I’m generally not a fan of films that are excessively violent just for the sake of being violent. It’s not that I don’t have a strong stomach for it. It just smacks of low-brow filmmaking to me – trying to hide a lack of script or acting behind a barrage of crimson fountains and severed appendages. It’s why I tend to steer away from all the Asian “gore” films.
But for Chow Yun Fat’s Let The Bullets Fly, I may just make an exception.
Set in China during the warring 1920s, notorious bandit chief Zhang descends upon a remote provincial town posing as its new mayor, an identity that he had hijacked from Old Tang, himself a small-time imposter. Hell-bent on making a fast buck, Zhang soon meets his match in the tyrannical local gentry Huang as a deadly battle of wit and brutality ensues
To be honest, I watched that trailer (courtesy of AICN) before reading the synopsis, so I had no idea about what the hell was actually going on, but I did know that it involved Chow Yun Fat being a badass with pistols, which is pretty much all you need to tell me to get my butt in a cinema seat.
The film is set for limited release in USA on 2 March 2012, which means that chances of it our local cinemas acquiring it, is very slim to none. But I’m pretty sure that you will be able to pick it up on Blu Ray/DVD later in the year.
Last Updated: February 7, 2012
James Francis
March 7, 2012 at 15:05
The plot is actually very confusing and much of the comedy falls flat if you aren’t Chinese. Good action scenes, but it came nowhere close to The Good, The Bad & The Weird or Versus.