The DVD:
Mao Cao (whose brother Mad, by the way, disavows any knowledge of that beef disease named after him) is a ruthless Asian Mafioso who is given to wearing frilly kimono style robes because, it's like, the 12th century or something. Anyway, his chief rival is a mad as a mung bean bad ass named Shih Tzu (or Chou Tu or something like that). Shih/Chou goes around the countryside breaking up criminal activity and revenging people (thus the title monkier...get it?) and it's hard for a Manchu-ed mobster to get his misdemeanor on when there's a goody two-thongs score settling up the place. So Mao gets his fellow felons to join him in an ambush. They kill Shih/Chou and hide his bones (perhaps for later, when they make their bread). Mao then experiences some metaphysical payback when he learns his sister, How Now Brown, is preggers with Shih/Chou's son. He disowns her and she ends up living with Shih/Chou's drunken cockney brothers, the bickering boobs known as Frick-san and Frack-san. Eventually, little baby Chou Tu, christened Chou Shu (guess "Jr." was too simple) comes crawling out of the womb, pissed off and ready to retaliate. Unfortunately, it takes his mom 18 years to spill the beans about Mao and his daddy-destroying ways.

End of Act 1 – Everyone take a deep breath. Here we go again.

Chou is brainwashed by his mother (who immediately kills herself afterward) to never raise his sword in anger. He must not get revenge on Mao. So the confused kid goes after the boss's "business" associates instead. He discovers that a local lardass has his father's bones, and after a really redundant fight, Chou kills the cad with his father's femur. In the meantime, we learn that Mao murdered a powerful family in the small town that harbored Shih Tzu all those years ago because, well, because he's evil, that's all. Unfortunately, this act of patronicide leaves the couple's kids completely kung fu less. So Mao adopts the boy and girl and raises them as his own. They grow up to be fierce warriors and willing to do whatever Mao tells them. Naturally, when the over-eager leader learns that Shih's sire lives, he puts out a contract on him. Everyone wants to kill Chou and all he can do is concentrate on his pappy's patella. When everyone finally meets up, it's like Hamlet except without all the iambic pentameter.

Whewww – Act II down. Get ready for Act III...

There is some sword fighting. We witness a little martial arts action. People die. Honor is restored. Dead fathers are avenged. People named Mao regret the chairman-like title. Everyone hopes their paycheck clears. Names are changed to protect the innocent.

Imagine a time in your life when you've been the most bored and the most perplexed at the same time. Perhaps you were doing a 5000 piece puzzle depicting the mating rituals of albino sea frogs. Maybe you were sitting for the SAT, only to realize as you open the booklet to begin testing that you had spent the entire night before doing hits from your best friend's beer bong. It could be that time when you visited your maiden aunts in Key Biscayne and they regaled you with stories of their bunion surgery (complete with graphic pictures and diagrams). Or possibly you found yourself at a stop along the Lilith Fair tour and after striking out with every drunken Dave Matthews fan in the crowd, you suddenly stood shocked as you understood you were actually listening to – and liking - a Tori Amos song! Well, brace yourself liver of the loser's life. You have never had such a more mind-bendingly bad time with a Hong Kong action flick as you will if, by some evil act of fate, you are forced to witness the witless Shaolin Revenger. Overcomplicated with so much soap opera plot pointing that daytime drama writers are suing for multiple scene stealing, and mixed with vile voice-over and sloppy cinematics, this arcane Chinese fight fiasco is so dull that massive waxing and buffing still can't produce a shine. Most Asian cultures are concerned about honor, face and respect. All three are up for grabs in this glorified costume crap where the only interesting aspect is when the next major narrative upheaval will occur (the statistical average here is once every 3.78 minutes).

You know you're in trouble when the best scene in this supposedly super cool chop sockey film is a sequence where an infant fighter practices his pre-K kung fu moves. Looking like he is suffering from St. Vitus Dance and a decidedly delicate case of itchy ass, this flailing brat has more moves than the Peking version of Menudo and looks more animated than the rest of the cast. His cruel doodie doobie dance exemplifies everything that it wrong with Shaolin Revenger. While really retarded looking, this kid is still filled with unbridled, un-toilet trained energy. He wants to be kicking butt and taking names. He wants to do the old double dragon nut cruncher and turn his tiptoes into little givers of Bangkok ballsack magic. But the rest of the movie just wishes to pour on the misguided ruptured spleen splendor. This Shaolin sheep dip is out to make a supreme saga. It wants to toss in the classic elements of family, authority, regality and tragedy to create an epic poem to punch-outs. But all the f.a.r.t. in the world couldn't broaden the broken scope of this lackluster lethargy. With the plot twisting every ten seconds you would assume this movie was as fast-paced as a typical Hollywood love affair. But this movie puts the "Z's" back into dozing with its static attempt at stoicism. Had it stayed with the peewee pugilist and his jokey Jazzercise gymnastics, we could have had some kid crazy kickboxing fun. But not even Judi Sheppard Missett could make Shaolin Revenger work out properly.

Indeed, the majority of the flashy fisticuffs suck ginseng root. Now most Hong Kong action movies are known for their intricate fight sequences, the kind of battle ballet where men match moves and wits to find a way to out finesse each other. Usually, such whipsmart wars are welcome additions to the action adventure dynamic. Even with over-amplified and exaggerated sound effects rendering every impact like a nuclear collision, an expertly staged martial arts fight is excitement and skill epitomized. But the mano-y-mano material in this muddled mini-series is just too polished. There is no element of surprise, just one accomplished lunge after another, always followed by a perfect parry until the tempo resembles a senior citizen's ballroom boogie competition. Indeed, if you ever wondered where that wonderful ringside riff - "We came here to watch a fight, not a dance" - got its square circle origins, Shaolin Revenger is high on the list of potential starting points. You can actually see the actors stop and count out the next set of swordplay pandemonium, ticking off the time steps one by one. This doesn't mean that the artistry is awful. Indeed, the intricacy of the action can occasionally overcome its terribly stagy quality. But there is none of the modern madness that comes from today's overcomplicated karate. Every bit of martial mania in Shaolin Revenger is so precise and polite that you really don't think anyone will die. At most, after the kicking and punching has concluded, a light reprimand seems to be in order.

