Movie Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

I'm not a big fan of superhero movies - and the Marvel ones are particularly bad - but this is… pretty good!

It's nice to see a modern / westernised "Kung Fu" movie. All the budget of a blockbuster, all the cheese of cheap Wuxia. It's refreshing that so much of it is subtitled - and surprisingly brave for a Hollywood studio. There's no daft love-story wedged in, and no obsessive call-backs to previous movies. If you didn't catch the cameos or background detail, there's no way you'd know this was part of the MCU.

Oscar winner Ben Kingsley has a lots of fun and steals the scenes he's in. Awkwafina is as delightfully daft as ever. The whole cast knows they're superfluous to the story. We're here for the CGI monsters and some sweet martial-arts moves.

And they're pretty sweet! Sure, it's all wire-work, and quickly cut. But it looks so gorgeous. There are lots of references to classic movies - and I'm certainly not qualified to have spotted them all - but it's great fun.

There's no great moral here. Like lots of American movies, it's all about the psychodrama of disappointing your dad. Watch it, then go watch the better movies it is based off.