WHAT’S IT ABOUT
Extreme sports lover Zhou Feng got involved in illegal international trade by accident. So he had to follow an international special agent Bruce to Budapest. Together with a crappy police officer Miao Yan, a non-professional scientist Ding Shan and an unemployed doctor LV, they became an amateur unit. In company with the senior agent Bruce, these four rookies started a fight with the terrorists that were thrilling and hilarious.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
There’s nothing I can say to fully explain the craziness of this movie. The Rookies is like The Three Stooges meet James Bond on Sesame Street. Although, that’s not how it started. The opening scene had the extreme promise of being a great film. There was a mysterious island scene, then an undercover operation in progress. Last, they show an extreme sports and internet influencer racing up the outside of a really tall building with another influencer. All this in the first ten minutes. Then, it started going downhill. The island is never shown again. The sting operation was a bust, and the quasi-parkour guys became a setup for the next scene. The longer this film lasted, the dumber it got. It went from drama to slapstick in the blink of an eye. The action scenes were, at times, very confusing because you never knew how much to take seriously. Some parts were animated to expand on a particular character’s thoughts or feelings. It was painfully obvious how hard they tried to be funny, but nearly every “joke” hit like a ton of bricks. So much so, I began to feel sorry for the actors. That’s when it became clear, Milla Jovovich did it for the money. Her character was an agent named Bruce. Like I stated earlier, they were trying hard to get laughs. The story itself was highly inconsistent as it followed the main four protagonists stumbling through every mission while succeeding in some impossible way. Every conversation was practically a setup for the subsequent comedic encounter. The chemistry between the characters was also very uneven. They didn’t want to work together, but they apparently had to. They didn’t get along, but they liked each other. They helped each other and sabotaged each other at the same time. The criminals weren’t any better. There was backstabbing and cooperation within the same group of people. Last note, this film is mainly in Mandarin. Of course, Bruce (Jovovich) and the small American cast spoke English, so unless you can speak (or understand) Chinese, you’ll spend most of your time reading, and it will not be worth it.
OUR RATING – A SORRY UNFUNNY 2