THE KILLER METEORS (FENG YU SHUANG LIU XING) A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2000
Those accustomed to Jackie Chan in his early Hong Kong films are probably aware that the popular actor had to follow the same path as most of other major stars. He had to work his way up to the leading roles by playing second fiddles or characters that could be hardly associated with his current screen charisma. One of such interesting cases is THE KILLER METEORS, 1976 kung fu film directed by Lo Wei.
The hero of this film is My Way (played by Jimmy Wang Wu), martial arts expert equipped with secret and deadly weapon called "killer meteors". His reputation is such that any other martial arts expert or heavy in the neighbourhood has to pay him annual tribute just to stay alive. My Way's deadly reputation is matched only by those of "Immortal" Wa Wu Bin (played by Jackie Chan), another "Killer Meteor" who seeks his help. When two "Killer Meteors" meet, Wa Wu Bin is just a shadow of his former self, being poisoned by his treacherous wife, Madam Tempest, who gives him antidote in order to keep him alive. My Way is asked to steal the well- guarded antidote and he accepts, entering the deadly web of intrigue, treachery and shifting loyalties.
Fight scenes in THE KILLER METEORS are shorter and less spectacular than in an average kung fu film. But this is probably a good thing, since longer scenes would stand in the way of the plot, which is incredibly complex for a simple genre movie. There are numerous characters with hidden personal agendas and even more twists, enough to fill entire season of soap opera series, but screenwriter Ku Lung somehow manages to squeeze all that into feature film format. The resulting confusion should be attributed to poor dubbing and bad editing. Lo Wei's direction is hardly stellar, and some special effects are truly laughable. On the other hand, they give THE KILLER METEORS certain trash quality, together with some unintentionally funny lines spoken by characters. This film is still very entertaining, but probably less to those who take kung fu films more seriously. For those without prejudice, it could provide a good guilty pleasure.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
Review written on January 13th 2000
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax Fido: 2:381/100 E-mail: dragan.antulov@st.tel.hr E-mail: drax@purger.com E-mail: dragan.antulov@altbbs.fido.hr
Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://film.purger.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews