[KFCC] Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain Review

Story: The Zu mountain chain has been of great strategic value for many centuries, during the current civil unrest in China several armies battle for control of the Zu mountain. In addition to its great strategic value many myth and legends were born in the valley and peaks around Zu, a runaway soldier gets lost and by accidentally encounters a legendary swordsmen. The confused soldier is soon caught in the mists of a battle between good and evil where he is asked to help.

Review: It can easily be said that Zu is the father of the Fantasy Kung Fu genre. Released in the early 80`s this movie sticks out as *THE* fantasy kung fu movie, it has inspired an entire genre of movies. This movie was in Hong Kong what Star Wars was in the US, with a lots of special affects this movie was innovative for the time. The story takes place in ancient China where a lot of legendary characters are on a great quest. Watching the movie for the first time you will find the story confusing at time. Its as if they tried to put all that they can into the movie, the story in itself is the basic good Vs evil to save the world scenario.

You had two kind of characters in this movie, the generic soldier or servant and the heroes. Now the generic characters were just for decoration, everyone else was a *cool* hero type character. Each of the Hero type characters had a uniqueness about them, like the lone swordsmen or the Monk and his student. The colorfulness of these characters added a lot to the movie. There was also a disadvantage, with all these characters there was no background to them so at certain times there was a little confusion as why they were there and what do they do. As for character evolution its mostly concentrated on to two *young ones* the student and soldier. In general the characters are a very important part of this movie.

Since this is a big battle of good Vs evil expect to see some good action. Most of the Martial Arts used in this movie are decorative as for the down and dirty fighting its usually with magic weapons or magic powers. For an old movie the special effects are surprisingly good, of course they are of a low quality but it fits the movie well (its not fancy special effects that gives a movie soul). Note that the movie is not action from start to finish, there is a good amount of time spent of the evolution of the story. One thing we should mention is that was a small amount of humour in the film, these amusing scenes were well spread out during the movie and added to the overall experience.

The subtitles are really excellent on the DVD version and the dialog is easy to follow. We know were are late with our review of Zu but its hard to balance the reviewing of new movies and old classics. We should mention our first experience with Zu warriors, one of us had already seen a copy of the movie without subtitles so we decided to go rent the tape at our local specialty video store (Clandestin). We get back and drop the cassette in the machine and press start, the first scene takes place in modern day England in a fencing class. Now the one who has already seen this movie says no that's wrong that's not Zu, its in ancient china. So we press stop and take a look at the label on cassette and it was written Zu the Time Warrior. So we decided to find out what is up with this movie, after 10 minutes of life in England the movie is cut to a part in Zu. Note this movie was dubbed and was probably some British release from Tai Seng Video, so stay away from this version. We quickly removed the movie and put it a way. We were not going to watch some released version that cut parts out of the original movie. A year later we got a hold of the DVD version finally. Zu is a very important movie in the Fantasy Kung Fu genre, because of this movie and its success it gave the chance for other movies in the genre to be made. Zu in itself is a good movie and a classic but its far from being the best in the genre a lot of progress has been made since then. If you wish see a true classic we suggest watching Zu.