[Review] Call Of Heroes (7/10)

If I had gone and watched the trailer for Call Of Heroes, I may not have gone into the cinema for it. The first five minutes kind of made me worried that this was going to be another typical, shallow Hong Kong comedy flick.

Even if I had checked who the director, Benny Chan, was; his only memorable work for me was New Police Story. And that was a long time ago.

So I'm really glad that I "accidentally" caught this one. A Western-Chinese is as rare as it sounds. Lau Ching Wan and Eddie Peng both were really good in their performances. Probably not their best, but still very enjoyable. Peng had a good comedic performance and he didn't pull his face too much just to get laughs. Lau was solid as ever and carried most of the movie. The supporting cast of Wu Jing also stood out as he really knows how to handle action and a spear.

The action choreography looked brilliant under the experienced Sammo Hung. Every single fight scene was a good spectacle and very intense.

What kind of put me off during the fight scenes was the fact that none of the younger fighters under Lau's character had any introduction before they had to fight. So it was just weird to see them being featured onscreen.

And that's also a big problem in Chan's directing. He would just throw things into the movie without a care for a proper introduction and thought everything would just flow. And that scene with Peng sitting on top of all those wine barrels wasn't giving the barrels a back story. Why were there so many of these barrels in this little town? I had to make a guess that the town produced wine when Peng should have introduced it that way. The other scene was on the bridge where all the bamboo suddenly came out of nowhere and didn't really fit into the character of the town.

Another bad standout was Louis Koo whom I thought was a miscast. He was going for something like The Joker character but he did not commit to the role at all. He just kind of sleepwalked through the movie. I would have liked to see the crazy in his eyes.

But there were a couple of scenes that were the quieter ones and impacted the story. One was Peng and Wu's first interaction in the tent as we found out their backstory. The other was Wan and his character's old buddy fighting with words on previously said bridge, and showed the desperation of each.

Overall, I really enjoyed all the good parts about this movie, from most of the cast to the action sequences, to the quieter verbal sparring. I think this kind of Chinese movie is too far and few in between.