Ni Ni

(On TV, January 2020) I hadn’t seen a wuxia fantasy film in a while, and that probably explains why I enjoyed The Thousand Faces of Dunjia so much despite it being difficult to follow and overwhelmed by bad CGI rather than practical action. It certainly has good credentials from the get-go, what with writer-director Tsui Hark and director Yuen Woo-ping—and a potentially rich formula in hand in building a fantasy action film. If it works, it’s on energy and speed more than on wit and finesse: the story about an adventurer fighting magical monsters is simple enough to follow, but (maybe because of subtitles) the moment-to-moment continuity of the plot can be challenging at times. More troublesome are the film’s tonal issues oscillating between very serious fantasy drama and much goofier comedy gags. When it comes to the visual effects, it’s a bit of a mixed bag as well: while there’s something interesting in seeing opening credits and chapter titles integrated in the environment inhabited by the characters, most of the film’s CGI is bad to the point of looking like pre-visualization attempts rather than polished special effects. This being said, there is a lot of such CGI exuberance, and it does lend some energy to the result. The pacing of the film is uneven, but the wild imagination is there and so there’s something to see every five minutes, guaranteed. Plus, there’s Dongyu Zhou as Circle and Ni Ni as Dragonfly to keep things interesting. It’s regrettable that The Thousand Faces of Dunjia is not that good a martial arts film given the amount of CGI and monsters, but there are fights enough to fill the two hours of the movie. It may not be the best of that subgenre, but it’s entertaining enough to be satisfying.