Greetings And Salutations, and welcome to my review of Cannibal Mercenary; here's the breakdown of my ratings:
Story: 0.25
Direction: 0.25
Pace: 0.25
Acting: 0.75
Enjoyment: 0.50
TOTAL: 2.00 out of 10.00
Yet again, here comes another undercooked story whose synopsis held magnificent potential. A war-weary soldier is forced into more deadly conflict to raise the money his daughter requires for life-changing surgery. However, this mission turns out to be more devilish as the tyrant's army is cannibals.
The shame is the writer, George Lam, misses every opportunity to build a simple tale into a masterpiece. For example, the merc's daughter is poorly, and the doctors are dicks, trying to guilt-trip him to cough up the cash. How the writer depicts the scene and its mood leads the audience to see the mercenary verging on a breakdown. This disintegration is excellent as it allows Lam to develop a realistic and credible character. Lamentably, Lam does little follow-up on the man's mental state. Had there been more depth to his meltdown, it would have strengthened the movie's drama element. So what we get is a week-arsed Rambo knock-off - A mercenary and his men sent into a jungle full of cannibalistic killers on a mission so secret they don't fully know the complete manifest. Once again, this little snippet encaptures a plethora of possibilities - all of them missed.
The direction doesn't get much better. Hong Lu Wong is horrendous at filming the martial arts action sequences, and all of them are as dull as an English Summers Day (it's thirty degrees as I write this, and we have yet to see a blue sky today). He does try to envigorate the movie by adding a few curiously angled shots. Sadly, for the most part, they're powerless. And he endeavours to build tension, but once again, they're inadequate to get you moving your bum-cheeks to the edge of the seat. If anything, he tries to imitate the American jungle warfare flicks. Many of those movies are filmed poorly, and Wong's is worse because it's dull and uninteresting. Decent storyboarding could have alleviated the amateur feel of the film. Do it right, and you can envision a scene beforehand because Cannibal Mercenary feels shot on-the-fly. But that may not have been the case - maybe the budget didn't stretch to Thailand's Spielberg clone.
The cast isn't entirely awful. There are a few, very few, scenes where they nearly reach averageness. It doesn't help that the voice-overs are terrible - they get nowhere near average. The bulk of the cast like to oversell a situation - when they get angry, they're a ball of raging fury - when they are sad, the tears flow by the barrel-load. But even their exaggerated performances don't lift the picture higher in the interest stakes. Yes, they're faulty, but not in a humorous way. By the time they arise, you've succumbed to the movie's monotony and are nearly comatose.
As you can guess, I'm not going to recommend Cannibal Mercenary to any movie-watcher. I couldn't do that to ya'll. Bust out a copy of Cannibal Apocalypse to get your war cannibal fixation, it's superbly better filmed and more entertaining.
Wipe the blood from your mouth and drop that Major's thigh, then come check out my Killer Thriller Chillers and Holding Out For A Hero lists to see where I ranked Cannibal Mercenary - and find something better for your entertainment.
Take Care & Stay Well.
