Review: Warriors of the Nation

Release date: February 18, 2020 (Streaming); December 18, 2018 (China)
Running time: 95 minutes
Starring: Lubing Li, Miya Muqi, Kenya Sawada 

Warriors of the Nation takes place after the Sino-Japanese War, when the Japanese army attempts to kidnap the military minister Zhang Zhidong.  However, their attempts are thwarted by Wong Fei-Hung and his disciples.  There are also some other factions involved that are loosely explained, and a whole lot of fighting.  Overall, this is an action movie so the plot is secondary.  

Warriors of the Nation first and foremost is a Kung Fu movie, with decent fight sequences from some talented individuals.  However, the good fights are few and far between.  There are some very intense battles between main characters, but many of other fights are roughly choreographed, with characters visibly anticipating the fight moves or waiting for the next one to occur.  There was one fight where someone flinched well before the hit happened in a slow motion take, and many others where weapons were waiting to be blocked or strikes were held until the person was ready.  It was a shame because I was really hoping for a good action movie, but Warriors of the Nation only delivered occasionally. 

The story of the film is historically based, but it seems redone for the movie.  It is convoluted with many characters and overly dramatic dialogue, not an uncommon feature for martial arts films.  However, it makes the movie more of a film dramatization rather than a film accurately depicting a historical event.  For example, there is one scene where a person looks like she is wearing workout clothes rather than a traditional outfit.  And often there are characters and events thrown in for humorous effect.  I'm fine with this when it works, but the humor here was much more slapstick than I was hoping for.  And overall the movie seemed like it was filmed two decades ago.  The film had a quality to it that looked old school, and although there was not a lot of CG, the CG that was in the movie was pretty bad.  There was one scene that it depicted warships that honestly looked like a scene from a 90s videogame.  This film could have been an interesting historical film, but it appears to have been tinkered around too much for the big screen in the wrong places.

Warriors of the Nation has some good fight sequences, but the rest of the film feels like it is outdated, overly dramatized, and not humorous enough to keep your attention. 

Pass on it