Wu assassins

An unassuming San Francisco chef becomes the latest in a long line of assassins chosen to keep the mystical Wu powers out of the wrong hands, he is to search for the powers of the ancient triad and restore balance to San Francisco thereby saving the whole world in the process.

Netflix tries out its hands at a martial art series and i don't really know how to feel about this. i am a huge Martial arts fans and the bar has been set so high by past martial arts series and thus they really had alot to live up to and did they actually get to live up to the standard set by recent Martial arts series i don't think so but they did lay the grounds for a subsequent second season.

Much was made about the trailer of this movie and it was great but trailers are always great and i have learnt that the better the trailer the more terrible the movie is and this is a fact which cant be disputed at all. that aside lets talk about this movie and what we did not like about this series Netflix really did invest money in this movie but then on the flip side of it  they now literally did not bother with giving us a good storyline or plot that was worthy of the time invested into the making of this series and this is so not like Netflix, they have gotten the reputation of being good plot and story developers and so it was really head scratching watching Wu assassins and the way it panned out.
 It was really disappointing, the story fell flat after the first two episodes and it continued like that even the season finale felt like an after thought and not worthy of being a season finale; if the intent of ending the season that way was to leave the audience at a cliff hanger they literally failed at this and i could not help but to laugh at the conclusion of the season finale.

lets just move on to the next thing which is the special effects and CGI, what was that maybe the special effects was done from a phone app and don't get me started on the CGI, this has to be the worst i have seen in a long while and that is saying a lot because i have seen quite a lot of terrible CGI and it was utterly shocking to see this in a netflix series, his was so low budget and it was utterly shocking, lot of the magical elements to the series seemed so out of place and unbelievable, did not seem like it was real in any way and seemed more like a child playing mash up, this should never be happening with a netflix original production, more is expected and more quality should be delivered.
another issue with netflix is the unpredictability of its series, audience are currently finding it hard to get really invested in new series because you honestly don't know which will be cut off after the first season or the on me that will get the 200 million push and this really makes it hard for fans to really becomes invested as nobody wants to waste time on a show that wont even be back for a second season just like Wu assassins no one even knows if there will be a second season and this unpredictability really makes some audience not to even bother with starting the movie or just rushing through it and unto the next one.

Having said almost everything that is to be said on the character development in this show but then just  little additional piece on the side characters outside the main characters, they actually had an important role to play but because  of the fact that their characters were not fleshed out enough and thus the audience cant actually understand or appreciate them in their roles. the audience could really care less about them whether they died or survived but this was not meant to be because the side characters in this show really had a great part to play they just were not invested in and thus the reaction towards them and we had some great acting from the side characters.

Casting was okay in this movie still and iko uwais is just one block buster away from being genuinely the best thing to come out of Asia , he has really come a long way and his English has greatly improved and his martial arts and stunt abilities are just off the charts. same can be said for the supporting cast but on a flip side the dialogue in this series felt drab and flat on a lot of occasions,
also the inconsistencies in the series is one too many, how is Kai supposedly protected by 10000 monk faces and h is really not that much stronger than his friends`, it just did not make sense like a lot of things in this show.

Now to the positives, this series whoops ass, i mean literally, thanks to he combined efforts of director Stephen fung, star iko uwais , fight choreographer Dan Rizzuto and an army of stunt maestros, the martial arts fantasy features some of the most dazzlingly impressive fist and feet throw downs you'll see on a screen this year big or small. luckily all the action is clear you won't get an iron fist situation here, where the editing bay had to take a katana to the footage to make it look like Finn Jones fights like a real human boy. fung was great and brought all his years of experience and brand of violence to work in this movie and it was great to watch.

Iko uwais is in a class of his own currently when it comes to martial arts, Hollywood needs to cast him more and also he has the pretty boy look which works but then there is only so much that impressive fights can cover and it obviously cant fend off a clunky script which is what Wu assassins is.

Having said all the above we at FCA rates this movie a solid 6/10 because of just the fight scenes and Iko Uwais. if there will be a second season i Will be here for the fights but just as an aside the best martial arts series are arranged as follows
AMC Into the Badlands
Cobra Kai
Warrior
Wu Assassins
and its not even debatable at all.

This an original netflix production
produced by stephen fung, chad oakes, john wirth, tony krants.
cinematography by john bartley
camera set up is single camera

CAST
IKO UWAIS
BYRON MANN
LI JUN LI
CELIA AU
LEWIS TAN
LAWRENCE KAO
TOMMY FLANNAGAN
KETHERYN WINNICK