[.ca] Saviour of the Soul

highly entertaining:
Saviour of the Soul is a brilliant high camp Hong Kong extravaganza featuring everything that the true fan loves about Hong Kong films. The plot revolves around Ching (Andy Lau) and Kwan (Anita Mui), who are 'city soldiers' along with Chuen. Silver Fox (Aaron Kwok) comes to kill Kwan to get revenge on her for foiling the plans of Silver Fox's master. In the process, he kills Chuen. Kwan, who loves Ching, decides that the best way to protect him is to drive him away. This leaves Ching with Chuen's 15 year old sister (who develops a crush on him) while he searches for Kwan, whom he loves. Anita Mui also plays her own a twin sister, a strange woman with a weird voice (which I think might have been dubbed in by someone else). Carina Lau plays Madam Pet (yes, that's what the subtitles said), whom Ching spurns. That is the soap opera plot of Saviour of the Soul in a nutshell. It is apparently based on the manga City Hunter, which has also inspired a Jackie Chan film. There is a lot of backstory which seems to be assumed in this film. First of all, what are city soldiers?! The setting of the film appears to be a sort of combination of Hong Kong and Gotham City and wherever Dick Tracy lives, with fabulously designed, gorgeously colored sets. The look of this film is superb, and reason enough to see it. This film has pretty much everything in it. Romance, drama, great flying fu style action scenes, blood spurts, some goofy special effects, and pretty much everything else you can imagine except a backstory (you can't have anything). Andy Lau is in fine form, bouncing from comedy to heroism without missing a beat. Carina Lau does a decent impression of Brigitte Lin's icy stare of death, though no one does it quite like Brigitte. Anita Mui does double duty as the romantic butt-kicking lead, Kwan, and her weird sister, who has a number of comic moments with Andy Lau. The young girl (Gloria Yip?) has the most boring role as about half the scenes with her in it seem to involve her crying for one reason or another. If you enjoy frenetic Hong Kong action-comedy-dramas (and if you don't why do you watch Hong Kong films anyway?) then see Saviour of the Soul. - G

Sets a screen on fire:
Heavenly King Andy Lau gives a rather corny performance in "Saviour of the Soul", and yet this movie still manages to be striking. An excessively melodramatic romance that proves a typical theme - the one that says, "Love never dies." Another Heavenly King on the screen, Aaron Kwok, is reason enough to buy this film. Aaron plays the "bad guy" - the only "bad" role he has taken in his acting career - and he brings creativity and stirs emotion of the audience through his performance. Why is the word "bad" in quotes? Simply because the film's perspective favors the character of Andy Lau, however if put in Aaron's shoes, he did what he had to do. This film grips you in the beginning, may get you tear-eyed in the middle, and by the time it's over, you'll be impressed. Even through Andy Lau's solo kung-fu performanes, this movie is not in the kung-fu genre. However, fight scenes were absolutely shocking and extremely original with nice camera angles, sound effects, costumes, and kicks from Aaron Kwok and Andy Lau. Fight scenes could have pleased an audience more by being longer and in more occurence, but like I said, "Savior of the Soul" is not a kung-fu movie. Andy Lau and Aaron Kwok (top performers in Hong Kong) work together again to fill the screen with swords, kicks, romance, tears, and more. Get this film. You won't regret it. - Priscilla

Pathetically stupid and disappointing:
This sequel of "Saviour of the Soul" will put you to sleep within the first twenty minutes - unless you're a major Andy Lau fan. This movie succeeded in being corny, stupid, and uneventful in every way. The actors failed, using the worst acting I've ever seen, and the dialogue makes the movie even worse because it attempts at being funny. (It fails.) The plot is completely unrelated to the the first "Saviour of the Soul" (which is much better). While the first movie concentrates on the romance of Andy Lau and his "lover", "Saviour of the Soul 2" completely shuns the female character. She's not even in it. Doesn't make sense, does it? Bad editing. Bad sound. Bad fighting. Bad dialogue. Bad acting. Bad cinematography. Bad sets. This film asked to be bombed. - Priscilla

Legend of Blown up Master...:
If you want to make a movie about a sword-wielding super ninja avenging his master you probably don't want to start the movie by having the aforementioned sword-wielding super ninja rescue his master and then blow him up. Nonetheless this is the road that Saviour of the Soul chooses to take and it is pretty succesful. The movie is just plain fun and extreme. It does just about everything there is in the filmmaker's handbook to get the audience to laugh, cry, and cheer. I really don't get the plot...that's where the holes are, but if you ignore plot entirely and follow the story without questioning any of the massive gaps in its logic, then you will enjoy this flick. Great art direction, sweet Hong Kong style fight scenes and a quality Superman take-off definetly make this dvd worth buying. Oh yeah, it also has Cantopop...nothing but Cantopop for a soundtrack...oh boy.

Colorful Waste of Celluloid:
One thing "Saviour of the Soul" proves is that you don't need Tim Burton or Joel Schumacker and a million to make a bad comic-book movie. All the things that made a film like "Heroic Trio" such an unexpected joy are missing here. Where "Heroic Trio" had light tone, that didn't take itself too seriously, "Saviour of the Soul" alternates between sorrow and stoogery. There is no coherent story nor reason to care about the characters and no amount of style and can save it. If we care about Anita Mui's character, it's only because we like Anita Mui the actress. The love story is laughable; there's no reason to believe the characters should be lovers. Andy Lau's character is just a sullen jerk, with good martial arts skills. Each of the stars have made better films. The fightings okay, but we've seen it all before. The special effects are generally cheesy. And don't get me started on Madam Pet, a ripoff of Brigitte Lin's character in "Zu, Warriors of the Magic Mountain." Life is short, spend it with better movies.