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Geochilmaru is one of the top writers of a martial arts website ... but
at the same time, he's also a total mystery and everybody thinks he's the
greatest martial arts master alive.One day, he invites 8 members of the
website - seven men and a woman, all presumably also great martial artists
- to the country to face him ... but before they can face him, theya have
to fight it out among themselves as to who earns the honour of challenging
Geochilmaru.
During the fight - that also attracts the attention of the local
(inefficient) policeman and a delivery girl - the characters of the 8
fighters do become painfully apparent: there is (among others) the
cheater, the violent streetfighter, the tender giant, the cold and
calculating fighting machine, the dragon lady and of course the pure
martial artist. As could have been expected, the final fight is between
the pure martial artist and the streetfighter - who serves as a
sort-of-villain here -, with the pure martial artist ultimately winning.
However, Geochilmaru does ultimately not show up, still, our
wise martial aritst takes that home as a lesson nevertheless ...
First of all, the action in this film is very often nothing short of
great. And the introduction to the different philosophies of the very
different styles of martial arts is at least interesting. That said, the
film does not work equally well on other accounts: The attempt to update
mainstays of period martial arts pictures to the 21st century using that
century's all powerful wand, the internet, is a bit pathetic and fails to
convince. Plus most of the characters are in fact little more than
2-dimensional cut-outs one has seen in oh so many films before. And some
of the narrative threads - like the one about the delivery girl and the
police man - si9mply lead to nowhere.
That said, the movie still isn't bad, but it isn't too good either,
it's just ... interesting.
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