The Legend of Zu (a J!-ENT DVD Review)

April 22, 2004 by Dennis Amith 

A film that had tremendous potential but becomes of a special effects-laden film without any deep overtones.

THE LEGEND OF ZU (2001)
CAST: Ekin Cheng, Louis Koo, Sammo Hung, Zhang Zi Yi, Cecilia Cheung and Wu Jing.
DIRECTED BY: Tsui Hark
PRODUCED BY: Tsui Hark
DURATION: 100 minutes
Note:  Viewed China Star DVD version with removable English subtitles.

Movie Synopsis:

Legend of Zu stars Zhang Ziyi of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, as well as martial arts star Sammo Hung. In this latest high-flying and far-leaping adventure from Hong Kong, Zhang plays a young woman who does battle with an evil strongman in the ancient mythological province of Zu. Zhang’s warrior princess is joined by Ekin Cheng, Cecilia Cheung and Wu Jing.

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DVD EXTRAS:

- DTS track, Making of Featurette (with English subtitles), trailer, movie trailers for “Love on a Diet” and more.

KNOWN DVD SECRET(S): None that I know of

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DVD REVIEW:

Back in the early 80′s, Tsui Hark directed a movie titled “Zu Warriors from Magic Mountain”. A movie that is highly regarded as the movie that pioneered many fantasy movies that followed like “Bride with White Hair”, “Heroic Trio”, etc. In fact, “Zu Warriors from Magic Mountain” is like what “Star Wars” is to the United States.

In 2001, Tsui Hark is back with “The Legend of Zu” featuring a similar storyline but yet very different. The story features Ekin Cheng as Xuan. A powerful swordsman whose tribe was wiped out by the evil entity known as Insomnia. Together with his friend Red (Koo) which is similar to X-Men’s Archaengel with the protective metallic, blade-like wings try to team up with Omei’s grandmaster (Sammo Hung plays the same character like he did in the original movie) and the Omei clan featuring it’s protectors Enigma (Cecilia Cheung) who is like a reincarnation of Xuan’s love who died 200 years ago and as you can tell it’s getting confusing the more I try to explain it.

I guess you can liken this movie to a videogame RPG like “Final Fantasy” because in fact, this beautiful, abundance of special effects movie is like a live RPG with many characters and plenty of cool fighting moves.

Like the first movie, many people will get confused with the storyline because it goes into some mythological type overtones. Where many people loved, the first movie…I couldn’t get into it. Where many people compared this to the first and didn’t like it, I enjoyed it.

This is a film that I’m sure cost a lot of money. It appears that nearly the whole landscape was computer generated and it looks very Final Fantasy-ish.

As for the DVD, it looks great and it sounds great thanks to the DTS soundtrack. The video quality is great but noticed some artifacting in the dark areas.

If there is one major problem with this DVD is that in some areas there are no subtitles. This was the first time I experienced a DVD which featured subtitles missing in certain dialogue scenes. Although not a long time (maybe less than a minute) but I was surprised to see this problem.

The special features feature a making-of, cast info, trailers, etc.

“The Legend of Zu” is not for everyone. I really think this will appeal to the videogame crowd to the awesome special effects, RPG like overtone and the awesome fight scenes. But for those wanting to see a straightforward movie, this might not be for you.

THE MOVIE: B+
THE DVD EXTRAS: B-
THE DVD OVERALL: B