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THE
BLACK PANTHER WARRIORS
AKA:
Warriors: The Black Panther
Year:
1993 Reviewer: Andrew
Saroch
The
usual things that are associated with the name Clarence Ford
are his stylish visuals and the confusing construction of the
film that he seems to revel in. Add to this a penchant for
tasteless humour and a general tackiness and Ford's standard
efforts are perfectly summed up. 'The Black Panther Warriors'
takes these to their very extremes.
Black
Cougar (Tang) is a slick superthief with extraordinary
talents. When a new client promises Black Cougar unimaginable
riches for one seemingly straight-forward mission, he
naturally accepts. He therefore builds a team of like-minded
persons all with their own amazing skills: there's a
gun-toting charmer who can fire bullets with incredible
precision (Leung); a suave gambler who uses playing cards as
his weapon (Yam); a beautiful, needle-throwing woman (Ng); an
equally charming swordswoman (Lin); a bizarre computer genius
(Cheung); and a newcomer who is a skilled fighter (Chan). The
actually task - stealing a well-guarded box from a police
station - goes without a hitch and all seems to be going well.
However, Cougar finds himself betrayed by his employer and is
consequently imprisoned by the enemy. These duplicitous
employers prove to be working for Bloody Wolf (Wah), Cougar's
supposedly dead brother. With a whole army facing them, the
Black Panther Warriors need to rely on each other to defeat
the villains.
Somewhere
on earth, there might a exist a computer than can decipher the
meaning of 'The Black Panther Warriors' - but that's doubtful.
Everyone hears about how mind-numbing the film is and people
attempt to be the one who will actually understand the
'comedy' etc, but no-one has ever succeeded. A very ordinary
storyline is weighed down by some of the strangest (and most
annoying) characters ever to have hit the screen and an
avalanche of stupifying, often tasteless, comedy. What drives
the final nails in the coffin of this is one of the worst
subtitling jobs ever by Mega Star; it's hard to remember a
sentence that makes any sense. The only slight redemption is
the wildly imaginative and surreal action sequences that prop
up the film. These show that Clarence Ford at least knows how
to create a visually striking feature. Nonetheless, a
potential viewer has to ask themselves if they're prepared to
watch the following:
1.
Tony Leung doing acrobatics and literally going insane every time
he hears Mandarin.
2.
Dicky Cheung (arggghhhh!!!!) salivating like a baby if he
doesn't have a dummy in his mouth.
3.
Ludicrous melodrama that pops up every now and again.
View
at your own risk.
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