The Storm Riders

1998 martial arts fantasy

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Lord Conquer, just like everybody else according to Tears for Fears, wants to rule the world. Standing in his way is Sword Saint. A prophet named Mud Buddha informs him that the battle will take place in ten years and that integral to his success is making two children (Whispering Wind and Stinky Cloud) his disciples. They're sent out to find a fire monkey and remove somebody's head, and then, I think, somebody gets a brand new computer and wants to show off some of its screensavers. There's a love interest in there somewhere.

I gave this movie a bonus point for Sonny Chiba's line "Good. . .Now let's see how much blood you have." Other than that, this was an awful, ugly movie. Too bad for the legendary Sonny Chiba, I guess. Most surprising to me is that this movie outsold Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in Hong Kong. I couldn't find a time on the dvd box (it seemed endless), but I've read that the international release of this film was cut from a little over two hours to eighty-some minutes. I think I would have preferred a version cut by two hours. CGI effects have been vomited all over this, and the action sequences make almost no sense at all. Wind and Storm have these unexplained powers and can apparently tear off their own arms and throw blood on their enemies or spin around really fast. One of the characters can make a giant bubble to float around in. Lots of "What the hell?" moments scattered all over The Storm Riders. It's all as vacuous as a Power Rangers television episode except it doesn't look as realistic. And it's almost entirely void of entertainment value. This may go down in shane-movies.blogspot.com history as the movie that singlehandedly destroyed Kung-Fu-Ridays.

Here's an awfully disappointed back of the head: