Thailand's Chocolate and Denmark's Fighter opened the flood gates for a female-fronted martial arts revival in 2008 and the gates show no sign of closing any time soon. Coming in 2009 are Japan's High Kick Girl and Hong Kong's Coweb, the common thread between the films being that all feature first time actresses who are real life fighters and do all of their own fight and stunt work.
Coweb marks the directorial debut of Xiong Xin Xin, a familiar name to martial arts fans around the globe thanks to his acting role as Clubfoot in the Once Upon A Time In China films. Xiong has been absent from the screen for a while now but that's only because he's been busy working as a fight choreographer and now as a director. The star? Jiang Luxia, who was spotted on the Hong Kong martial art reality show The Disciple, a show sponsored by Jackie Chan to find the next generation of Hong Kong screen fighters - a successful move as a number of finalist are appearing in upcoming films. Here's a synopsis:
Newcomer 蒋露霞 Jiang Luxia, a finalist of The Disciple reality TV show, plays the lead role as Guangdong wushu coach Nie Yi Yi who gets implicated by a kidnap case in Hong Kong. It's up to her to battle waves after waves of fighters to rescue her employer and his wife who are kidnapped. Little did she know that her fights are being captured on video and broadcast live via a website which serves as an illegal online gambling den...
When we first wrote about this back in September there was a trailer and a pair of clips available on the official website. Those have disappeared now but a new trailer has just surfaced which you can find below the break. The video quality is lower than I'd like but the fight quality is nice and high.
Great poster art, same artist that did the magnificent Shamo poster?
It certainly looks similar, doesn't it?
Chick is hardcore.
Ehh... too much wire-fu for my liking...
Can't believe that they are using the same scene from Rush Hour 2. Other than that it looks pretty generic.
This one trailer is better than the whole of Chocolate. That movie was a complete waste of time, even for the action. It's a shame that action movies get a pass for being stupid just because they have action. I'm looking forward to this one, though! Best of luck to Xiong Xin Xin!
But you guys should really change the headline. "Chick fight"? What are you, a bunch of 9 year olds? You don't call action movies with guys "stud fights." Next you're going to refer to the whole genre as chopsocky flicks.
Not bad, but can't say it left me too excited. Needs a better trailer, one that doesn't have matrix music in the background.
Chinese bamboo very strong!!
Looks respectable. But you can't expect too much from both Jiang Luxia's and Xiong Xin Xin's debut.
Anyone here actually get to see The Disciple? Interested to know if it was any good.
usually these kind of movie don't have a strong story but what they have is some of the most amazing fighting scenes that look so dam real because they are real and that is something that Hollowed can never get even close to with all there CG....
I love me a good chopsocky flick! Unfortunately the latter half looks more like a stunt team reel...not a bad thing but it doesn't mesh too well with the opening. I agree with Iscariot on the 'young girl can take a hit!' angle - if the footage is anything to go by, we've seen it done better and recently so at that.
After reading most of these post, you can never satisfy a fanboy!!! You could have icicles shooting out of Britney Spears camel toe in a movie, and still wouldn't impress these star wars lotr nerd.
Let me put it like this, Eurotrash... If it was Wu Jing or Daniel Wu in that trailer, people would probably be lamenting the fact that they've done much better work in the past. The fight rhythm feels off, and I think overall it's not a well made trailer. That doesn't mean I'm impossible to please, the trailer for Ip Man has me dying to see it, and there's not a lightsaber or elf to be found in it.
The funny thing is, i dislike Star Wars a lot, and i couldn't care less about LOTR, a.k.a: When Frodo met Sam.
I'm not fan of Star Trek or Harry Potter either, i already passed puberty.
awesome