Kung Fu Yoga - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Kung Fu Yoga

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
Jackie Chan is a truly old school action star. His ability and willingness to give everything physically possible to a role has made him an action legend. His body has been through the ringer in more ways than you and I can possibly imagine, and his penchant for physical action based comedy carved him out one of the biggest niches Hong Kong cinema to date. However, age catches up to us eventually, and the human body can only do so many back flips and crazy stunts for so long before nature takes its course (he was known for being pretty much uninsurable, and during his heyday paid out of pocket to insure his stunt men as well). Chan has actually been one of the few action stars to adjust pretty seamlessly to knowing his limitations and rolling with that. Films like Police Story: Lockdown, Little Big Soldier, and Railroad Tigers has given us solid films that allow the character to age gracefully, and play to the strengths and weakness of age instead of doing what most action stars do, and try to milk the star studded days of youth.

Chan also used to be one those men that would sell the movie on his name alone. I didn’t care what it was, but if it starred Jackie Chan, then you can bet your butt that I would be there with bells on to watch it. Lately that has started to change, with more and more of his films being relegated to “eh that was not bad” to “ouch” with the occasional good one thrown in. Kung Fu Yoga happens to be one of the “ouch” category, I REALLY was looking forward to the film, as it was the fist time that legendary Hong Kong director/producer/writer Stanley Tong had directed a movie in 12 years. Having been known as making some of Jackie’s best movies (Rumble in the Bronx, Supercop, First Strike) I was hoping for at least a partial return to form for Jackie, but instead it tries to imitate the glory days of Chan’s stunt filled youth, as well trying to go international by blending in some Bollywood stylings. Not to mention the blatantly over the top “knowledge is power” message that just gets pounded into the film from every direction.

Jackie Chan plays Jack, a highly regarded archaeologist turned professor who has a love of Chinese and Indian history. When he gets hints of a famous Indian treasure lost in the border areas of the land near the Chinese/Indian border he embarks on a treasure hunting expedition with his Kung Fu nephew, his cute assistant, an Indian princess (Amyra Dashtur), her sister (Disha Patani) and a few more tag alongs. Well, Jackie doesn’t seem to JUST want to have a Tomb Raider like adventure, he always wants to make history “fun”, by boring us to death with over 50% of the movie being a blatantly obvious historical lesson, as well as making sure we ALL know that the find belongs to the people of the world (and to the government as he says many times), and not to the individuals chasing them during the movie.

No adventure movie is complete without a villain, and that comes in the form of Randall (Sonu Sood), the final descendant of the original treasure trove’s owner. In typical villainous fashion, he hounds the group and tries to steal it from them, including chasing them down in Dubai, as well as under ground and TO the treasure itself, fists and knives flailing all the way. We open the film with a cheesy CGI 300 style battle where Jackie firsts starts blasting the audience with historical facts, then move on to a fist fight in Dubai, head over to India central for a goofy battle of the sexes, have Jackie ride around with a CGI tricked out lion in the car (thus the cover of the movie), and culminates in a final “boss battle” up in the Tibetan mountains. Standard Jackie Chan fare really.

I have to admit, I WANTED to like Kung Fu Yoga more than I did, but I can’t lie to myself. It was pretty bad. The fights are fairly uninspired, and besides Jackie Showing off his moves better than he has for quite some time, but it can’t overcome the REALLY bad script writing. Even with Stanley Tong writing, it came across as stilted and a little insulting at times. Why they had Jackie literally BEATING us over the head with history and “you know the treasure belongs to the world!” stuff is beyond me. It’s meant to be more of a comedy, but it lacks the heart and joy of his earlier projects, and the action isn’t anything to write home about. I kind of liked blending Indian actors and styles with Chinese ways (there’s even a little dance and song number at the end to show homage to traditional Bollywood films), but it was REALLY poorly done. The English speaking by the Indian actors sounded really amateurish (maybe in their own language they would be able to emote better), and the infusion of yoga into the story had me shaking my head going “what are you doing!” most of the time.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

Kung Fu Yoga may not be a great film, but Well Go USA has certainly given it a great looking transfer. The obviously digital film is bright and shiny, with all sorts of richly saturated colors. The underground ice cave is beautifully blue and grey, while the outdoor fight in India is awash with all sorts of reds, golds, blues and earthy tones. Contrast levels are evenly balanced, and skin tones look very natural. Black levels are deep and inky, and I couldn’t see any major banding besides some brief instances here and there (not very much). One thing that I DID notice is most likely not part of the transfer, but the filming process. During quick motion shots there seemed to be a slight judder and stilting that goes on. You can watch the weird almost “laggy” motion that happens during fast motion shots, including the fight scenes as well as the car chase. It’s odd and I at first thought it was my player or my JVC RS46 acting up, but I tried it out on 3 different players and 3 different displays and it was obvious on all three. It seemed to be better on my LCD, but my plasma and LCOS projector certainly amplified it (a 120 inch screen will do that). I can’t say it’s part of the encode as it seems to coincide with the way the film makers sped up the camera for the action, but it is an oddity that you will notice.
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Audio:

The disc comes with both English and Mandarin options, with the Mandarin one getting the upgrade from 5.1 DTS-HD MA to DTS:X. Naturally the DTS:X track sounds the best, with a great use of surrounds and overheads and some lovely LFE that really pounds away during the action intensive scenes. Surrounds are filled with the little sounds of a city, or the rush of water from behind the listening postion, all the way up to echoing voices coming from being in a cavern. There’s a couple of bass drops later on in the movie that really was vibrating everything around me and the vocals were spot on. One thing that is kind of odd is that the film is a “hybrid” Mandarin and English track (even though it’s just listed as Mandarin). When Jackie and his Chinese associates talk it’s always in Chinese, but the Indian actors and Chinese actors talking to each other comes through in English (most likely as that was their common link language), which means almost 50% of the movie will be in English, even with the other 50% in Mandarin.






Extras:

• Bloopers
• "Best Of Both Worlds"
• "The Dynamic Duo"
• "The Making Of"
• "Jackie Chan"
• "Bollywood Dance"

Final Score: ​

Kung Fu Yoga is a definite swing and a miss. Stanley Tong, Jackie Chan, and some action should have been a sure fire hit (or at least a good time), but more often than not I was looking at my watching wondering if the movie was going to be over yet. I guess the people of India thought the same was as out of it’s 180 million dollar budget, 179 million came from China itself (who seemed to eat it up). Honestly, I really think it’s time for Jackie to retire, as he has been churning out mostly low budget mainland China propaganda films for the last 10 years, and the man is richer than most any action star out there. It’s sad to see him like this, but it is what it is. Skip It.




Technical Specifications:

Starring: Jackie Chan, Disha Patina, Sonu Sood
Directed by: Stanley Tong
Written by: Stanley Tong
Aspect Ratio: 2.35.1 AVC
Audio: Mandarin: DTS:X, Mandarin DTS Headphone:X, Mandarin DD 2.0, English DTS-HD MA 5.1, English DD 2.0
Studio: Well Go USA
Rated: NR
Runtime: 107 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: August 8th, 2017

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Skip It

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I am a fan of Jackie Chan but will skip this one per your recommendation.

 

[Asere]

Thank you for the review. I really like Chan but l already knew it was a disaster of a movie by just looking at the bluray cover lol.