Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

 

Director Dustin Daniel Cretton's athletic, nimble and robust Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings amazes with cinematic acrobatics and warm family tension but doesn't quite stick the landing in an overlong climactic cacophony of dragon magic and blurry martial arts.

Simu Liu is every bit the leading man the picture needs as the fantastically gifted Chinese immigrant running from a tyrannical father (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung) who possesses the mystical rings of the title and has used them to extend his life and dominate the world (echoes of the Lord of the Rings). That father and son would ultimately face each other is a given, but the road to the battle royal, set in a hidden mythical realm that was the home of Shang-Chi's lustrous mother (Fala Chen), is circuitous and occasionally foggy.

Most mysterious is the presence of Shang's best friend Katy, a winning Awkwafina delivering her rat-a-rat comic timing and, as befitting perhaps the biggest player in the screen aside from the venerable Michelle Yeoh, getting to strike a winning blow for the good guys. Katy is not Shang's love interest and not quite a totem to feminine agency -- the picture has Chen, Yeoh and the wonderful Meng'er Zhang as Shang's sister, Xialing, bringing truckloads of Asian Girl Magic. Her role is unclear.

Katy's uncanny transformation into a warrior princess in the final reel pestered me, and indications that she will be Shang's companion through the rest of the enterprise is even more mysterious. It may be a brilliant calculation or nagging casing gaffe.

One thing is sure, Cretton's staging of the "Bus Boy" fight early in the film is for the ages and is not bested by any other action sequence in the picture.