Review of True Legend (2010) by Wayne Henri S — 20 Apr 2016

Quite a wasted opportunity, all things considered, True Legend could've been the next GREAT, Chinese action film, but its jarring-as-hell, and awkward final act lets it down in such a big way, it can't come back from it.

The story is fairly typical of the warrior/soldier sub-genre; a former leader who tries to retire is called back into action due to an old foe and has to train to become stronger than he ever was before to defeat him.

This concept works (for the first two acts) largely due to the impressive and visceral fight choreography and the great, villainous portrayal by Andy On, whose character has sewn metallic plates into his body to be invulnerable to blades, making him a considerable opponent.

But it all goes terribly wrong after the conclusion to this revenge story ends at the 96 minute mark and you realize there's still another 40 minutes to go. The third act is so completely detached from what came before it, you'd swear they stitched the ending from a completely different film to this one and it shares MANY similarities to the ending of Ip Man 2.

There's also a bizarre and cheap-looking training section with shoddy CGI that belongs in a Playstation 1 game, but this can slightly be forgiven once we learn it was all in a character's mind.

When this film is firing on all cylinders, it is simply great, but that last 40 minutes torpedoes the good-will set-up and you finish the movie scratching your head instead of applauding.