Watched the U.S.A.'s 2022 Fistful of Vengeance (1:36:10), a sequel to Wu Assassins. In this movie the group of protagonists are in Bangkok to avenge the murder of Jenny, a sister of a member of their group. In the meantime the Wu Assassin, who is in their group, is being targeted for abduction by Pan Gu, allegedly the first man, who seeks to unite him with his female counterpart and thus reassemble Yin and Yang--reversing the theory of fragmentation.

The movie is shot like a video game. It is essentially a series of chases and fight scenes. The cast is competent but suffers from a B-grade screenplay and stilted, B-grade dialogue peppered with a lot of "fuck" and "shit", as though those words make everything look masculine and cool. The kissing and sex scenes are abrupt and actually unwarranted, and seem to have been conveniently inserted, albeit at the wrong moments. The production's saving grace is that it looks expensive and has a lot of interesting, multi-angle shots, including drone shots. The fight routines, unfortunately, are old hat.

Very few productions succeed in presenting a mix of talismanic magic, shamanism, and martial arts, because you can't really tell whether the fighters win of their own valor or by being saved at the last minute by deus-ex-machina supernaturalism. At best, this is entertainment for nine-year-olds who couldn't care less about cinema as art and are easily pleased with brainless, visual spectacle.