The Monkey King 2 is a beautifully wrought conversation about Buddhism compared to the ethics of killing for a just cause. While poignantly crafted, an appropriately lite-on-philosophy screenplay has threads of humor and lots of action to illustrate the ethical struggle.
Extremely high Art Direction fills the entire movie with eye-candy. The Monkey King 2 even refrains from commercially desirable, simplistic, Western Morality Tale endings, so the challenges to our understandings, in light of human history, are real.
Aaron Kwok, as the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, uses his maximally forward costume, instead of the costume using him, to add well-tuned facial empathy to a character that is in danger of being mistaken for more conventionally wooden "super heroes", then Kwok adds precisely focused micro-body language from a simian dialect that adds more lite touches of delight throughout this movie. Strong ensemble performances from the other characters accent and are accented by Aaron Kwok's distinctly strong lead.
Not something I do often, but I will watch this movie again and again. I'm also looking forward to more of this storytelling.
Extremely high Art Direction fills the entire movie with eye-candy. The Monkey King 2 even refrains from commercially desirable, simplistic, Western Morality Tale endings, so the challenges to our understandings, in light of human history, are real.
Aaron Kwok, as the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, uses his maximally forward costume, instead of the costume using him, to add well-tuned facial empathy to a character that is in danger of being mistaken for more conventionally wooden "super heroes", then Kwok adds precisely focused micro-body language from a simian dialect that adds more lite touches of delight throughout this movie. Strong ensemble performances from the other characters accent and are accented by Aaron Kwok's distinctly strong lead.
Not something I do often, but I will watch this movie again and again. I'm also looking forward to more of this storytelling.