Donnie Yen, Joe Chen, Kang Yu, Jack Lok, Lin Qiunan
Movie rating: 6/10 Neck score: A
I knew what it would be before I started it, but my love for Donnie Yen made me watch it anyway. I would have probably preferred a movie with more fighting in it, but what fight scenes there were were definitely good. This movie is more about the schmaltz. It's 100% feel good and social commentary. It's about an unorthodox teacher who turns a class of loser misfits around and makes them care about life and want to try again the way that only an unorthodox teacher can. He's not only ex-military, he's also an ex-trouble maker and alumni from the school. He's basically the perfect problem solver. That's probably the schmaltziest part of the film, he manages to solve everyone's problems with his magic caring. Well, a lot of that is just talking through things and actually giving a darn, so it does make some sense, but it also is a bit too simple. There are of course difficulties. Bad decisions and consequences that lead to our teacher taking out a MMA champion to save a student (got to get a fight scene in somehow) and later a gang of thugs because of course some evil rich dude wants the school to close so they can make bank on a redevelopment scheme. But they also had to comment on the school system which drives students to give up caring or to commit suicide, so there was plenty of heaviness too.
It was also about the class of kids, so there wasn't a lot of time for a variety of character development, which is probably why everything was solved quickly. There were a lot of kids to help, although it focused on the 5 problem students. I would have liked more development in general. I also wanted to see more development of the other teacher, played by Joe Chen (who I was happy to recognize). They hinted more development for her, but really didn't have time for it. She was the earnest, hardworking teacher who was trying in hard in the system rather than working outside the system like the new teacher. She then represents the potential improvements in the system as she embraces some of his teaching methods to connect to her students as well.
So, really it's probably only worth watching if you like this kind of movie, or if you are (like me) a huge Donnie Yen fan. He is my favorite kung fu actor, so I probably will watch anything for him, bad or good, but at least I recognize what I am getting into before I start. And usually the fighting at least makes it worth it. This one... well there wasn't really enough fighting for me. And it was the more realistic type meaning that he's a little more bound to physics than sometimes and he gets beat up a lot too.
