GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Destroyer Wod I had this movie for a while in my "to watch list" , got it from a VIDEO STORE selling a while ago, i think 2 years... Yeah, been a long time. I finally decided to watch it today. I had saw a trailer back in the day and tough it looked cool, thus why i purchased it.So let me start this review positively. The CGI is actually pretty good. I mean it does look like a video game in some point but in a way that the movie is constant and you never have this impression that it is out of place. Obviously if you enjoy the style or not, this is your own point of view, but i personally did enjoy it and i am not a fan of wired fu to say the least.That being said, sadly the movie fail on almost every other aspect for me. Sure the music was alright but all the rest, characters, story, all movie long i was wondering what was going on. The movie start very abrupt and show us our main heroes all chain and ready to be executed. But by some mean they manage to escape, think there stronger than the bad guy, but get there a** kicked. So they then need to find a way to get stronger in order to defeat the bad guy. That part is easy to understand but all the rest surrounding this is really hard to understand. I get that this is based on a comic book, and no i never read it, and i never saw the first movie either. Actually you can blame me on jumping on the sequel and then complaining about the story or you can blame the North American distributor for naming the movie The Storm Warriors instead of The Storm Riders 2. Yeah i figured out i was watching a sequel later when i checked IMDb. So yeah i did had a hard time connecting to those characters and the lore of the movie, and especially that whole plot point which end up being a major one about a stupid dragon spine that for some reason is super important for china to stand together. Spoiler ... the bone actually get split in half and never is mentioned again... wow, what an important plot point.I really had a hard time figuring who is who, maybe learning more about the lore would had help me, again if i knew before watching the movie, but so much character are there and you don't know too much about them. For example that Lord Wicked guy, he is supposed to be the strongest of them all, yet he cut his arms because he was evil? That plot point almost made no sense what so ever. And "Nameless" which is supposed to be such a legend, it seem the movie kinda tell us midway that he was poisoned and for that he does not have all his strength so thats why he can't defeat the bad guy. I just feel there is just too much characters with little development to really care about them. In a magic word like this, you want to know who is who and why he is so...As for the fights... well beside the special effects which i said where pretty good, there is not much fight choreography for the martial arts aficionado, a little here and there but its almost purely a special effect CGI fest. Honestly this movie somewhat remind me of Dragon Tiger Gate done wrong. That movie had a similar premise as young pupils training to beat an almost unbeatable enemy in a martial art set up that also involved super powers. The difference tough was you cared for the characters, the special powers added to the movie but there is still plenty of great martial arts. Obviously Donnie Yen... hard to wrong. But anyway that movie was much more entertaining than that Storm Warriors movie.This is the kind of movie i feel i will forget in T-minus 1 hour... yup already forgot.

williamcauble I expected an epic tale of some kungfu heroes versus the tyrannical Japanese Imperial conquerors, in the modus of "Ip Man" but what I got was a CGI nightmare. Seriously I watched for 27 minutes just hoping that the special effects would stop long enough for some real kungfu fighting. It was so disappointing. Even the special effects were so wild and out of it. The director tried to piece together CGI with pseudo-anime style scenes, stitched together with a real boring plot line. I do not dislike CGI; don't get me wrong. I liked Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon although the bamboo forest flight scenes were a little corny, LOVE Kung Fu Hustle, with the guys who shoot darts off of their Chinese zithers and the lady with her Dyna-yell, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera; but this movie is a STINKER.

