Country: China

It’s not a perfect film by any means, but it succeeds in painting an interesting portrait of an aging gentleman looking for a little redemption.

‘The Bravest Escort Group’ was one of those films you start watching while all the while thinking that it must have either been edited down from a much longer version or part of a series.

‘The Butcher, the Chef & the Swordsman’ may be an uneven yoking of brilliance and banality, but it is so heavily stacked in favour of the former that this still proves to be a film of great interest.

Had ‘The Captain’ focused on the drama on the plane and not felt the need to flick back-and-forth to dull secondary characters, it might have brought the true story to the screen with aplomb.

‘The Emperor and the Assassin’ is a minor masterpiece and comes highly recommended, though it should be stated that this is not a film for everyone.

‘The Final Master’ does have some knockout moments though and the climax in particular is full of the kind of crisp, clean and measured choreography that looks so good on the screen.

Very 1980s in its tone, a factor which adds to a lot of the fun, ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’, is flashy and harmless and shows the two Hong Kong stars still have charisma to burn.

Classy, tense, complex and delivering some fine tuned action scenes: ‘The Foreigner’ is a well crafted film that gives Chan one of his best roles.

ordon Chan can certainly do entertaining fantasy action but the various elements of ‘The Four’ just don’t gel meaning there are moments of fun but on the whole it’s all just a little dreary and long winded.

‘The Great Wall’ packs in a monster amount of large scale action as Damon, Jing et al take on the horde of monsters in ever increasingly elaborate ways.

Anyone hoping for an exciting big-budget version of the well-known character will be sorely disappointed by this merely functional cinematic rendition.

Chan fans may be disappointed he’s not the main focus but he does feature in an inventive scrap with Schwarzenegger and overall there is some cool action on offer.