If there is one thing China loves to do, it’s make heroic movies about the ordinary people.
It might not look like it, but Cloudy Mountain pays a deep homage to the Railway Army,
a group of men, soldiers, who broke their backs and risked their lives to build China vast rail network.
And, Cloudy Mountain is also about blowing it all up!
Hi I’m The Arty Dans from Asian Film Fans and I am going to tell you:
why you should watch the Chinese action disaster film Cloudy Mountain
And a special thanks to our friends at China Lion for providing a copy of this movie for review.
China Lion are the official cinematic distributors for this film in Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada.
Check the details on the screen for the release date in your area.
Where to start.
A tunnel, 10 years in the making, is approaching its completion. However, a controlled explosion causes the tunnel to begin
flooding due to a miscalculation of the geological composition of the mountain.
At the same time, a series of natural disasters triggers an earthquake in the town the tunnel is being built in, and this causes a sinkhole.
So far, the disaster count is 3. And that’s just the first 20 minutes.
The father of the geologist whose job it was to ensure the conditions are safe for explosions comes to visit his son and the progress of the tunnel.
He gets caught in the sinkhole trying to rescue people, and time is running out to rescue him as yet another disaster, a landslide,
is due to hit the village as a series of aftershocks continue to cause chaos and threaten the lives of 160,000 people.
I pose an alternative question – why wouldn’t you watch a disaster film?
Disaster films are all about fun, and this movie opens with a bang.
It doesn’t really give you much opportunity to get to know the characters before the first disaster hits, and then the next, and then the next.
So given that the movie moves rather quickly at the start, the character development is pretty crude.
Want to show the main character has as issue with water that he will need to overcome?
Throw some flashbacks of his mother drowning while he is helpless.
Want to show that his father prefers the old-fashioned methods and hates technology?
Show him in a department store trying to pay for an ornamental plant with paper money
while the sales agent pushes him to use digital payments.
Crude. Hilarious. But strangely very effective.
Disaster movies rely on hooking the audience right away, because as we all know they can’t keep up the action and drama all the time.
This means the movie needs to ensure it has your attention so when it gets to the lulls, you’re still interested.
And the way the movie does this is very typically Chinese.
There is a scattergun approach at the start where things happen so quickly, and swap between new characters so fast,
that it will make your head spin.
It takes a few moments to realise there reall is only 4 characters you need to follow:
the geologist and his girlfriend, his dad and the manager of the tunnel project.
So while the intro and first third of the movie is very action packed and exciting, unfortunately it does grind to a painful halt in the middle third.
By this stage though you’re pretty much invested in the movie and want to see it through, luckily,
but its still a rather obvious and painful section that deals with the father-son issues that were brewing during the opening third.
Another painful element is the computer effects.
There is a strange thing going on where the good effects are only briefly shown, but the average effects are given lots of screentime.
Take for example the beginning of the movie.
What appears to be a drone shot is actually a CGI bridge where two of our main characters are driving a 4WD.
All of this looks rather average, and it gets a lot of screentime.
But then we get to the earthquake and sinkhole scene and some rather exciting shots where derailed trains smash into shopfronts,
and these awesome looking effects only last barely 1 second.
More of these, less of the rather average CGI.
To cap it all off is one of the most ridiculous things you’ve ever seen in a disaster film.
Well, two things actually.
One involves the father, and the other involves the son. I won’t spoil but you’ll know exactly what they are when you see them.
However, in the end, the movie is still big stupid fun and that should be your expectation when you approach this.
It doesn’t bring anything new to the disaster genre,
and while it has a rather weak middle where I wouldn’t blame you if you tuned out for 5 or 10 minutes
while father and son sort out some issues that will be important later in the film,
the action of the disasters is still worthy enough to make it a watch, especially the packed first 30 minutes
So I give this a thumbs up for that. I enjoyed it.
I wont remember much about this movie in 6 months, but I still enjoyed it.
If you’ve seen it, what did you think?
If that's not bad enough, then the way the movie establishes that Ngo is a classic villain might just make you roll your "seen-it-all-before" eyes.
I feel confident enough that I don't even need to tell you what he does to establish this. I think you already know.
But these two negative points cannot take anything away from this impressive end product.
A movie that feels like it was years in the making, and a movie that has had enough final touches added in post-production to
ensure that the legacy of Benny Chan will remain strong in the minds and hearts of any Hong Kong, and indeed Asian, action movie fan.
And after the less-than-stellar efforts of Enter The Fat Dragon and Ip Man 4, it's a sharp reminder to the audience of the kind
of superstar that Donnie Yen is when provided a solid script that perfectly suits his style.
This is a 120 plus minute movie that all action and style over story substance.
And I am more than fine with that thanks to the action set pieces, performances and cameos that reminded me why I fell in love
with Hong Kong cinema in the first place.
One day it may even be classed as a Top 5 film for either Chan, Yen or Tse. Maybe even for all 3 of them, only time will tell.
This is a collaboration that will always be remembered as one of the finest, yet came far too late.
Imagine the kind of movies we could have had 15 years ago if Yen and Chan had began then.
I give this film a thumbs up, vale Benny Chan.
If you’ve seen it, what did you think?
told to surrender the building, with his superior giving him a lecture about
“we don’t know what kind of China we will have in the future”
being a rather unnecessary piece of propaganda dialogue.
But the negatives are definitely not a dealbreaker that should stop you from watching
and enjoying this film, they’re just considerations for you to keep in the back of your mind.
This is a fantastic piece of Chinese cinema, even with all the constraints imposed upon it.