So, this movie has a lot of major assumptions to swallow. The most difficult of which is probably Keanu Reeves being an evil martial arts badass that makes people fight to the death for the entertainment of his patrons. And that he lives in an evil Batcave.
Yeah.
No one in this movie seems to believe tai chi is capable of being awesome. Even in a martial arts tournament. I can only assume that none of these characters has ever watched an actual kung fu movie. Tai chi masters are always the biggest badasses to ever badass in those things.
Other than that, it’s a very standard boy learns tai chi, boy doesn’t listen to his master, boy betrays his master and then learns the awesome tai chi technique where you punch someone with your chi and make them vomit blood and thus suddenly knows the True Meaning Of Tai Chi. Only this involved Keanu Reeves looking like he wanted to rob a bank.
I thought the tai chi looked pretty awesome. Mike didn’t complain, though Mike is currently also very sick so he might not have had the strength. There was a sort of meaningless subplot where the police tried to hunt down the underground fighting ring, and it was all really a framework upon which to hang fight after fight.
The fights were… all right. Not bad. Not really good enough to distract me too long from tumblr. But it was nice to see a movie where tai chi was the focus and you could actually see it in action beyond moving very, very slowly. I don’t know if it was $8 worth of nice from On Demand, though.