Grief can be a killer if it consumes you. Early in this latest Marvel film a character is told to move on from a loved one's death and a response tells us that moving on from a huge loss is a Western concept. People die in their thousands in comic book films but this one reminds you that just one death can cause all the pain in the world. For the big bad of Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings it's the power that fuels him and it's what gives us what may be the strongest Marvel bad guy yet. Move over Thanos, Wenwu is in town and one of the coolest actors on Earth is playing the part.
Shaun (Simu Liu, a very likable hero) isn't living his best life. He's a parking valet in San Francisico with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) and he's capable of so much more. As a teen he ran away from his father Wenwu (the mighty Tony Leung Chiu-wai), one of the world's biggest crime lords for over a millenium (yes that's 1000 years) using the power of his ten mystical rings that have turned him into an invincible lord of destruction. Shaun, then called Shang-Chi, trained under him to become a great fighter but skipped town when he realised the life of crime wasn't for him. Now after 10 years his father has found him and his Macau based sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) and wants to use them to enter a mystical realm in the hope of righting a tragedy from their shared past.
For a film consumed in grief and loss Shang-Chi is surprisingly entertaining. Like Black Panther and Captain Marvel it gets to do it's own thing away from the MCU (aside from a cameo or two) and the results are very pleasing. That beautiful early fight scene between Wenwu and a warrior woman called Jiang Li (Fala Chen) is a genuine highlight of the entire Marvel franchise and will bring you back twenty years to a time when Asian action/arthouse cinema like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and The House of Flying Daggers were all the rage. It's a gorgeously drawn and choreographed moment, so much so that not even CGI augmentation can't take away from it. Director Destin Daniel Cretton's skill with fight scenes continues into the grittier, more bruising encounters too with a crunching bus scrap and a scaffold fight between Shang-Chi and Wenwu's henchman Death Dealer being the standouts. Fans of Asian action will recognise all manner of influences here, with fight co-ordinator Andy Cheng drawing on early Jackie Chan slapstick all the way to Donnie Yen's more refined and technical action. A Kung Fu Hustle poster on Shang-Chi's wall nods towards what you can expect too and speaking of that keep an eye out for Yuen Wah in a small role as well, a famous face in Asian cinema for almost 5 decades now, a man who's been decimated by Jackie, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and brilliantly in his film debut by Bruce Lee. Nods like this will always make the movie nerds in the audience smile.
Plenty of humour will keep everyone else smiling too. Most of it courtesy of Awkwafina playing Katy, the civilian dragged into the whole mess. She's a joy, and her platonic chemistry with her best friend Shang-Chi delivers some wicked laughs. But the film's biggest giggle comes courtesy of a face from an earlier MCU film, a scouse accent, some wild hair and the world's oddest looking pet. This review won't spoil who it is but it's a crowdpleaser. And speaking of crowdpleasers the film's strongest performance comes from Tony Leung Chiu-wai, that Hong Kong acting legend who's barely aged a day since John Woo's Bullet In The Head introduced him to Western audiences 29 years ago. Always effortlessly cool onscreen, here he creates a bad guy with a real grievance, one most people can recognise but he actually has the power to do something about it. His plan is a selfish one that will rip apart what's left of his family and it gives the film a real personal edge. But it also leads to the inevitable BIG CGI CLIMAX ™.
When you watch a Marvel film it's always at the back of your mind that it's coming. That moment when special effects overwhelm everything else and it's at the 100 minute mark when it really kicks off. The setting this time isn't a crumbling city or a disintegrating bad guy lair in the sky but a small lakeside village. Within minutes the screen is covered with zappy beams and all manner of winged nastiness but at least this time it's visually interesting, set during the day which is always a plus and liberally laced with famous symbols of Chinese mythology. It's certainly not a film that can be accused of forgetting it's roots.
As an introduction to the latest members of the Marvel family Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings is a real success. It's lovely to be excited about Superhero movies again after the bland overkill of the last few years.
In cinemas now everywhere.
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