Country: China

Big of budget and large in scope, ‘Double World’ starts out promising and begins to build to something rather exciting before petering off in the final third when it can’t quite keep up its momentum.

‘Dragon Blade’, for the most part is an entertaining ride but sways inconsistently between hard hitting period action and cheesy dramatics.

The action ranges from the adequate to the quite good – hardly a ringing endorsement, I grant you – but suffers from that same curse of poor wirework.

There aren’t any surprises in ‘Duckweed’, but for a well made feel-good film it’s about as good as we’ll see this year.

While ‘Dying To Survive’ offers an important message, it is, at its heart, an excellent comic drama.

Feng’s achievement is that his work here is a delightful romance while also successfully juggling numerous other sub-plots.

‘End of Innocence’ won’t be counted among the great thrillers to come out of Asia in recent years, but it’s a more than competent effort and generates real tension before the credits roll.

‘Escape of Shark’ is a remake of Australian thriller ‘Bait’ which, while not a masterpiece either, is several notches above this effort.

Whether this is the beginning of the Esports film remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure – there’s definitely plenty of room for improvement.

This is a Jet Li film we can finally be proud of and a Ronny Yu work that will finally stand the test of time.

‘Fist From Shaolin’ really stands out with its powerful choreography which, even after numerous other fine new-wave productions, remains very impressive.

Those less critical may get more out of ‘Flying Swords’ as there is still a lot of high flying action on offer, despite it being stuffed with CGI, and the film certainly has a rich visual style.