DVD Review: Heavenly Sword (2014)

  

 Once upon a time, in an unspecified sort-of Eastern land, a vicious warlord was rampaging across the ountryside bent on conquest. He was only defeated when a shining warrior descended from Heaven to cut his head off.  Mission accomplished, said warrior sloped off home but left his sword behind. The sword, a weapon of great power and frankly bizarre design, became the focus of much attention and the cause of much bloodshed with people willing to overlook the way the sword quickly made the user A) mad then B) dead.

   Eventually the Heavenly Sword fell into the hands of a certain warrior clan who decided to put it somewhere safe. There was a prophecy, you see. The Guardian of the Heavenly Sword would have a child in a certain year - The Chosen One -  who would wield the sword against evil. 

  Much to everybody's horror, the child turned out to be a girl and the Guardian of the Sword would subsequently make sure his daughter knew exactly how disappointed he was in her failure to have testicles.

He's kind of a dick like that. 

  Fast forward to the present day and flame-haired protagonist  Nariko is once again getting treated like crap by all her nearest and dearest when the clan stronghold is attacked by flying Ninjas.   Luckily for the good guys, the ninjas are great against people with their backs turned and unarmed civvies but completely bloody useless against anybody armed and paying attention. 

 However, while everybody is feeling pleased with themselves, an entire frigging army sneaks up on the fortess. Cavalry, artillery, weird-ass mutants, the whole deal. 

  You'd think self-appointed Guardians would be better at keeping a lookout.  

  I digress. Since Nariko's ninja-killing technique actually impressed her daddy for a change, she's handed the Heavenly Sword and told to do a runner. "Don't let King Bohan get hold of this. Now leg it."

  With the fortress fallen and her whole clan having been stomped flat, Nariko and her perky, possibly psycho, little sidekick must and find the real Chosen One before Bohan can do whatever wickedness he has planned. 

 Films based on video games have a rep for being more "Miss" than Hit. CGI films based on videos games even more so. 

 However, the cover features a redhead swinging a sword so short, vicious internal struggle left the part of me that has taste getting a right shoeing from the part of me that has a disturbing thing for lethal redheads. 

So what did I think?   

Well, how much you enjoy "Heavenly Sword" depends entirely on how willing you are to sit through game cutscenes. If you like cutscenes then you are in for a treat because this film does come across as three discs worth of cutscenes edited together. 

 The landscapes are pretty good, the costumes are spectacular, if impractical, and when the battles happen, the animation is fluid and not bad at all. By game standards, anyway.

  Things aren't so good when the characters are chatting to each other. The flat facial expressions and slightly stiff movements are jarring. Unfortunately the voice acting is equally stiff with only the late Alfred Molina putting in much effort. 

Back on  the plus side, the violence is quite respectable, Nariko finds herself fighting some inventive opponents, and the film does make sense even if you've never played the game. (Compare and contrast with FFVII Advent Children - looked great but what the hell that was all about I never did know.) 

 This was not enough to get me past the bad case of Uncanny Valley Effect I was experiencing, sadly.      

    

All in all, I thought it was on the low side of OK. You might like it more - or less - depending on how much you wanted to see "Heavenly Sword" the game turned into "Heavenly Sword" the movie. 

  

Approach with caution.  

Trailer provided below for your perusal. 

That's all folks.