The Shadow Strays is the kind of mindless, repetitive action film that can fill the screen with so many clashing swords and yet leave me deeply, deeply bored. But that’s largely a me thing… action junkies will probably love it.

It’s about one them there league of assassins that puts one of its newer members on hiatus for a little too long. Perhaps because she’s bored or just human, she intervenes with a young boy’s problems and winds up in a kung-fu movie that goes on for 2.5 hours.

I don’t care about this familiar plot of a killer with a secret heart or her mentor in the middle of a civil war. This plot can work, presumably… but this movie was just one long drag-it-out until I wanted to hit my head with a hammer.

It has fight scenes but they are peppered in more during the endless first hour that I stopped caring. By the endless final act, it didn’t matter how good, bad, or indifferent the sword fights were, I just wanted the movie to end.

Most of the action is very well choreographed with some excessive – and appreciated – levels of violence. It’s from the madman who directed the MUCH superior The Night Comes For Us so if you know his “HOLY SHIT!” levels of carnage, you’ll appreciate what he does here. And I did visually appreciate it… until I was over it. No matter how gory or kill-riffic the action is, if you lost me in the first hour, you ain’t getting me back in the second.

So, yeah, this is probably the kind of film action junkies will love for the sake of the action. But it’s the kind of action that feels hollow and merely performative to me. Nice level of violence though. Love the instinct, but not the result.

Score: 70