John I waited years for this sequel and I finally got it and I am so disappointed. It was basically 300: the martial arts movie. It was so loaded with cgi from backgrounds to character animations. it had a weak story that wasn't endearing like the first, and it was missing the action of the first movie as well as some of the more interesting 'powers'.the original had the feel of a video game come to life and done very well. This one was like the goth version. it was dark, disjointed and didn't flow the way it should have.what can I say? the reviewers before me pretty much nailed it and I hate to repeat. So there it is. the third movie is coming, I hope it is better than this one!

dont_b_so_BBC Green-screened movies and manga/ anime (graphic-novel/ cartoon) adaptations are a dime a dozen these days-- so what makes "Storm Warriors" (based on a Hong Kong "wuxia" comic series) any different? Well, unlike Hollywood movie adaptations which tend to tone/ dumb things down for wider/ mainstream appeal, or Japan movie adaptations which try to stuff all the original story/ characters in, Hong Kong movie adaptations are generally about entertaining their fan-base-- even at the risk of becoming self-referential/ indulgent "B"-movies.And the "magic-(kung)fu" style/ stance aptly known as "Mastery of Ten Thousand Swords" shows up right at the beginning, as if Hong Kong/Chinese cinema is staking its claim as the rightful home of "magic-(kung)fu" movies. Jedi Knights can only ape, but never muster up, THIS much style.That's right, "Storm Warriors" is an unabashed attempt at THE "magic-(kung)fu" comic-book movie-- complete with comically symbolic names and philosophical kungfu-babble, as well as the requisite series of achingly slow 2-minute "power-ups/ stand-offs" followed by dizzyingly fast 2-second "fights/ contacts", etc.. By starting right at the END of the story, "Storm Warriors" shrewdly (shamelessly?) avoids any semblance of story-telling or scale... in favor of merely showcasing the "end-game" battles that are being fought-- with NO explanations for the uninitiated.And unlike its prequel "Storm Riders", which tried semi-successfully to make a "realistic/ conventional" movie based on an earlier story-arc in the same Hong Kong comic series, this movie simply aims to realize the experience of reading/ re-imagining its "wuxia" battles-- with frequent "fades-to-black", extreme close-ups and closely-edited montages... and once I realized/ accepted I was watching a manga/ comic-in-motion, I actually had fun "interpreting/ analyzing" each "panel".In other words, just go and do your own research if you didn't "get it"... and if you didn't have fun watching it, you're obviously not its target audience-- "wuxia" fans waiting to see the next stage in the cinematic realization of "magic-(kung)fu" battles (the opening "Mastery of Ten Thousand Swords" is now CANON in "wuxia"-fantasy cinema). Never mind if you missed (like I did) the "magic-(kung)fu" movie craze started by the "Buddha Palm" in the 1960s (filmed in black-and-white) or the "Warriors of Zu Mountain" in the 1980s (filmed with wire-fu)-- thanks to the advances in green-screen and CGI technology, "Storm Warriors" is able to show you some of the wild "magic-(kung)fu" battles envisioned by generations of "wuxia"novelists/artists with all their crazy chi/energy.Of course, you can fault the directors/ writers for the lack of story/ character development-- or just blame it on comic fans who already know the story/ characters (the comic series ended ages ago), as well as "wuxia" genre fans who will able to figure it out (most of it "wuxia" clichés), or even the investors who wouldn't put up the money for a 9-hour trilogy upfront.... But you can certainly see where most of the money went-- though I wished more of it was spent fleshing out the first half of the movie, instead of endlessly "leveling-up" in the second (where budget limitations really show).Personally, I admire the producers'/ directors' guts (foolhardiness?) in splurging on the EFFECTS and scrimping on the script (instead of the other way round like most films with a tight budget). Eg. The lighting/ texture of CGI-background/effects matches with the live-action actors so well/ evenly that it usually does NOT distract/ detract from the movie (always the highest compliment for CGI); and the choice/ ability to light/ color the film with "natural/ ambient" light is a welcomed sight for sore eyes strained by heavily color-corrected sci-fi/ fantasy movies (hiding their CGI in "soft sepia", "cool blue", etc.)-- so "Storm Warriors" aimed rather low, and mostly hit its mark.In short, this movie is nothing if not "pulp/cult", and a "guilty pleasure" at that too-- the story/ characters may not resonate, but the visuals can certainly be relished... depending on how you liked them. For me, there were at least 2 things (no, not the two male leads) that they got right: "Mastery of Ten Thousand Swords" at the very beginning, and "Capricious Dance of the Demons" at the very end-- but there was really a lot of "filler" to get through...