Fridae

Scratch the surface of the Chinese film industry these days and you will find period epics. Scratch beneath the surface of a Chinese period epic and you will find a war film. Now, there are good war stories (The Warlords) and there are spectacles on a scale that will shock and awe (Red Cliff).

Then there is Legendary Amazons, which seems inspired by Hollywood’s recent success with dazzling CGI and frenetic editing in their recent sword-and-sandal epics by former music video directors. What makes Legendary Amazons so special is how lofty its ambitions are and how incompetent the entire film is executed – to the point of unintentional comedy that will bring down the house.

Based on the semi-historical, mostly embellished folktales of the Yang family of generals and soldiers, Legendary Amazons covers its most famous tale where following the demise of all its male members save an 18-year-old kid, the women of the house hold fort and repel a barbarian invasion.

We can't take this film seriously because director Frankie Chan doesn't take its story seriously either. There are four generations of the Yang household portrayed in the film (whose original 70s Shaw version was called The 14 Amazons!). Yet aside from the 18-year-old male protagonist and his fearsome great-grandmother, his monstrous regiment of aunts and grand-aunts all look not a day above 30, and all too interchangeable with each other. Why care about the characters if they don’t look anything like who they're supposed to be?

As it turns out, the ridiculous casting does indicate a lack of respect for the story as well. There's plenty of drama and high tension but that is foiled and turned into comedy because of the haphazard storytelling, the perfunctory performances (all the female actors have the same incredulous look of shock and surprise in the film), and worse yet, the copious yet ineffective CGI in this film that looks so fake and cartoonish, you have to laugh.

As a film adaptation of a story from a grand opera tradition, Legendary Amazons will be remembered as the one where an 18-year-old boy gets called up for military service and drags his mum, aunts, grandmother, grand-aunts, great-grandmother, and a gaggle of maids to war, while getting lost and ambushed all the time presumably because of the infamous 'feminine' lack of direction. It might actually be so bad that it's good.