Today’s quick review: Zu Warriors. Above the Zu Mountains in China, immortal warriors practice magic and seek enlightenment. When the ancient demon Insomnia attempts to destroy Omei, the greatest of the Zu schools, White Brows (Sammo Hung), the master of Omei, calls on King Sky (Ekin Cheng), the last warrior of the fallen city of Kunlun, and Red (Louis Koo), Omei’s finest student, to defend the school from the greatest threat it has ever faced.
Zu Warriors is a Chinese fantasy action movie that features high-flying special effects, plentiful CGI, and a creative fantasy setting. Zu Warriors depicts the climactic confrontation between the immortals of the Zu Mountains and a powerful demon that seeks to absorb their magic. In spite of the movie’s fanciful action and sense of scale, it suffers from an unclear plot and crude CGI. The result is an action movie with potential but little polish.
Zu Warriors’ greatest strength is its action. Nearly every character is an immortal warrior with a signature weapon and the ability to fly. Their fights are aerial clashes fueled by special effects and imagination. However, much of the fighting boils down to dueling rays of energy, and the movie seems to make up its rules as it goes along. The one or two times Zu Warriors dips into martial arts, the stunts are quite impressive, but the focus is on fantasy.
Zu Warriors suffers from a flimsy story. The core of the plot is straightforward: the Zu immortals fight a protracted, losing battle against Insomnia using every weapon at their disposal. But the particulars are almost incomprehensible, especially to a Western audience. The subplots and character arcs clearly have thought put into them, but the rules of the universe are poorly explained and the events of the plot are hard to follow.
Zu Warriors’ other major failing is the quality of its CGI. CGI is ubiquitous in the film, providing most of the sets and almost all of the action. The designs for the characters, magic, and locations range from adequate to quite good. But the execution of those designs is greatly constrained by the limits of early-2000s CGI. The special effects are far from realistic, and they have not aged well.
Watch Zu Warriors if you’re a fan of fantasy-style action and are willing to look past dated CGI and an impenetrable story to get it. Zu Warriors has severe enough flaws to be a niche pick at best. Its particular flavor of fantasy will appeal to some, but most viewers would be better off skipping it. For a martial arts movie based on Chinese mythology, try The Forbidden Kingdom. For a similar flavor of fantasy with better CGI, try Gods of Egypt.
5.3 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 6.0 for decent action and inventive fantasy hurt by a poorly-explained plot and primitive CGI.