Iceman (2014)

I suspect that the makers of this movie were inspired not only by the 1984 Hollywood movie "Iceman" (not just by the title), but also the 1984 Hollywood movie "Ghost Warrior", which also involved an ancient Asian warrior frozen and thawed in modern times. Well, come to think of it, the core ideas of those movies had been done before many time in other movies and media, so it doesn't seem fair to just point a plagiarism finger at the makers of this movie. As for this retelling of the formula, it does have some merit. It looks pretty well produced, and there are some exciting action sequences here and there, particularly the climatic sequence. However, the movie can't decide whether it's a comic telling or a serious telling of the formula - it keeps wavering back and forth between the two extremes, and the Asian style of humor may bewilder western audiences not familiar with this style. But the real problem with the movie is that it is EXTREMELY confusing. There is very often a lack of explanation as to what is going on and why. It seems like key scenes and linking footage are missing or were never filmed in the first place, even though the movie as it is is 104 minutes long. Although the movie is never boring, the narrative is so confusing that in short notice you stop caring about the characters and the story. Too bad.

Before I start to go a little in detail about the characters, let's set everyone's expectation right. This is not another solemn and patriotic Ip Man movie, nor is it the Asian version of Captain America (though the plot is somewhat similar). So, if you watched it with an open mind, this film is mostly entertaining.Many might cringe (or laugh) when the first thing He Ying (Donnie Yen) did when he defrost was to pee, same for many little actions he did, like listening to the ground for incoming enemies or even standing on the rooftop to think about stuff. But if these actions were taken place in period films, these will seem normal. I like how Donnie Yen was able to incorporate the "Qing Gong" as well as the little details of how martial arts practitioners behave into the film, a big contrast with the current era.Battle Scenes The battle scenes between He Ying and his two other brothers, Niehu and Sao were impressive, but were spoilt by the CGI, making the atmosphere of the fight comical. Some of them were also exaggerated, like using the shield to snowboard and pothole covers to fight.Broken plots and Split personality I was disappointed with the role of Xiao Mei, a nightclub hostess with inconsistent personality. She's a money-loving girl initially, and somehow transformed into a heroine by saving a bus-full of passengers trapped by the warriors' fight. The combination of the various disparate parts makes up a disjointed story, and it made people hard to take the story seriously.The movie ended abruptly, only to reveal that there is a part two to the film. If you need a good laugh, do catch the movie and don't think too much about the nonsensical "curry chicken spaghetti".Read more: http://tiffanyyong.com/2014/04/17/iceman-3d-movie-review/

Honestly, I was tricked by the previous review hence i thought the movie was really bad and I went into the theater with zero expectations. But the results... were simply. Amazing. Another classic Chinese martial arts movie which will continue to be remembered for generations to come.This movie is not your typical Donnie Yen ass-kicking movie, this is a movie with a lot of feelings, touching yet Comedic. The whole cinema was laughing every few minutes and the actions were impeccable. The last fight scene is easily one of the best action scenes in the past 3 - 4 years of Movies.Donnie Yen has to pretend to be a Ming Dynasty warrior trying to fit into our 21st century, but obviously he is way too powerful physically and has to learn the ropes of adapting, and this has led to many funny moments throughout the movie. The ending in particular was very exciting, and then..boom, something unexpected happens, a plot twist and it becomes really touching where I can see people in the audience tearing.Definitely a must watch!Note: There is a part 2 coming out in October!

