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So with my little brother-in-law staying over we let him pick out a movie to rent and he picked one that I’d never heard of and that didn’t seem particularly exciting. But we watched it anyway and after seeing it, I am somewhat surprised that I hadn’t heard of it and assumed that is was just another old time cheapo Kung Fu flick. But no, the movie was Forbidden Kingdom and it seems to be a fairly recent addition to the flying through the air kung fu extravaganza genre. Though I haven’t seen many of these, after having Sleeping Dragon Flopping Lizard leave a dull taste in my mouth, I thought that this one was actually pretty good. Starting of with the photogenic scene of a martial arts battle across a bunch of little mountain tops poking out of the clouds…
We wake to a young American fellow who has seemingly been dreaming it… The plight of those who watch too many Kung Fu movies, I suppose. Anyway, to make things more interesting, he comes across a staff in a junk store… A staff that featured prominently in his dream… And we’re off!
Forbidden Kingdom is the story of Chinese immortals with an issue. See, the Monkey King is rather obnoxious (and quite undefeatable with his magic staff)
and many years ago, he ticked off the Jade Warlord by crashing a party and the Jade Warlord managed to trick him and get the upper hand. Of course, prophecy says that one day a stranger will come and return the staff to the Monkey King and he will be able to defeat the evil warlord.
One guess who this prophesied stranger is… Our guy meets up with Jackie Chan (as the drunken immortal) and Jet Li (a monk on a mission) and a woman with vengeance on her mind and they set out through lush landscape, dramatic scenery and much much Kung Fu fighting to get to the palace of the warlord.
In addition to all the nice looking scenes, they encounter some interesting landscape, a witch with some tricks up her sleeve and the movie is pretty entertaining with not too much of the sappy stuff, not too much of the dumb slapstick but tons and tons of action. All sorts of fight scenes, all sorts of martial arts techniques… Just people flying and fighting all over the place.