Takeshi Kaneshiro Stars in Wuxia (武俠) the Movie

Takeshi Kaneshiro returns to the big screen in 2011 with his follow-up project to the epic and box-office breaking mega-movie Red Cliff. He teams up for his third go around with famed directed Peter Chan (who also directed Takeshi in Perhaps Love and The Warlords) for the upcoming Wuxia, co-starring Donnie Yen, Tang Wei, and lured-out-of-retirement famed actor Wang Yu.

First off, calling a wuxia movie Wuxia is like making a sci-fi movie and calling it Sci-Fi. Creativity was clearly nowhere in sight the day of naming. I’m wondering if there is a mini-resurgence in wuxia movies in the last two years, which have brought us Thirteen Blades, Reign of Assassins, and the upcoming Wuxia and Dragon Inn Flying Armour.

Wuxia wrapped principal production yesterday, and the first stills from the movie were released, showing the three leads in a moody and evocative profile. Donnie Yen plays a hidden wuxia-master, who has adopted a new identity and lives in a remote village with his wife, Tang Wei, and their two sons. Takeshi is a detective obsessed with wuxia-skills, and is investigating a series of gruesome and unexplained murders.

His investigation leads him to the village and to Donnie, and results in Donnie coming out of hiding and forced to fight an evil wuxia master played by Wang Yu. I had first heard about Wuxia earlier this year when rumors swirled that it would be filmed in 3D. It’s not, that honor will go to Tsui Harks’ Dragon Inn Flying Armour, which I wrote about earlier and is currently in principal production phase. I hope Wuxia is good, because the last few movies from either Takeshi or Donnie have disappointed me. On an unrelated note, it’s really really nice to see Tang Wei working again on domestic Chinese movies.


Comments

Takeshi Kaneshiro Stars in Wuxia (武俠) the Movie — 4 Comments

  1. My Former Future Husband! Awesome! I was beginning to think he had retired or something. And another movie with Peter Chan, too. Puts me in the mood to watch Perhaps Love for the millionth time.

    But, yeah, WTH is up with that lame title?

  2. oh, I’m looking out for this one as well! At least the ppl involved in this production realized how the PoS money making extravaganza is soiling the genre and it’s putting up a fight to reinvent. 🙂 I do like Peter Chan, he’s ambitious and smart in calculating a balance of commercial and critical success time after time. Though I’m not floored by his bigger budget fares ( my fav will always be TianMiMi), I’m entertained, it’s well made, cant really be too greedy.

    I think Peter Chan deliberately picks this mundane a name as a very ambitious move/gimmick. He sets out to ‘demystify’ wuxia by bringing in science…..to explain wuxia itself. (ahhhhh we get a wuxia hero + spec’d science nerd/detective galileo Takeshi in one movie!) If I suffered thro RC I can watch Takeshi in anything even though he may never be an amazing actor (who cares? I don’t). Hpwever, I’m watching this more for my Tang Wei dose, being a mega TangWei fangirl. And Wang Yu the quintessential wuxia hero of yesteryears playing the baddie, that took me by surprise! Wow! Donnie Yen is meh, he’s the token action figure…*yawn*!

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