But by far the worst part of this repugnant retribution saga is its romance novel plotting. There is so much back stabbing, double crossing, dirty dealing and mistaken identity idiocy that you'd swear you were watching a Senate subcommittee. Dynasty didn't have this many madcap narrative nuances. Maybe that NBC mini-series mistake Centennial had as much unexplained story stacking, but somehow, one gets the feeling that Shaolin Revenger could take it in a two falls or 110 minute tale twist tag team match. This movie keeps resetting every 10 minutes or so. We meet the original Shaolin Revenger. BANG! He gets killed. We learn of Mao Cao's Sister. WHAM! She's with child and in exile. We are introduced to the drunken brothers. GULP! They are raising their sibling's son, and slapping each other. Shaolin Revenger is actually about 18 shifty stories cold compressed into a narrative so gnarled that John Carradine's hands are understandably jealous. Now most Hong Kong action films are not known for their simple stories. But most of the time, the abundance of themes are buried in poetic scenery or somber character close-ups. But Revenger has to show everything. And not only show it, but explain and exemplify it over and over again. By the time we get to the swordplay climax, the movie has borrowed from almost every standard saga situation one can imagine. If only Mao Cao had been secretly gay and his own evil twin, the tall tale trifecta would have been hit for big bucks.

Venom Mob should be ashamed. At least Sandy Frank had the bright idea of turning every hard to handle Asian name in his Gamera movies to simple to remember monikers like Kenny...Kenny...and Ken. Venom decides to decode the movie in a far too literal fashion, letting ultra confusing characters with names like Chin Lao, Shin Lao and Chen Leu occupy the same sentence space. Imagine how confusing a Hollywood film would be if the main characters were named Will Smith, Phil Smith and Bill Smith. The dumb ass dub also has other offal issues. Who decided that the Revenger's buffoonish brothers should speak in a near Monty Python Pepperpot faux cockney caw? The duo of dufus sure look like drunken dipsticks, but the Abbey and Constable quality of their comic capering meshed with the easy-peasy perplexing pronunciation renders the rejects redundant to the rest of the movie. And that is when you can understand what is going on. The dialogue exchanges here overlap so frequently that Robert Altman is spinning in his grace and the exposition is so rapid fire hyperactive that elementary school kids in special Ed classes are hanging their heads in forced recognition. Had the original Cantonese soundtrack been included with some simple, straightforward subtitles, Shaolin Revenger would have, at least, kept its personas correct. But the random hastiness of the happenings and how they are described here destroys the movie.

The Video:
Damn if this movie doesn't look like ten pounds of rotten Kim Chee. First, we get a very faded and out of focus full frame image that renders most of the action decidedly outside the 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The transfer has to resort to panning, scanning and cramming information into the overlong oblong frame just to give us a clue. The colors are washed out and the scenery almost disappears in the background. We also witness a few oversaturated moments where the picture posterizes and the blacks shine like they're glowing with neon. While not completely unwatchable, it is pretty darn close and reveals both Venom Mob's original mentality and Crash Media Groups current concern for kung fu connoisseurs.

The Audio:
As bad as the movie's visual presentation is, the sound is not much better. The Dolby Digital Stereo is terrible. The music is overmodulated so that it constantly distorts during the more dynamic sequences. The voices, as said before, are all rapid fire with over the top acting. The sound effects are far too titanic for the tiny actions they accompany and when everything is combined together, they represent the beginning of an Excedrin headache that no amount of buffering powder could cure.

The Extras:
The two "T's", trailers and technical tidbits are all we get here. The added content consists of some awkward ads for other atrocious looking action flicks and there is the option to go to any fight in the film, automatically. Indeed, this may be the only way to watch the movie. Sit down with your remote; hit Right to the Fight a few times; rejoice in the fact that you've seen the best the movie has to offer in the span of a brief few moments; toss DVD in the garbage can.

Final Thoughts:
It really takes a lot to make a martial arts movie feel like a visit to the proctologist. But Shaolin Revenger will have you so antsy in your pantsies that you'll swear you require a rectal exam just to decipher what all the butt jitters are about. Now, not every kung fu fighting festival can be a perfect combination of warfare, flying and excitement. But Revenger doesn't even try. It's like watching a nine-hour version of The Mikado with uppercuts. The story keeps steeple-chasing itself all over the motivational map until, eventually, it has to kill off as many people as it can to mop up the mess. But this movie would need more than a good bloodletting to correct its horrible humors. Aside from a shorty Shaolin who does the drunken master as he makes mudpies in his parachute pants, there is not a single redeeming moment in this monotonous motion sickness. Even as a rental, this would rank right up there with the time you went to Blockbuster to check out Freddy vs. Jason, only to discover that when you put the DVD in the machine, it was Freddy Got Fingered instead. Fancy Red Mantis Collection label or not, Shaolin Revenger is a crowded, complicated collision of components, fusing bad transfer, sound, scripting and story shaping to create a ridiculous riot instead of a rollercoaster ride. Whenever a specific genre becomes popular, there is always a flood of flotsam hitting the market to capitalize on the craze. Shaolin Revenger is one such 'Jah Ni come crawling' lately. It should have just stayed at home.

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