Disappointed! The Amazing Masters part is a faux-cumentary hosted by The White Shadow about why martial arts are so amazing, which…we know. Get some worthwhile footage so we can actually see what you’re talking about (and don’t think you fooled us by leading with Sonny Chiba and then basically not covering anyone else we’ve ever heard of except Jimmy Wang Yu), and how about a hundred percent less Carter Wong hopping around in slo-mo doing The Dance Of A Thousand Butterfly Knives? Of course, Wong is the lead in Shaolin Traitor, which I watched afterwards, and as a weak and cheap as Amazing Masters is, Shaolin Traitor should have rocked by comparison — but totally didn’t. I have a pretty high tolerance for the vagaries of this genre, but this one just isn’t worth watching. It’s extremely slow, and it does have entertaining bits — the princess is kind of awesome, and the villain from The Victim, Yi Cheng, turns up again as a master/baddie, and I extra-love that guy and his disgusting teeth — but there’s not nearly enough fighting, and the fighting itself is just not good. I’ve never seen so many mid-fight cuts, and the shot-making is obviously designed to cover weaknesses; letterboxing might have improved matters, in terms of following the sequence, but it doesn’t make sense in the first place, because it’s not like either Yi Cheng or Polly Kwan is a sucky fighter. I haven’t seen Wong in anything else, but he looked to me like he was bringing it, so…I don’t know. If you’ve got a good peanut gallery, it’s not terrible, but don’t bother with it solo. (1/6/06)

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