THE STORM WARRIORS (Hong Kong, 2009)
Directed by: The Pang Brothers, Oxide and Danny
Starring: Ekin Cheng, Aaron Kwok, Simon Yam, Nicholas Tse

In 1998 the Hong Kong film business was in danger of disappearing completely, but out of nowhere came THE STORM RIDERS, a special effects extravaganza based on a popular comic book and directed by Andrew Lau (INFERNAL AFFAIRS). A massive hit across Asia, it single-handedly saved the Hong Kong film industry. Now, 12 years later, comes THE STORM WARRIORS, based on the same Ma Wing-shing comic and with some of the same cast, but otherwise a standalone flick that is the closest cinema has ever come to putting Chinese martial arts comic books, with all their surreal techniques and freaky superpowers, on the silver screen.

No one gets the pulp alchemy right the way the Pang Brothers do. They’re the masters of style over substance and STORM WARRIORS is style cranked up to the point where it becomes substance. This movie is a deliriously self-consuming artifact full of hair extensions, sword power, fire fists...visually it’s like the airbrushed panels on the side of a serial killer’s van, circa 1977. From the very first frame the choirs are wailing like a death metal concept album times infinity, and every shot is a blast-beat drum solo, every edit is a power chord  and when the characters fight it’s like two planets smashing into each another. Imagine World of Warcraft if it was a thrash metal song played entirely on the drums by an 11-year-old jacked up on Red Bull and you’ve got some idea of the delirious visual and narrative overload you’ll experience.

The flick kicks off in media res, which is a fancy way of saying it starts slam bang in the middle of a fight scene. Cloud (pop star gone supernova, Aaron Kwok) has been captured by Lord Godless (Simon Yam, playing an evil Japanese warlord) along with his master, Nameless (Kenny Ho, already looking like a manga character), one of the original comic’s most popular characters. Their armies are destroyed, their powers have been stripped and things look grim. Suddenly, Wind (pretty boy, Ekin Cheng) swoops to the rescue with a wall of flying swords and the good guys take to the hills. Nameless informs Cloud and Wind that they’re going to have to level up to defeat Lord Godless, and while he helps Cloud invent a new style of sword-fu, Wind is sent off to learn Evil Power from Lord Wicked.

Obsessed with the wielding of power, the visual display of power, the uses and abuses of power, this is a movie that is built expressly for teenaged boys and the girls who love to watch them strike a pose. The special effects are layered so heavily that the battles are transformed into dreamy, psychedelic abstractions, like the world's most butt-kicking Pink Floyd Laser Light Show, and even the actors are digitally enhanced as Evil Power turns Wind into a brooding goth dreamboat that not even Edward Cullen from TWILIGHT can rival. Swords are so powerful they cut the weather in half, ultimate weapons are made from the spinal cords of dead gods and everything ends on an appropriately rock operatic note of tragedy. What other summer blockbuster ends with the hero traumatized and wounded, raving "Why didn't you kill me?!?" A happy ending? Happy endings are for girls.