Shang-Chi is the latest MCU film. It’s about a regular dude who parks cars in San Francisco with his best gal pal… only to blow his real identity as the son of a shadowy martial arts villain. Now he has to return home to save his sister and confront his bad guy dad… and learn more about his abilities, his mother’s home town, and a bunch of mystical magical to-do. It’s rarely related to the existing MCU except for some convenient cameos and a pretty good mid-credit scene/setup.
I liked this film. It’s not high-tier MCU, but it’s good mid-grade stuff. As a pure martial arts film, it has some very impressive choreography and wire-work in the Crouching Tiger floating style. Some it is very elegant and beautiful, and some of its brutal. But it usually all works… except for some sequences at night that felt like a little too much like cover for stunt doubles (CGI or real).
The film has a nice focus on the family with Shang-Chi, his sister, and his best friend making a fun core trio. They are joined by the always-welcome Michelle Yeoh (as an aunt) and Tony Leung as Evil Dad. The acting and action staging for the group is quite good… and we get an interesting *gasp* villain for an MCU pic.
The script is pretty tight and controlled. It’s telling this single story and giving us plenty of flashbacks for character development… but it’s always focused on its core plot. It has comic relief but it’s not overdone. It generally works all the way… until the final action scene, that is. Which is funny since I realized how tight the movie was during this action sequence… at which point the movie instantly starts to go off the rails.
The final action set piece is such a murky CGI nightmare that doesn’t follow any of the promises of the earlier martial arts scenes. No elegant or brutal use of amazing mystical martial arts…. nah… lets do a CGI skyfight where nobody uses martial arts against a vaguely defined villain that isn’t half as interesting as the father. And then they end it arbitrarily when the hero, I dunno, does random thing A or B… maybe because this movie is running long so they gotta end it somehow. Big disappointment.
But, hey, up until that point, I had very few complains about the film. It’s good, reasonably exciting, and sometimes quite beautiful. I liked the characters and that includes an interesting villain. Sure the end fight is a little messy… but this is hardly the first superhero flick to commit that sin.
Score: 84