overacting or even his restrained performance in Yip Man. Whatever the case is, Legendary Assassin is by no means good enough for both a Wu Jing's film standard and the potential he can certainly reach. While it may seem rather critical, but sometimes, when some needs to be said, it owe to be spoken, and the reality is that Legendary Assassin is disappointingly below average and a clear step in the wrong direction of a promising career … (Neo 2009)

I rate it 5/10

• www.thehkneo.com

This movie was a disappointment from the start. The direction was very poor and the simple story line was uninteresting. All the unnecessary slow motion scenes with bad cinematography just didn't work. The relation ship between the two lead character was the only thing of interest but even that was superficial. Plenty of better movies to spend your time than this one. It's hard to be positive about any thing in the movie, but there were glimpses of good action scenes but most of them were wasted by poor decision making by the director. I was hoping for something much better considering the exposure and the involvement of Jacky Wu. But what i got from this film was utter disappointment.

Being a big fan of Wu Jing, I've waited nearly a year for Legendary Assassin after his dazzling moves in Fatal Move left me in limbo. I'm not sure how big a role he played as co-director in this film, but the direction and the story was fairly mediocre. It takes place on an island where he meets the girl cop (Celina Jade), and gets chased around by the bad guys. They are trapped on the island because a tropical typhoon has shut down all the ferries. It feels a bit like Assault on Precinct 13 but nowhere near as intense or exciting. A 6 to 6.5 rating is about right.

The thing about Jacky is that he always seems to fall short of making that 'big break' movie that truly shows how great an actor he can be. In Legendary Assassin, his acting is pretty much exactly the same as in Fatal Contact, whenever someone talks to him he smiles and waits a few seconds before replying. He plays the underdog secret assassin/kungfu master alternate identity that is in danger of being typecast nowadays. The big difference is that he talks a lot less than in Fatal Contact, and therefore in my opinion it is a step back. He actually took a step back from Fatal Contact. There should have been much more dialogue between him and Celina. The fighting scenes were slightly above average, nothing spectacular. A lot of people knock Fatal Move, but I thought it was intended to be over the top and ridiculous, like something out of a Japanese comic, CGI blood spraying all over the place. His fighting scenes were much better in Fatal Move and SPL. I guess I'm a bit spoiled by Donnie Yen, at the moment if Jet Li is considered to be retired, then Donnie reigns supreme (both on the screen and as producer/director) and Jacky is just behind him. In a leading role, Fatal Contact is probably still Jacky's finest, so he needs to step back and evaluate which direction his career should be headed. Perhaps he should take on projects with a solid script and director. I'm a huge fan of Jacky Wu and hope his next project can truly take it to the next level, and break more barriers.

A pleasant surprise is Hong Kong born newcomer Celina Jade making her debut, who is half Chinese and half American. Besides her natural beauty, she can also speak three languages (English, Cantonese, Mandarin). Perhaps because of the fact that she was actually born and raised in Hong Kong, she performed admirably in Legendary Assassin and looked very natural on the screen, never fazed or looking out of place alongside a solid cast with some old time faces. Besides those dreamy eyes, her language and culture is her greatest asset, as despite playing a naive cop, you take her seriously as she delivered her lines with sincerity and realism rather than just being silly or trying to look cute. She also displayed a wide variety of emotions convincingly, and is definitely one to look out for in future Hong Kong productions.