Day: November 4, 2011

Here at Gorgon Reviews, we sometimes like to change up the review format. For instance, this review will basically be a question and answer format for the movie Chop Kick Panda.

Question 1: Is this just some poor man’s ripoff of Kung Fu Panda?

I dunno! I will let you be the judge. Here is the cover.

As you see it is very different. This Panda is not wearing Pants.

Question 2: So it is a CGI movie about a martial arts panda?

Well. Kinda. First off, despite the cover, it is not a CGI movie. The movie looks as if it was made on a flash animation program for some quick computer thing. Yet instead of a quick video thing it is a full movie (of 40 minutes in length).

The amount of the movie that is actually martial arts is hard to say. In this place, Serenity Falls, the Panda is a janitor who had some lessons at a dojo. For some reason he has a kid, who he tells he is the best thing ever to. Movie even begins with a weird self dialogue about how great and legendary he is (like KFP). In fact, he is so legendary, that even his legend is legendary. They say that about 4-5 times in the movie, which means about once every 8-10 minutes.

So yeah. Some tiger wants some special amulet in the dojo? And tries to get it during a sleepover thing there. And yeah. That is about it.

Question 3: Hmm. That sounds kind of lame. At least there is lots of cool fighting?

As far as I could tell when I watched it, there was about zero fighting. A lot of off screen fighting. A couple on screen jabs. And that was the movie.

Question 4: But…but…the title! It says — Wait. Chop Kick? What the fuck is a Chop Kick?

Good question. I assume it is similar to the Kick Punch, but more Asian.

And less robots!

13 in a few ways reminded me of the movie Mean Guns. Okay. Barely. But lets just say people die, and there is money available in both movies.

Ice-T isn’t in 13. But 50 Cent is.

The beginning of this movie is pretty slow (and arguably the ending). Sam Riley, some no name, is an electrician at some dude’s house. Dude dies though. For some reason or another, he opens his mail and sees a message with a key, telling him to go to a lockbox. He does, finds another message and a train ticket. At this point, he is like, fuck it, lets do this shit. Despite not knowing anything, he keeps going along with the checkpoints, getting frisked, searched for wires, etc. And you know what? He is fucked.

He is now taking part in a weird “tournament” where very little skill is required, just luck. A group of about 20 or so individuals, complete with numbers on their shirts (guess which number is our main guy?) pretty much play russian roulette. They are made to stand in a circle, each with one bullet, spinning chambers and all, and pointing their gun at the person in front of them. When a light goes on, they shoot. If they survive, congrats! If not, well dead.

Why is this? Because of gambling! Lot of people are watching these games, making very high stake bets. I couldn’t really understand most of the betting terminology though passed around. Each shooter has a handler to help them through the rounds, and someone who represents them for bets and what not. 50 Cent had brought in Mickey Rourke to participate. They have an interesting side story themselves.

Jason Statham brought in his brother (for the fourth time) and Alexander Skarsgård ends up helping main guy. At the same time, David Zayas is playing a detective looking for this underground gambling ring (he is good at being a detective I guess). So overall, there are three rounds, each with increasing bullets. At the end, 2 people are randomly selected to stand face to face in a duel, with 3 bullets.

Yes, this is all for gambling. Yes people die. But hey, if you survive until the end you get lots of money too. That makes it okay?

I will admit, I think this poster is pretty cool.

So the acting isn’t the best. But you probably expected that. This is a pretty low budget movie. It is probably too long at 90 minutes. The scenes to get to the gambling arena place took awhile. But the tournament, I just described it, doesn’t take that long either. So the ending after the tournament, if not completely expected, is kinda of slow too. Nothing unpredictable happens after it either. So that kind of sucks. This is one of the times I would have preferred a 75~ minute movie or so. Or, if they wanted, they could have had a lot crazier good acting, in regards to how the different “contestants” were handling the pressure of the game.

But this movie if anything was interesting for the majority chunk of it, and I like that it tried something new, if not horrible to think about.