Wolf Warrior

Released: April 2015(China)

Director: Wu Jing

Not Rated

Distributor: Well Go USA Entertainment

Run Time: 91 Minutes

Cast:
Wu Jing: Leng Feng
Scott Adkins: Tomcat
Nan Yu

It’s kind of a rare thing for a martial arts actor to direct his own movie.  It’s even more rare when that movie actually turns out to be any good.  We’ve had a few: Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and even Bruce Lee directed his own movie.  It’s a difficult thing to do, because the actor not only has to direct others, but himself as well.  He also has to keep an eye an all other aspects of production.  So, it’s a minor miracle that a kung fu movie directed by a kung fu movie star is any good at all.  Jackie Chan has had more success in that regard than almost anybody else.  Along comes “Jacky” Wu Jing, another Asian martial arts actor.  I first noticed this guy in SPL a.k.a KillZone with Donnie Yen.  While not nearly as charismatic as Yen, Wu Jing is a very talented martial artist.  So, for a movie called Legendary Assassin, Wu Jing stepped behind the camera as a first-time director.  Sadly, the film was not very good, with over-used wire-fu.  Sure, it was fun, but it was absolutely derivative of better films.  7 years later, Wu Jing gives directing another shot with a film called Wolf Warrior.

Opening in an abandoned factory, the film sees a group of Chinese military and police officers working together to take down a drug smuggling operation.  With the ringleader taking a hostage, and the officers ordering the police to stand down, Leng Feng disobeys a direct order and takes out the ringleader.  In another part of the country, the military is preparing to take another drug dealer into custody when they are attacked by a group of mercenaries.  After serving some time in jail, Leng Feng is offered a chance to join a legendary special forces outfit called The Wolves.  But, certain mercenaries also have Leng Feng in their sights.  While the overall story isn’t terrible, it does feel like a 90 minute commercial for the army, and that’s not necessarily what you want in what is supposed to be a martial arts flick.  It’s also loaded with an overdose of patriotism.  There’s also the subplot of a man-made virus that was designed to target the Chinese specifically…..right.

The acting in the film isn’t too bad, with Wu Jing himself leading the charge.  While he definitely fits in with the whole tough guy role, the others are just….there.  Scott Adkins plays the mustache-twirling Tomcat, and he does a pretty good job with it, but it would probably be better if he was playing a Russian.  He’s good at that.  The action in the film isn’t actually that bad.  There’s a lot of gunplay and explosions if you’re into that kind of thing, and I usually am.  The issue here is the assumption that this movie is a martial arts flick, and it isn’t.  Not really.  Despite the fact that you’ve got Wu Jing AND Scott Adkins in the same movie together, there is not a whole of martial arts going on here.  If you follow martial arts movies as well as I do, you would think that Adkins and Jing would end up in a spectacular free-for-all towards the end of the movie.  It was not to be.  The fight that we get between the two is almost not even worth mentioning.  These are two of the coolest martial artists in the industry and they get short-changed by Wu Jing’s complete lack of experience in directing a major action film.  I don’t know if it was written that way, but it feels like it could have been so much more.

I will give the film credit for not being boring.  It keeps things moving at a relatively quick pace.  There are also a few funny bits here and there between Leng Feng and his group.  Overall, though, I can’t help but be disappointed by the fact that this isn’t the action movie that a lot of people were expecting.  A lot of people were expecting, rightly so, a top-notch action film with fantastic martial arts sequences, and we didn’t get it.  Now, on the Blu-Ray cover, there is a quote from somebody called Movie Cricket, claiming that the film had “Breathtaking martial arts.”  I don’t what movie they saw, but the film that I saw barely had any of that.  At the end of the day, what we have here is a competent action flick, but not a whole lot else going for it.  If you’ve come to see Wu Jing and Scott Adkins in a spectacular face-off, you’re in for a major disappointment.  My final recommendation?  Rent it.  7/10.

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