Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings review
“I gave you 10 years to live your life. And where did that get you?”
Continuing Marvel Studio’s trend of hiring directors of acclaimed independent films, next is Destin Daniel Cretton, whose previous work Short Term 12 (2013) and Just Mercy (2019) tackled social issues with tremendous honesty. Now he follows his compatriot Brie Larson in joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a film that while adding some needed cultural diversity to the growing superhero roster, it unfortunately does stick a little too closely to a predicable comic book formula.
Upon introducing our hero, an expensive sports car slowly drives up to a San Francisco hotel, the camera lingering on the car with the same gaze you would find in a Fast and Furious sequel – I wasn’t impressed to assume another billionaire hero was going to once again save us from impending doom. To my relief our hero Xu Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) is revealed to be the hotel valet, working a minimum wage job that he and friend Katy (Awkwafina) try convince each other is really not so bad.
The choreography is just grounded enough to keep the stakes high, thanks to its lack of characters shooting powers from their hands.
Shang-Chi wears a pendent around his neck that performs its task proudly as the MacGuffin for the movies first half. It’s important enough for Shang-Chi’s father to send a hearty bunch of foot-shoulders to retrieve it, including a Romanian muscle man with a sword for a hand. Before we know it, we are treated to a martial arts scene on a bus that is as outlandish as it is enjoyable. The choreography is just grounded enough to keep the stakes high, thanks to its lack of characters shooting powers from their hands. Early in the movie it feels that a swift kick might be enough to change the course of the plot.
It is clear Shang-Chi is not just a car valet, he is a martial arts master who also happens to be a car valet. Its an enjoyably silly set-up, which in Marvel’s regular tone of choice doesn't take itself too seriously. Soon our heroes are globetrotting to Macau, where in true Kung-Fu fashion there is sizeable underground fight club ready for Shang-Chi to fight in. Suitably this fight club’s location is under some sort of construction, which allows for an inspiring, breathless battle to take place on the scaffolding of a high rise building.
Unfortunately the second half fairs less well. The specials effects get bigger, but the characters are lost amongst the noise. The gritty martial arts quickly changes into fantasy as our two likeable working-class characters travel to China to meet Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung), father of Shangi-Chi, a man who though a few thousand years old, he still feels insecure enough to need a large army of goons on standby. He tell his son that you can’t outrun your true self, but I can’t help but think it would be better being a car valet than a villain.
In many ways Shang-Chi is a film about grief, as the death of his wife is the key motivator for Xu Wenwu to act against his better judgement. His grief is also shared by our hero, but luckily Shangi-Chi has enough foresight to realise that opening a big scary door full of demons will probably release a big scary bunch of demons. As the special effects take over, the agency of our likeable hero diminishes. What is forgotten is the act of seeing actors engage in marital arts can be incredibly emotional. It’s in their faces, in the act of getting back up to keep fighting; its the physical violence representing character the way dance can in great musicals. A lot of money was spent for a conclusion of giant dragons fighting other giant dragons, yet they are a poor substitute for the actors. As Bruce Lee put it, with martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is. We could have done with a little less.
