Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Destin Daniel Cretton brought in Brad Allan, the first non-Asian member of Jackie Chan’s stunt team, to supervise the fighting, saying he did not want a whitewashed Hollywood imitation of a kung fu film. Allan died in August 2021 at forty eight, before the film opened, and it is dedicated to him. That decision is visible for two acts. The bus brawl and the scaffolding sequence are shot in long takes, with a camera that never hides where a body is. In the last half hour the picture switches genre into two digital creatures colliding, and whoever came for choreography waits it out. Tony Leung made his first Hollywood film here and played it in English. He was told at first that computer work would carry the fights, then did most of them himself. By his account the studio was curious about the human side of the character rather than the evil one, so the father is written as a man wrecked by his wife’s death instead of a conqueror. Trevor Slattery, played by Ben Kingsley, continues the fake Mandarin joke from Iron Man 3; without that earlier film he is just an odd clown. For a viewer wanting a family reckoning told through fight staging. Not for one who refuses a finale that turns into a battle between dragons.