The Knight of Shadows: Between Yin and Yang (2019)
The legend of the demon hunter begins!
Tonight is one of the movies that seemed like it’d be an easy give me on a few fronts as far as it goes when it comes time to review time. The pitch is pretty easy - Jackie Chan, everyone’s favorite battle-damaged super star that can’t be stopped, and he hunts demons in ancient China. I mean, easily going to be action scenes, costumes outside the normal, and probably effects work of some kind! Yes, unless I know a full foreign language I’ll most likely need to read, but my eyes are not nearly as sore as the rest of me for existing currently so that’s fine. Time for a mystical romp that’s more than the pitch, tonight we follow The Knight of the Shadows.
What we think is our main plot isn’t quite that way. We would think from the movie pitch that this movie is about demon hunter Jackie going after all the naughty demons - in particular one that’s sucking up young girl souls. Yes, that is in the movie - but it feels much more like a fancy blanket around the main story, which ends up surprisingly enough being a cross-cultural classic of forbidden doomed romance much like Romeo and Juliet. The nice part about this is it provides ample angles for both shenanigans and serious, quirky fun and brooding sadness all without missing any real beats of feeling particularly shoe-horned in. You see, both these stories somewhat naturally combine during the story - but instead of it being a weird romance triangle or something like that, it’s literally the plot of one becomes a threat to the plot of the other. We want our demon hunter main to succeed, but as we learn more from the core plot we start wondering just how bad we want him to succeed in the manner he usually does. It’s well done, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some variation of this story exists in every culture there is, because that bad romance element seems to crop up all over the place when it comes to film - albeit in varying levels of enjoyment and presentation.
Now, despite all the serious aspects of the plot, I’d say this movie firmly falls in that family movie category in my opinion. For whatever serious, heart felt moment exists and is presented as such by our actors, we have another moment where a little green demon farts in somebody or somethings face. If you haven’t guessed, that also means the actors are going to be dealing with acting against some CG stuff as well as the normal real in-set things. Good news is they all do a pretty darn good job here. Yes, the intricacies of the Chinese language is lost upon me so I do lose out on that element of it, but from body language and how things sound you do a very good job of getting the idea that they are doing a good job of things. Of course, this comes with a bit of a caveat for the comedic moments, as it gets pretty slap-stick and over-blown at times for comedic effect, but in all honesty it never really feels like bad acting as much as exactly what was being called for regardless of how silly it might be. It’s probably a pretty familiar thing for most people to hear who frequent family movies really, but figured I’d point it out.
Characters are there, and mileage will directly depend upon the character. We see a lot of the main character and who he is through his actions, but it might over-selling it to call it substantial depth. We see that there is a lot of drive with our assistant, although motivation and comedic relief might be his strongest points. Most the depth and history comes from the duo in the romance core plot - which is dripped out through the movie and comes to a head a couple of different times. Side characters are there - in the case of demons it’s largely as a tool, and for the humans a lot of times they are more there for comedy purposes. It’s good enough to get you hooked for a character or two, but not so overly bloated that you feel like you need a million exposition scenes to inform you as to what is going on. It gets you interested in the demon hunting story, whilst completely going through the romance story in the process.
Team Jackie and bumbling smart dude.
While I somewhat mentioned it earlier, there’s a mix of effects work going on here. A lot of things are done in the CG realm here, but there’s a fair share of practical and CG assisted practical to consume as well. It also never really looks bad within reason either. For the CG heaviest parts, everything switches over to it in most the shots, so nothing really ends up standing out to the eye like other moments of demons interacting with people. The nice part of the demons is since most of them aren’t just typical human in design, if they feel somewhat cartoony or unreal it doesn’t break the immersion as much as the uncanny valley isn’t getting hit and triggered with it. I mean, you see a little flying jelly-fish headed plant fairy looking thing, and you don’t go “that looks out of place” compared to if it was a really bad CG human fairy like a bad Tinkerbell attempt, if you get what I mean. Of course, there’s more than just demons - we get some magical effects and seals flying about, and plenty of touched up locations made more impressive as well.
Costumes do a good job of setting characters apart as well. My personal favorite is probably the fella who uses the binding seal papers, as it strikes me as that Chinese version of the classic wandering samurai, and much like knights I do enjoy me some fantasy samurais. It’s not all just cool warrior looks though - there’s plenty of more classic Chinese style attire, including some quite pretty dresses for our various lady crew. It’s a good mix of stuff, and the sets largely hold up as well - whether a spooky swamp, a spooky walled in demon house, some of the crowded streets or mountain-top villages it feels a lot like going back home to some of the other Chinese-focused cinema I’ve seen, particularly towards the fantasy or historic side of things. It all looks good too, it never really feels like it’s just another set that someone is going to, but never really so busy that it’s just in the way and over-crowded.
Audio is good and balanced. Music fits the scenes and emotions they are running for, but it doesn’t super stick with me either. I do remember one point where they added in some spooky sounds that reminded me of when they’d do that for something like Ghostbusters - but I also don’t recall the specific instrument that made the noise to relay it, or if it was technically the same as whats used here. Still, audio department does a good job, and if you speak Chinese you’ll probably easily be able to understand each line. I don’t speak it, so I can’t really attest to it. That said, the subtitles are good, and I didn’t have any instances of fast-talking causing a subtitle to vanish before I could finish reading it. Humor is subjective of course, but I got a good chuckle out of various moments, and I’ll be honest towards at least three of them literally just being farts. I’ve got crap humor, I can’t help it.
Team Romeo and Deamonette.
This was a fun movie. It ended up being a bit more effects heavy than I really thought it was going to be, but that’s not a horrible thing. It had some comedy to counterbalance the more serious parts, but the serious parts also gave it a depth that the standard comedy-heavy family movie might not normally give out. Costumes and the likes were enjoyable to see, and the various ways of getting action into it help spice things up without going too overboard until the final leg. I’d say that it’s an enjoyable movie, even though comedy mileage is always going to vary from person and it’s not quite as heavy duty on the action as what a good amount of the North American Jackie Chan audience might expect from the movies we commonly associate with him. Either way, Chinese fantasy movies are still running a pretty good stint of being enjoyable for me, and although this one wouldn’t replace the Detective Dee movies from their position at the top of the podium, it’s still good fun.