Buddha Palm Technique (2020)
The way of martial arts
Time to get handsy. Yeah, it’s a crap pun, but whatever they all can’t be bangers. So, this one I saw the cover art for over on amazon and went “that could be cool” - expecting it to be a animated movie. Well, turns out it was not an animated movie, but it is still a wire-fu flick so I got part of it right right? Bring out your subtitles, tonight we check out (as titled on Amazon anyways) Buddha Palm.
Sometimes figuring out the actual title of a movie when it’s from overseas can be an adventure of it’s own. The IMDB entry adds “Technique” to the end of it, and I don’t know where the fault lies because quite honestly, I can’t read or speak Chinese. Hasn’t stopped me before though - and this one here is a pretty easy to follow plot for the most part. At it’s core, we have a brother doing whatever he can to save his sick sister from dying, and after one of those things is signing up for human experimentation he finds himself with some pretty remarkable kung fu powers. He’s then on a bunch of side quests using them to get the necessary medical mcguffins to cure his sister. In the background lurks a more sinister and shadowy plot with a man and an evil mask and the “good guys” of martial arts that try to take him down. I don’t think that plot is any harder to follow, but admittedly the translation job gets far more in the way with that then it does with the main characters plot.
The characters are pretty straight forward. The good guy is a good guy. The bad guy, despite having a mask literally called the “Evil Mask” the entire time really doesn’t do a whole ton evil on screen. Yes, it’s mentioned he’s be stealing people energies or whatnot to keep himself alive longer, but there are only a few moments that really set him us as an evil person instead of just one of those power-hungry types. I don’t feel like it’s necessarily a movie with a massive amount of character building - most the screen time is spent on our main character, and although we get a lot of information about him as a result, it doesn’t really feel like he’s changed as much as we’ve just learned more about him. The “targets” for the martial arts missions are mixed - some are pretty vile, some are really in that grey inbetween where you aren’t entirely sure if they deserve what they are getting - but part of that is layered into martial arts and honor, while some of it is just a crazy dude that’s drugging people and acting real sleazy.
The actors themselves I think do a decent job. It’s not the best I’ve seen, but it’s not the worst either. A good chunk of it may have been lost in translation - and we’ll come back to that - but people are acting like you would expect given the characters. Our main shows a decent amount of worry, anger, and cracks a few smiles. Nothing here is going to bring you to your knees sobbing or whatever, but it’s enough that you can stay in the movie and enjoy it without being pulled out and laughing at how bad it is like you’d get in a bunch of Asylum stuff. Everyone seems to handle their motions pretty well, so it does a good job of not making it seem like they took some clumsy non-martial artist like me and slapped them into some Donnie Yen style role.
That said, the action scenes in this aren’t exactly the smoothest things to watch. It’s a lot of flash, and at timesit can get a bit cutty. It’s cool to watch, for sure, with plenty of wire work and mind-boggling flips and the likes, backed up by the effects department for extra oomph - but sometimes we’ll throw a random directional reversal in there and it might get you a little spatially jarred for a second. Although they are pretty cool, it also doesn’t feel quite as much fulfilling as you would get from a classic period kung fu flick for example. I think part of that comes to the Dragon Ball style special attacks going on with the whole titular Buddha Palm getting thrown around. In turn, each fight starts feeling perhaps a bit unique, and then mostly ending with the same result. Don’t let me make it sound like it’s all too bad or anything though, I still had fun with the fight scenes and some of them have wonderful highlight moments, like the opening fight and somebody getting wrecked with a car fender.
Which helps me segue smoothly into special effects. Now, costumes in here are wonderful - I love the mix of modern and classic, and at times it’s one of those Neo-Tokyo style feelings where things feel a bit bathed in neon and yet you are staring at a classic ninja running down the streets. That’s totally my jam, because as immersive as a normal everyday outfit can get, there’s something about period dress from a lot of movies that bring up a level of fanciness - and then you tack on things like evil masks to make it bleed a little fantasy and it just makes it feel like that much more of an adventure. Settings are pretty varied in a similar fashion, and I’m still here for it. The effects work, however, doesn’t quite fare as well as the costumes and sets however. There’s some moments that are honestly not great - like not as bad as the guy falling off a roof and becoming a noticeably not real clay figure kind of bad, but totally a bunch of “well that’s not real” CG aids and a helping of “oof, that’s pretty jank right there.” It didn’t ruin the movie for me - I do have a pretty high tolerance for stuff like that - but it crops up a bunch so it’s something to bear in mind. There are a few good effects as well - the title move whose effect made me think the entire movie was going to be a CG animated flick, for example, looks great every time it comes up.
Audio is balanced well, but I don’t understand the language so I really can’t attest to the intensity or authenticity of how convincing line deliveries are. It seems fine for the most part though. Music is there, but largely hides away as soon as it’s gone like a typical movie does for me. One of the things that did stand out out to me is the subtitles - probably because I had to read them know what was being said. They could certainly be better - I get the gist of whats going on easy enough, and at times it only feels a little off - like the fact that I guess the big underground ring of martial artists that take on missions is literally just called the Martial Arts, and it fells like maybe something was lost in translation there. There was one occurrence of a misspelling in there as well - not that I particularly blame them with how fast the word went by on that particular scene - but overall there’s a feeling of “good enough” about the subtitles that could have potentially enhanced the movie experience with a little more polish and time - but then again, I imagine it’s probably pretty hard translating a full move from one language with it‘s own phonetics, pacing, and meanings into another one that’s just as overly complicated. For the thinking types, you got some stuff in here - mostly the basics, good versus evil, doing the right thing, what would you do to save someone you cared about, that sort of stuff.
It’s not a bad flick. I’d put it at a solidly average at worst, although some would probably put it a bit lower due to some of the effects work. I like seeing the different takes on power-up special moves, and wire-fu is always a blast even if it really can be ridiculous at times. I think probably the biggest hiccup of the movie is probably the ending, which offers a resolution to the immediate fight that was happening and then just cuts to credits. I imagine that’s just a bit of cultural cinema thing - Hollywood style you have to show what happened to all the side characters, maybe show the main character is good and staring at a sunset or some crap - whereas here it’s “fights over, this guy won, moving on.” Kind of refreshing in a way, but also odd.