Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Review

The bus fight is the argument for this film. Cretton and his stunt team stage a long, clear, escalating sequence aboard a runaway San Francisco bus that owes far more to Hong Kong action cinema than to anything in the studio's house style, and the scaffolding fight in Macau is nearly as good. Simu Liu is likeable and physically credible, if a little light in the dramatic scenes. Awkwafina does the best friend part well without straining. The real weight comes from Tony Leung, who plays a thousand year old conqueror as a widower, and whose scenes with his children give the film a grief this genre rarely bothers with.

Michelle Yeoh brings her usual grace to a role that is mostly exposition delivery. Then the last half hour arrives and every specific thing the film built gets swapped for generic fantasy: an ancestral village, a soul devouring gate, two digital dragons thrashing in water, and a hero who has spent two hours fighting with his fists suddenly wielding light. The gap between the first hour and the last is the whole review.