Mojin: The Lost Legend
Director: Wuershan
Year: 2015
Rating: 6.0
Think
of this as a Chinese version of The Tomb Raider films and Indiana Jones with
zombies. Sounds like fun, right? Well, it is. Brainless fun but still fun.
A mix of action, adventure, stunts and nitwit comedy. More CGI than a purist
would want but it is done reasonably well. And Shu Qi. She is as always,
the best special effect. At this point in her career, she is basically only
doing Mainland films. Where the money is. It also stars Huang Bo, one of
the most popular Mainland actors - though I often wonder why. In the few
things I have seen him in, being loud and chaotic would describe him best.
At two-hours in length this goes on longer than it should have - true of
most films these days - it is like they still had money left in the special
effects budget, so just kept adding things to the film.
Mojin are tomb raiders - this is based on
a novel called Ghost Blows Out the Light that was very popular. There
have already been a few films produced based on it. The best Mojins are a
team of three friends - Hu Bayi (Kun Chen), Wang (Huang Bo) and Shirley (Shu
Qi). These ancient tombs are far down shafts loaded with deadly traps but
they are experts. They have one rule. To put a lit candle in the southeast
corner and if it goes out, get the hell out as quickly as you can. Bad things
are about to happen. Bayi opens a coffin and inside is a perfectly preserved
beautiful woman - and then her eyes open and the candle goes out. They decide
to retire and move to NYC where they eke out a living selling artifacts.
Wang gets enticed into doing one more job
for a cult led by a female, Madame Ying (Xiaoqing Liu) to find the Equinox
Flower, that she thinks will allow her to revive the dead. As her bodyguard
and enforcer is Yoko (Cherry Ngan) who wears a scowl through the film except
for the occasional smile when she is hurting someone. Wang goes off to China
but leaves a message for Bayi saying he has to do it for Ding (Angelababy)
which brings on a lengthy flashback to when the men were both young and with
a group of Red Guards quoting from their Little Red Books. They all end up
underground when the Red Guards start demolishing ancient artifacts- "Destroy
the Four Olds" - and suddenly a platoon of dead Japanese troops come to life.
They get out but Ding does not. Of course, Bayi goes and Shirley follows.
They soon find themselves underground with
the insane cult, poisonous gas, zombies, traps, grand CGI structures and
everything collapsing. It goes a mile a minute and is as ridiculous as it
sounds. It is a little surprising that in a Mainland film they killed off
the Red Guards spouting Mao and that there is so much supernatural. When
the book went to print form after being on the web, it had to delete the
supernatural aspects. I guess they have eased up but depicting the supernatural
in films was not permitted for years.
