Review of Reign of Assassins (2010) by Budomate A — 13 Dec 2010

The film was mainly directed by Su Chao-Pin, but the John Woo link gives the film an extra boost of action credibility, especially after his recent success with Red Cliff.

I spent two hours with expectation to be impressed of such a good unite of filmmaking related persons like John Woo and Michelle Yeoh, but Reign of Assassins is just another romantic action-packed entertainment and too far away from the best Chinese wuxia martial arts movie "Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon".

Drizzle is a ruthless assassin, a top member of the Dark Stone Assassins squad famed for her lethal "water-shedding" sword technique, who is trained to kill whoever gets in her way. She falls in love with a monk who reciprocates her feelings and allows himself to be killed during a battle. Losing someone whom she loves, convinces Drizzle to leave her old life behind and got a new face and identity. Everything seems to be smooth sailing at first, she married a humble messenger and used to live happiness 6 months. But The Black Stone (a team of deadly assassins) detect her due to her martial arts style while she protected her husband.

If not John Woo's and Michelle Yeoh's credits we probably missed it like a lot of other wuxia films which pushed to Chinese market every year. Michelle remains a wonderfully charismatic talent, she is wonderful in the impressively staged action scenes and has a unique stillness and elegance that makes her extremely watchable... more budomate dot com.