Let us begin by setting the record straight. We are big Donnie Yen fans. Even before he became a household name with 'Ip Man', we admired the kung fu star for his uniquely thrilling moves in 'SPL'. Still, even his most loyal fans will probably be wondering just why he has appeared in one bad movie after another in recent times. Indeed, his last good one was Peter Chan's 'Wu Xia' back in 2012; since then, 'Together', 'Special ID' and 'The Monkey King' have not only been bad movies, at least the first two have approached the point of being unwatchable, which is something we'd thought we'd never say about a Donnie Yen film.'Iceman' could very well have been that turning point in Yen's string of duds. Its source material was Clarence Fok's 1989 martial arts fantasy 'The Iceman Cometh', an entertaining blend of action, comedy, romance and period drama starring Yuen Biao, Maggie Cheung and Yuen Wah. Its budget is an eye-popping HK$200 million dollars. And even before its release, there has been much hype about a climactic sequence set on Hong Kong's iconic Tsing Ma Bridge which cost an additional HK$50 million dollars to film because the authorities wouldn't give the filmmakers permission to do so on location. In essence, this Captain America of the East was supposed to be big-budget action blockbuster spectacle, weighty enough to warrant a two-parter release not unlike 'Red Cliff'.Yet after all that hype, 'Iceman' is worse than 'The Monkey King' and almost as bad as 'Special ID'. Much of that has to do with the tonally incoherent plot by Lam Fung which manages to be overplotted and dramatically undernourished at the same time. Working upon the original's concept of a Ming Dynasty warrior who awakens 400 years later to find himself in modern-day Hong Kong and continue a feud that began as far back, Lam throws in multiple subplots criss-crossing present and past. There is Yen's search for a time-travelling Golden Wheel of Time that is operated by a key called the Linga. There is a corrupt Police Commissioner (Simon Yam) bent on recovering Yen and his fellow frozen guards to apparently sell them to the North Koreans. And last but not least, there is Yen's budding romance with a nightclub hostess (Eva Huang), who is caring for her sickly mother in an expensive old folks' home.The combination of so many disparate parts makes for an extremely disjointed whole, and it doesn't help that director Law Wing Cheong seems entirely overwhelmed at maintaining some semblance of coherence. His storytelling lurches backwards and forwards across time with little narrative flow or momentum - and what makes it worse is just how tonally jarring the shifts are, from comedy to romance to period fantasy and then to surprisingly graphic action. Law also seems to have gone way out of his league from the Johnnie To-like rom-coms ('2 Become 1' and 'Hooked on You') and crime dramas ('Punished') to large-scale blockbuster territory - notwithstanding his little-seen 'The Wrath of Vajra' last year - and simply lost his footing even on the very basic level of staging a compelling enough sequence.The same could be said of lead star and action director Donnie Yen. Even when everything else was a letdown, the very marquee name of Yen promised that at least the action would not disappoint; alas not even in that regard does 'Iceman' count for anything. Save for the much touted finale on the Tsing Ma bridge, the rest of the action sequences here seem almost like an afterthought, too reliant on the kind of unrealistic wirework that B-grade properties oft relied on. And when we finally end up on the bridge, Yen becomes too obsessed with making this a 3D movie by hurling all sorts of weaponry towards his audience that it just becomes too gimmicky to take seriously. It is scant compensation for the seemingly interminable one half hour wait, and ultimately disappointing because neither Wang Baoqiang nor Kang Yu as his nemeses are anywhere near close to being Yen's worthy on screen opponents.There are occasional pleasures though, and these often occur at times when the movie simply refuses to take itself seriously. We're not denying that these slapstick moments will be utterly cringe-worthy to many, but hey we take what we can get. For instance, we laughed when Yen first bursts out of his cryogenic tomb and then releases his urine like a water cannon. Ditto for his favourite catchphrase literally translated as 'your mother's breasts' in Chinese. Or how about when Wang and Yu start learning words like 'chicken curry spaghetti' from a gang of Indian grifters after saving them from the cops? There are also other fish-out-of-water comedic moments that border or belong in cheese, but that's the only kind of entertainment you're going to get out of 'Iceman'.If you're going to try to enjoy 'Iceman' therefore, it's important to set your expectations just right. Don't go in expecting the kind of popcorn blockbuster that 'Captain America' ever was, for Chinese cinema has yet to produce a modern-day superhero movie that didn't suck (think Benny Chan's 'City Under Siege'). Don't go in expecting the kind of good old-fashioned martial arts action Donnie Yen presented in 'Ip Man' or the kind of gritty MMA fighting in 'SPL' or 'Special ID', for there is nothing but a gimmicky 3D sequence right at the end that matters at all. And don't go in expecting this to be any better than Yen's recent batch of movies, for this is just one more in a bad streak that we hope will be frozen forever in time.