*There are SPOILERS here!*
Coweb is a good movie. It's true that the directing may be somewhat inexperienced; some of the fighting sequences could have been better shot, but other than that I have very few complaints. I think that people's criticisms are just plain wrong, and I also think that the low rating the movie has received so far simply owes to not enough people (by which I mean people who know their martial arts movies) having seen it yet. Compared to martial arts movies in general, Coweb is in fact amazingly realistic in many ways. Sure, the plot is designed around the fight sequences, but so are most other martial arts movie plots, and this one actually does a better job of it than most.
We have a young woman, YiYi, who's a martial arts (taekwondo?) instructor, while also being a security guard (in the beginning of the movie she seems to be a cop, but it's not entirely clear to me why she's suddenly a security guard - not that it really matters). When she meets an old friend who's the personal assistant of some big-shot business man, she is offered a job as a bodyguard to his wife. Pretty soon, the business man and his wife are both apparently kidnapped, using so many guys that YiYi can only fight off some of them. Over the next several days YiYi and her old friend (nicknamed Fatty) do everything in their power to try to save the business man and his wife, which involves following leads that are texted to a phone left by the kidnappers, telling them to show up at certain times and places to fight various goons. It turns out that the fights are being recorded and broadcast on the internet for a group of gamblers to place bets on. YiYi fights her way to the top, and eventually finds out that she has been betrayed and manipulated by everybody; it has all been a lie, designed to make money off her fighting skills. She ends up confronting the business man who exploited her, and getting him arrested.
Besides being a pretty cool martial arts movie, it also contains a very satisfying political dimension, demonstrating in a very clear way how the rich exploit the poor and naive. Showing how money so often destroys people's lives. I always love a Chinese movie with a distinctly anti-capitalist message, and this is certainly one. The end scenes actually bear some resemblance to Hamlet - I kid you not - with Gertrude turning on Claudius, and Hamlet (YiYi) having the final duel with Laertes.
The movie is not all that brutal. It does have some blood, but not much in the way of broken bones or deaths, so it's pretty watchable for everybody, which I think is good. There are a number of good scenes, but also some imperfections. Not all of the background music fits the fight scenes very well.
The previous reviewer who says of this movie that "It accomplishes what Hong Kong "Golden Age" directors failed To achieve with their female talent" is to a large extent right. Imagine a movie starring one of the old-school fighting females with as many fight scenes as we have here! In some ways, Coweb is comparable to movies like Joyce Godenzi's She Shoots Straight, but the latter hasn't got anywhere near as much fighting in it, and much the same can be said for many other vintage action movies. A plot that accommodates the fighting as well as Coweb's does is rare, but it is exactly the kind of thing a good martial arts movie desperately needs. Hopefully, action directors are finally beginning to realize this...
8 stars out of 10.
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