Donnie Yen interrupts the chase, frees the dumbbells and makes off. This leaves 13th Young Master to face off with Blue Bird as she fights for her business. The fight goes on for a while before another guard, Red Vulture shows up, stops the fight and everyone goes their separate ways. This allows the story to start taking shape.
The item the thief stole is a stone tablet that is destined to find its way to the hands of the man foretold to become king. The empress is afraid of losing power so she sends Blue Bird on a mission to make sure the prophecy does not come to pass. Meanwhile, 13th Young Master is charged with finding a certain man for one of the empress' generals. Before long the two woman are teamed up as their missions eem to be heading the same path. They are also joined by a couple of young men, Charcoal Head (Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie Chan) and Blockhead (Wilson Chen).
They are faced with many obstacles on their journey, which revels itself to actually by a treasure where a mystical, Excalibur-like sword is said to exist. Once they find it, the new king will lead an uprising against the evil empress.
This movie helps prove that Hollywood has not quite cornered the market on shallow, action and effects driven summer blockbuster type moves. This is not a terribly deep film and seems only made to serve as a star vehicle for The Twins in Hong Kong, and a moderately entertaining diversion for the rest of the world.
Don't get me wrong, I did not hate the movie, it is actually rather fun, but only in a surface fashion. I cannot say I really cared about the story or the characters. I just enjoyed being swept along in its wake. It brings together action, comedy, adventure, and romance in one slick, brightly colored package.
The acting is not all that great, tending to being a little overdone and goofy. There are a couple of nice action sequences, particularly the opening fight between Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung, and the too-short fight between Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen. The story is a little silly and and the effects are often not of the highest caliber. Still, I found it hard not to enjoy it on a superficial manner.
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