My Rating: ★★★★
Shocking Kung Fu of Huo’s [霍家拳之威震山河] is a Chinese martial arts/action movie that was released on 9th June 2018.
About
From the iQiyi website:
He Dachuan was killed in helping his brother Huo Zhenshan to escape. Twenty years later, Huo Zhenshan opened a martial arts gym in Shanghai and looked for He Dachuan’s descendants. Facing the challenge of the black market boxing hall, Huo Zhenshan defeated his opponent but refused the bounty, making the witness Shitou respectful. Shitou turned out to be He Dachuan’s long-lost child!
The description isn’t that good but it gives you a jist of what the movie is about.
Cast
Chen Qiu Guo (陈秋果) as Huo Zhen Shan
He had a small part in Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty, which was saw. He mainly appears in TV series with two films under his belt.
Yan Jie (言杰) as Shi Tou
He is an actor, director and Wushu Athlete. A long list of films and TV series to his name. We’ve seen him in numerous shows but mainly where is is a support actor.
Review
Even though from the early part of the film we’d knew how this would turn out it was quite enjoyable and under-rated on other websites.
Despite it being a typical story line which we have seen before the writers did try to pad it out a little more than the others. Most of the characters evolved throughout.
There was action right from the start and towards the end. Most of it was pretty good. Some of it was comical. There were typical characters like a drunken and monkey martial artists.
The fighting in the ring scene was a little bit like American Masterchef.
The part of the film that was set in 1911 was filmed really well, the cinematography was great, I liked the colour grading they used in this portion of the film.
The most annoying character, who wasn’t listed in any of the movie sites, was the one who played the American, although he looked and sounded Russian.
They packed a lot into the movie and it moved fast. It was a happy ending.
Summary
I will give this movie a 5/5. iQiyi reviewers gave it a 9.1. Other review websites weren’t so generous. I thought it was a good film, I am pleased to have watched it.
Where to Watch
We saw this on iQiyi but it is on many other streaming platforms like Amazon Prime and Apple (not sure if the western streaming companies are country specific).
Wushu
The main star of the show is a Wushu Athlete. Canada has its own Wushu Movement, visit WushuCanada. More about Wushu on Wikipedia.
