Let's obtain correct down to it: "True Legend" should be a lot improved than it is.
A workable martial-arts crack with a couple of extraordinary set-piece free-for-all scenes, "True Legend" co-stars Michelle Yeoh ("Crouching Tiger," "Kung Fu Panda 2") and Gordon Liu ("Kill Bill"), real legends amid Asian movie fanatics. And the executive is Yuen Woo-ping, the free-for-all choreographer well known for his work in "The Matrix," "Kill Bill" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," drive-in theatre that crushed barriers by bringing Asian action-movie sensibilities in to mainstream American multiplexes. Even the late David Carradine, of the TV array "Kung Fu," creates a cameo.
But "True Legend," infrequently segmented in to two stories, won't be fasten the ranks of the other films. In the initial part, set in long-ago China, Vincent Zhao is Su, an honest soldier who leaves the army to open a martial-arts school. But his pacific life is uneasy by the lapse of Yuan (Andy On), his adopted hermit who's on fire with punish since Su's father murdered his.
This set-up leads to a of the movie's lofty highlights - a martial art throwdown inside a well. In the final segment of the film, Su has turn a failing in duty (don't ask), and has changed to city China, where he gets entangled in brawls staged by reprobate Westerners (Carradine). If the not long ago expelled "Ip Man 2" hadn't already covered this ground, "True Legend" might appear more inventive.
What "True Legend" proves is that even the many splendid action sequences remove their punch when mired in a book that frustratingly under-utilizes the likes of Yeoh and Liu. But that stage in the well is flattering cool.
TRUE LEGEND
3 stars (out of 5)
R (scenes of fighting hostility and heartless fighting); 115 min.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.
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