Wushu [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Ok, first thing I should get out of the way is that Jackie Chan's name is all over this DVD, but aside from a brief appearance at the Cannes film festival found in the special features, Jackie is nowhere to be seen. I know undoubtably people will buy this and gripe that Jackie's not in, don't be one of them. Jackie's "big brother" Sammo Hung is the top billed star, here he plays a wushu teacher and widow raising his two sons at a martial arts academy. The first part of the movie is a kid's story about Sammo's boys and three other children (two boys, one girl) they meet at the academy, they train together and become BFFs after rescueing a helpless puppy. Then the movie kicks into high gear as the kids become adults in training for a wushu competition, rivalries and romances blossom, and just when you say I've seen this all before, a gang of human traffickers enter the picture. The baddies are fronted by a former disciple of Sammo's, so you know their's gonna be a student-teacher smack down, who kidnapes twin boys from his academy. All this must be taken care of before the final tournament can be judged.

Yup, you probably have seen most of this before in other martial arts films, but don't get me wrong, Wushu has plenty of charms of it's own. First, just about any movie starring the great Sammo Hung is worth seeing, even though he is getting older and fatter, he still is one of the best and his fight scene towards the end is a must see. Really, as expected with a title like Wushu, there are a lot of excepental kung fu fight scenes, most of which look quite realistic. The actors are all pleasant and give likable performances, the only drawback other than the familarity of the story, is that it kinda drags a little bit in the middle.

One final note, as with a number of other Lionsgate DVD realses Wushu comes with it's original language track with subtitles, which is great and I would recommend seeing this one, but the dubbed track is a nightmare. It's like the worst dubbed kung fu movie dialogue ever, flatly written and badly performed. Just a head's up.

- It's a kung fu movie for kids.
- The acting is stiff, forced, and exactly like kiddy stuff.
- The editing is terrible. There are a lot of scenes where they're so poorly cut and pasted that I can clearly see they are two separate scenes combined together.
- The film is not funny.
- Jackie Chan is one of the producers but he did not act here.
- Most of the fighting scenes look amateurish. This is understandable because most of the fighters are kids and teens. However, even the main fighting scene at the last 15 minutes is not good either. Samo Hung's fighting is much better in other movies.
- In short, even on the standard of family movies, this is not worth the money.

Excellent movie, similar to Ip Man, but really good, if one is interested in some Chinese Martial arts and lots of really good action with a decent plot.