The Wrath Of Vajra

Just prior to the second Word War, Imperial Japan attempts to internally weaken China prior to invasion by re-activating a mercenary cult of fighters called the Hades,  forcefully recruited from childhood from all around Asia and other parts of the world.  An ex member who escaped (Vajra played by real life Shaolin monk and actor Yu Xing) and went elsewhere to find peace at China's Shaolin Temple, seeks to disband the Hades, after the latest group of child recruits in China are kidnapped. The Wrath Of Vajra isn't the greatest martial arts movie, but it's definetely not a bad thing to watch.  What made the movie interesting to watch was the story and historical significance, the international casting of it all, and the pretty decent fight choreography courtesy in part to Sammo Hung.  Not many movies have a pretty balanced mix of rather decent and primarily Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and various Western actors that appropriately fitted the story.  There are many things wrong with the film surely, but in this rant I choose to focus primarily on the opposite, because I like what the filmmakers were trying to do, and they more or less appropriately borrowed ideas from other contemporary good martial art movies in every aspect, including soundtrack. The creative fight training sets with the iron Wing Chun dummies served as a nice precursor to the fights that follow and clearly have influence in the Ip Man movies and the metaphoric fight opening in Hero.  Yu Xing as Vajra though, is clearly one of the main reason the movie works so well.   His authenticity as a real martial artist is undeniable and his debut as a lead actor here is good.  Do take note of the best fight in the film, the real climactic fight before the "climactic" fight. Here, he fights the dark Crazy Monkey boxer, and as incredible as it is to behold, we must also recognize that there is clearly a heavily influenced Ong Bak type of fight choreography and acrobatics at play, that Thai and Indonesian filmmakers have been taking the martial arts genre in fresh directions with in the past decade.  But it's nice to see a rather fresh attempt/try from Chinese filmmakers and the international collaboration and influence that does come thru.