David Wu may not be a familiar name, but I guarantee you've
seen his work as a longtime collaborator to famous Hong Kong action director
John Woo. With Cold Steel, Wu has channeled the early "˜90s
Hong Kong "ballet of bullets" style of action into a period war film with plenty
of explosions and well choreographed action sequences. Like some of those films from the
"˜90s, Cold Steel has issues with
character development and a sluggish story in between the action scenes.
Mu, the hunter of a small Chinese village, finds a wounded
American soldier and through him learns the secrets behind marksmanship. After a local tussle, Mu finds himself
imprisoned for silly reasons but quickly proves his worth as a sniper,
eventually solidifying himself as a member of an elite squad of sharpshooters
assigned highly dangerous missions. This grabs the attention of an expert
Japanese sniper who threatens to bring the fight to Mu's hometown. Yeah, it's
basically Enemy at the Gates with
Chinese and Japanese snipers, but where Cold
Steel really differentiates itself is through the big battles and not the
small intense sniper scenes.
The influences are unabashedly sprayed all over the screen
from Leone westerns to modern action giant Bourne
Ultimatum and, of course, John Woo.
There's a particular city battle near the beginning of the movie that
might be one of the best sustained and most impressively choreographed action
sequences of the year. It's
unfortunate that the flick all but wastes the mildly interesting characters by
placing them in clumsily written romantic scenes riddled with weird dialogue
and almost no momentum thanks to the wooden acting.
As with almost all modern Chinese movies that involve the
Japanese, the latter is portrayed as bloodthirsty maniacs with the former being
overwhelmingly good. It's well
made propaganda carefully manufactured to deliver the version of history they
want to show, often removing negative elements from the record. Luckily, David Wu at least attempts at
giving the villain an emotional arc to somewhat circumvent the censorship
management in China. Overall Cold Steel delivers on its premise with
solid action and exciting battles but comes up quite short on character and
story.
