Rating: B-
Dir: Liu Wenpu
Star: Xie Miao, Hong Jianing, Ming Xiaoxi, Jing Yanqiao.
A long time ago, novelty act The Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band had a song called Hunting Tigers Out in India. I kept finding myself humming it throughout this, and weirdly, can even remember the lyrics: “How many tigers can you find with forks and serviettes? / Don’t care in what part of you they fix their fretwork sets.” They really should have played it over the end credits here, though I guess China is not India. Unusually for the genre, the main poster does not feature the animal in question attacking either. I much prefer the alternate one shown here, for this is squarely in the genre, and in terms of CGI interacting with people, has among the best work I’ve seen out of China.
The story has evil eunuch Pang (Ming) who is harvesting essence of tiger, in order to make an elixir which will provide eternal youth. However, the tiger farming caused the big cats to go a bit wonky, and also become extremely aggressive. One of their apparent victims is Zhang Liuping, who went missing while on a hunting expedition. His brother, former Imperial soldier Zhang Liucheng (Xie) goes looking for him, but quickly finds himself and the rest of the nearby town, under siege by a large pack of – yes – mutant tigers. He has to lead the defense, protect an adorable orphan, and eventually, take on Pang. The eunuch ends up taking the elixir which… Well, he should have checked the website for side-effects, let’s leave it at that.
Particularly early on, this is very impressive. There’s something just slightly “off” about the tigers: this may be CGI limitations, but given the title, works in their favour. The sequences where they are attacking the town is impressive, it’s hard to deny, and unlike many films where it feels the creatures are copy-pasted on top of the footage, here they feel integrated to it. Could perhaps have used more arterial spray in the attacks, which are curiously bloodless considering the sheer amount of gnawing which is going on. However, they’re still effective, and there’s no shortage of action. We get a very nice swordplay duel in pouring rain too: been a fan of those since Hero.
Things do drag a bit in the middle, when the makers make the common mistake of trying to make us care about the human characters. This works as well as it normally does i.e. hardly at all. Fortunately, things then recover with a solid finale which sees Zhang and Pang’s forces both head out into the tiger enclave, leading to a memorable conclusion on a rope bridge (top). Will there be plummeting felines? Will there be heroic sacrifice? Will there be a coda which robs the heroic sacrifice of its impact? I’ll never tell. If the overall impact falls just a little short of being a top-tier WCAA film, I’d say the best segments are among the very best, and it’s still recommended.
This review is part of our feature, When Chinese Animals Attack.