Just exactly how much substance are you willing to sacrifice in favor of style? Watch True Legend to find out. It will capture your imagination and test your patience at the same time. From the martial arts choreographer of The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Kill Bill, True Legend continues the tradition of highly stylized fighting sequences that Yuen Woo-ping has seemed to master. However, unlike in the aforementioned titles, True Legend lacks the vehicle in which to properly display his choreography. Behind the shiny coating lies a simplistic plot, flawed characters, an uneven visual style and a completely puzzling and unnecessary last act.
The film begins with a dramatic rescue of a Chinese prince led by the heroic General Su. Appreciative of his bravery and leadership, the prince offers Su a promotion to regional governor. Seeking a life of peace and wanting to start a family, Su instead recommends his step-brother Yuan for the position. From the outset, it is clear that Yuan suffers from overshadowed sibling syndrome and his resentment of Su is obvious. Fast forward five years later and Su and his wife Ying (Yuan's sister) have a son and are content living a quiet life. Yuan returns home, now as a powerful governor, with a bone to pick. Stuff happens which leads to a fight. Yuan, having perfected a deadly technique called the Five Venom Fists, defeats and badly injures Su, taking his son in the process. Su, broken and defeated, spends an inordinate amount of screen time feeling sorry for himself and then training to defeat Yuan and take back his son.
In the midst of all this are dream-like training montages where Su trains to the brink of insanity against the Wu Shu God. His sessions serve as a test against not just the legendary warrior but against himself as well. He needs to only regain the confidence he once had to not only defeat Yuan but also his own self doubt. The problem with these sequences is that after all the suffering and hardships he must endure, you never gain the sense that Su has truly learned anything from his training and self reflection. There is no aha! moment to signify his transformation, making his growth unconvincing. He wallows in his self pity for so long, it is hard to feel anything for him other than to know that he must persevere because that is just how movies go.
The eventual showdown between Su and Yuan is the highlight of the film as you get exactly what you expected, a no holds barred kung fu extravaganza. However, for whatever reason, the movie doesn't end after the fight. There is an additional thirty minutes tacked on in a completely unrelated narrative that destroys whatever growth or self realization that Su had in the first portion of the movie. Su degenerates into a unredeemable drunkard whose self loathing can be smelled from across the screen. He begs us to feel sorry for him, but instead we're just disgusted by what he's become and the glorious action of the first hour and a half is slowly washed away into an unmoving melodrama. Then, in the second grand finale of the movie, he takes on a bunch of Russians led by the late great David Carradine in an awkward cameo. Suddenly, I stopped caring how cool the fighting tried to look and could only focus on how monotonous it's all become and couldn't wait for it to end.
The acting and script leaves a lot to be desired. For instance, Yuan is so evil in this film, it's almost laughable. He kills at least ten of his own men out of anger, making me wonder why they are so quick to rush to him to give him bad news. The fighting sequences are very good, though there are portions that rely too much on style rather than the good old fashioned fighting we want to see. Yuen didn't need the cheap tricks to make the fighting sequences in Crouching Tiger compelling, so why do it here when he has such capable martial artists to carry the action at his disposal? Visually speaking, the picture is both beautiful and laughably generic. The real life landscapes are lush and vibrant, while the computer generated backdrops look made for TV rather than for a big budget (at least for Hong Kong standards) film, creating a very uneven look and feel, much like the rest of the film.
If the movie were to end after the battle between Su and Yuan, I would have given True Legend a solid B for its brisk and simple entertainment, but the final act basically ruins the the movie.
Grade: C+
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