I'll tell you why so serious

Better Late Then Never

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Michelle Yeoh might not be a trained martial artist, but with her background as a dancer, lots of meticulous choreography and more than a little help from Hong Kong cinema magic, she is suitably convincing as a kick-ass kung fu cutie. Here, she plays a female Indiana Jones-style character, a daring aviator and mercenary who, with help from a secret agent (Derek Yee) and a wacky con-man/wanderer (Richard Ng), helps the people of a small Northern Chinese town to fight the evil Japanese invaders who want to build a poison gas plant on their land.As is often the case with '80s Hong Kong actioners, Magnificent Warriors suffers from a touch too much screwball silliness (mostly courtesy of comic relief Ng) and some lightweight flirting between Yeoh and Yee, all of which would be excusable if the action, of which there is plenty, was sufficiently exciting. Unfortunately, the countless explosive set-pieces and fast-moving fight scenes never really set the pulse pounding: there's lots of crash, bang and wallop, but very little that sticks in the mind as jaw-dropping, making it a frustratingly mediocre adventure overall.

This movie is oddly enough the essence of Hong Kong cinema, back from the late 1980's. The story is fairly simple, and spiced up with comedy elements, while the main focus of the movie is the martial arts and action sequences.The story is about a small group of people who has to rescue a guy from the clutches of Japanese invaders."Magnificent Warriors" ("Zhong Hua Zhan Shi") has elements of action and martial arts, obviously, and also elements of comedy and drama. There is sort of a light-hearted Indiana Jones touch to the movie as well.Michelle Yeoh does put on a good performance here, martial arts and action-wise, as the movie is not heavy on dramatic acting performances.If you enjoy martial arts movies and/or Asian cinema in general, then you should watch "Magnificent Warriors" for the action that it is.

This movie begins as a comedy about spies and a gambler who has to support them unwillingly, but in the second half it turns into a war drama with a rapidly increasing body-count. It seems to play (no exact date given) after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria 1931. Obviously, as a Chinese production it can not be expected to be neutral on history, therefore is eager to show patriotic Chinese who burn down their home town before it falls into the hands of the enemy. "Dynamite Fighters", aka "Dynamite Heroes" on European DVD, seems a bit chaotic, but the action moves so fast you don't think much about it, and young Michelle Yeoh is tireless kicking everyone who doesn't get out of her way. I loved the opening scene when she is the pilot of an airplane and steals from those who have stolen from others. It's good fun most of the time, but in the end didn't entirely fulfill my expectations.

After going to see "In The Line Of Duty 2" and having been impressed with Michelle Khan - both in terms of fighting and in terms of beauty - I didn't need much urging to go and see "Zhong hua zhan shi" ("Born Fighter"), but I was a bit disappointed.The fighting scenes were good, for sure, but the movie's comic relief was allowed to take up too much time (of course, this could have been a result of Barbadian censorship; I still remember seeing "Coming to America" and hearing Eddie Murphy's only four-letter word in the only movie being cut out, never find the fact that it also cut out the point of the joke), and ultimately diluted the movie's effect. But things worked out okay for Michelle in the end...