Jade Dynasty (2019) Review

“Jade Dynasty” Theatrical Poster

Director: Ching Siu-Tung
Cast: Sean Xiao, Li Qin, Meng Mei Qi, Tina Tang, Qiu Xin Zhi, Cecilia Yip, John Chiang, Norman Tsui, Leung Kar-Yan, Hung Yan-Yan, Bao Xiaosong, Chen Liwei, Li Shen
Running Time: 101 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

The hyper-kinetic action and billowing silk of the early 90’s new wave wuxia genre may be a long time ago, but one of the directors whose name is indelibly linked with it is thankfully still around – Ching Siu-Tung. Siu-Tung’s distinctive choreography style of the era, defined by its bombastic wife-fu infused set pieces, can be found in the likes of New Dragon Inn, Holy Weapon, and Butterfly and Sword, as well as in the movies he sat in the director’s chair for himself, such as the Swordsman and Chinese Ghost Story trilogies. That era of Hong Kong cinema may be gone, however I confess that when Siu-Tung’s name is attached to a movie, I still get excited about it.

Admittedly as a director the post-millennium world hasn’t exactly been full of highlights. After the riotously fun Conman in Tokyo in 2000, the guilty pleasure (at least for me) of 2002’s Naked Weapon, and the 2003 Steven Seagal vehicle Belly of the Beast, it’d be another 5 years before he directed again. When he returned, it was to make An Empress and the Warriors, the movie that many consider to be the first blip in Donnie Yen’s filmography after his resurgence in 2005 following Sha Po Lang. Not content with staining Yen’s filmography, in 2011 Siu-Tung directed Jet Li in The Sorcerer and the White Snake. In an era that was defined by how many ugly looking CGI fantasy spectacles were being churned out by Mainland China, The Sorcerer and the White Snake is often considered to be the ugliest.

Siu-Tung’s foray into CGI spectacle was an expensive failure, and it would take him 8 years before he’d step into the role of director again, helming the 2019 wuxia adaptation Jade Dynasty. It’s always a concern when a director hasn’t worked for so long that rust may have set in, and while Siu-Tung usually keeps himself busy as an action choreographer when he’s not directing, with the exception of the critically mauled 2013 Bollywood sequel Krrish 3, this time he’s been out of the spotlight all together. So the burning question is, will his return to the familiar world of wuxia be one which sets him up for success?

Jade Dynasty is based on an eight-part novel series by author Xiao Ding, and as with so many wuxia novels, this isn’t the first time for it to be adapted for the screen. In fairness, it is for the first time for the big screen, but the honours for the debut adaptation go to The Legend of Chusen, a TV series that was shown across 2 seasons in 2016 and 2017 (currently a 3rd season is on the way). Lucky for us Jade Dynasty itself is planned as a franchise (the Chinese title includes the number 1, indicating the same), and while it’s not unheard of for HK filmmakers to cram in several novels worth of story into one movie with brain melting results (check out The Dragon Chronicles: The Maidens of Heavenly Mountain), the plot for the 100 minutes presented here is at least comprehendible.

The leader of Chinese boyband X Nine, Sean Xiao, plays an orphan who was adopted by a martial arts sect 10 years ago. His parents, along with the rest of the rural village he lived in, where killed by an unknown force, and for the past decade he’s supposedly been learning martial arts, while in reality he’s little more than the sects resident cook. With a kung fu tournament on the horizon, there’s little hope for Xiao, however things quickly change when a mysterious bead he was betrothed with several years ago is activated by his blood (thanks to being bitten by a mischievous monkey – seriously). The bead ends up transforming into the ‘soul chasing stick’, a powerful weapon that can only be used by the person whose blood activated it. It also comes with a mind of its own, and results in Xiao cleaning up in the kung fu tournament, however its resurgence also draws the attention of the Demon King, who wants the stick for his own evil purposes.

While the above sounds like all the ingredients for a classic wuxia tale are there, onscreen much more focus seems to be on the various women who enter Xiao’s life. Xiao is secretly in love with the sect leader’s daughter, played with a borderline annoying cuteness by Yixin Yang (The Golden Era), however she may be in love with someone else. Xiao repeatedly finds himself in the crosshairs of Qin Li (Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon), the leader of another sect who puts on a tough exterior, but as Xiao tells her under the moonlight in one scene is “just a front”. Meanwhile, the daughter of the Demon King, played by Meiqi Meng (a member of the K-pop/M-pop group Cosmic Girls – yes it’s that kind of movie), plans to get close to Xiao in order to retrieve the soul chasing stick for her father, but instead she finds herself falling for him. With enough unrequited love to fill a whole season of The Bold and the Beautiful, how will it all end?

With the acting on display, it’s difficult to care. Xiao spends most of the runtime wide eyed and naïve, a performance which rightfully earned him the Most Disappointing Actor Award at the 2019 Golden Broom Awards, which are the Chinese equivalent of Hollywood’s Razzies. Most of the young cast don’t fare any better, their inadequacies highlighted further by the veteran cast who play the leaders of the various martial arts sects. Jade Dynasty at least gives us the opportunity to enjoy David Chiang, Leung Kar Yan, Norman Tsui, Hung Yan-Yan, and Cecilia Yip sharing the screen together, and in their brief scenes where they’re not drowned out by special effects, they have good chemistry.

The action itself is underwhelming. I don’t mind CGI enhanced action in productions such as this (League of Gods and Double World both do it right), however it needs to be a balance between the effects and the performers, and it’s clear that nobody here is a martial artist. Wire work is mostly restricted to the ‘one straight leg, one slightly bent, arm outstretched with a sword’ variety, with very few actual exchanges taking place, and slow motion is gratuitously overused to the point of boredom. There’s none of that kinetic energy of the early 90’s new wave flicks to be found here. Proceedings look like they’ll brighten up with the arrival of the Demon King’s four lackeys – a double-sword wielding boar, a guy who has bladed shields attached to his feet, an invisible figure able to suck opponents into its body, and an old hooded puppeteer who wheels around a creepy looking doll in a cart.

The puppeteer is the highlight, able to make the doll come to life, and separate its limbs to attack and take control of any opponents corresponding appendages while the head chomps away on the victim’s neck. With each limb attached to red rope, the creativity behind the puppeteer harks back to the type seen in Siu-Tung’s directorial debut Duel to the Death in 1983, but it’s short lived. Outside of their introductory scene the quartet don’t get a whole lot to do, and are quickly dispatched in an unimpressive onslaught of CGI energy beams. In fact the whole finale feels like a re-enactment of a Marvel epic destruction style ending, with special effects being the order of the day, which extends to the billowing silk. As recently as 2004’s House of Flying Daggers it wasn’t necessary to create flowing sleeves (and it’s a wuxia movie, so they’re usually deadly!) with CGI, but apparently now even clothing needs to be created with pixels.

While I’m in no way averse to CGI in cinema, it should never overwhelm the narrative or be a lazy fix for stuff that can be done practically, and here there’s too many times when it feels like CGI for CGI’s sake. Combined with a young cast who lack any charisma, chemistry, or action chops, in the end the whole thing feels remarkably shallow and it’s difficult to ascertain exactly what’s at stake. With a finale that abruptly decides to bombard the audience with a tragic twist, all too obviously setting the scene for the sequel, the bombastic nature of it all feels at best unwarranted and at worst laughable. Some may feel it’s both. At the center of everything is supposedly the soul chasing stick, but if you were to point it in the direction of Jade Dynasty, I doubt it’d be able to find any.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10