TV Talk - Wu Assassins

Next up for the month is a bit of a late edition. Originally, I was going to look at some movies that featured actor Iko Uwais from The Raid movies. He’s done quite a bit since then. He and the director of the Raid movies also had a precursor to The Raid called Merantau. I was going to watch this and a couple of other movies, but I remembered that this show was on Netflix and decided to finish it out.

Wu Assassins is a pretty recent addition to Netflix. It was greenlit in 2018, and it eventually made it to Netflix on August 8^th, 2019. Uwais was brought in immediately as the main star, and he also served as a fight choreographer and coordinator on the show. I didn’t recognize too many faces from the show. I did recognize Lewis Tan from a couple of things. Bryan Mann was another recognizable face, but it took a while to remember what he was in. He’s appeared in quite a few things. The role I should’ve recognized him for was his time as Ryu in the 1990’s Street Fighter movie. Also, actors Mark Dascasos, Summer Glau, Tommy Flannagan, and Kevin Durand appear in roles.

Wu Assassins takes place in San Francisco and revolves around Kai Jin (Uwais), a Chinatown chef. He ends up being chosen as the next Wu Assassin by the spirit of the first Wu Assassin. Basically, his job is to take down the Wu Warlords. The Warlords have control of the elements like fire, water, wood, metal, and earth. What Kai doesn’t know at first is that Uncle Six, his adopted father and Chinese Triad boss, has control of the Fire Wu. He also has to deal undercover cops, shady friends, The Triad, other gangsters vying for power, an annoying friend who’s an addict, and a mentoring spirit who can kinda be grating at times. Oh yeah, there’s a whole lotta butt-kicking going on!

PROS

While the show isn’t perfect, I did enjoy it for the most part. The thing that mostly kept me around for all ten episodes was the actors. I thought Iko Uawis was nice in the lead role. He wasn’t the best actor around, but he did what he could do in the role. Besides, he’s got the physical part of his role down, but I’ll get to the pretty good fight choreography later. I also liked Bryan Mann in the role of Uncle Six. Sure, he was a bad guy, but you knew that Kai was his soft spot. Lewis Tan as Liu Xin was cool and I also liked Kathryn Winnick as Christine Gavin, aka “CG.”

The story is kind of  your usual “you got to beat these dudes to save the world” plot, but it’s not a bad one. The drama between Kai and his friends mostly takes up the time and some of it isn’t bad. Jen and Tommy, two of his friends, have some issues to sort out with their restaurant and themselves. I also thought the dynamic between Kai and Uncle Six was nice. While the true villains were… eh, I did think the main villain, Alec McCullough, had an relatable goal. He wasn’t evil for evil’s sake, so that’s nice.

At least Bryan Mann almost got to pull off a Hadoken on the show.

Of course, you got Uwais helping choreograph this thing, so you know the fights are going to pop, right? From the first episode to the last, the fight scenes were pretty good. If you like what was done in the Raid movies, then you’ll like what’s done here. I will say that it isn’t as gory as it can get with those movies, but there is some blood here. It also helped that most of these actors actually knew martial arts, so we didn’t get an “Iron Fist Season 1” problem. I thought the music choices were also nice. It’s been a while since I’ve heard the classic “Shake It Fast” from Mystikal.

CONS

I never knew how important an interesting mentor is until now. Ying Ying wasn't it.

While I do like the show, it does have some problems. Probably the biggest one is the pacing. Is this an issue with Netflix in general or what? Even the Marvel shows have issues with that. There are times where episodes can get pretty dull. It also doesn’t help when the writing for certain episodes isn’t that good. Episode 7 was probably the worst of the bunch. Even though you had a road trip, the main plot was pretty weak. It also felt like the show didn’t do enough to explain its lore at times. I got to the last episode, and there were things that still didn’t make much sense.

The villains were kinda “meh” for the most part. I thought it was weird that the Wu Warlords pretty much make up the last third of the season. It also didn’t help that they were pretty uninteresting. While the acting for the main leads was decent, you had some pretty bad acting from some folk. I know Kai’s mentor, Ying Ying, was kinda crap. I don’t know if it was the dialogue or the actress, but I couldn’t stand that character. The CG used here was also pretty mixed. Some of it would be some what decent while the rest looked really cheap.

Our Irish villain was... okay. I wish his underlings were better.

While I did like the fight choreography, you did get a couple of shots that weren’t great. I guess “Shaky-Cam Dan” paid a visit for a while. Another thing that kinda peeved me off was the fact that it ended in a cliffhanger. It wasn’t even a good cliffhanger either. I don’t know if I’m curious for the next season or not right now. Other than these things, I still liked the show.

……………………………………………………………….

In the end, Wu Assassins had a fine first season. There is room for improvement on the story side, but the action is pretty good as a whole. I don’t know if it’ll return for another season, but I kinda hope it does. Maybe it’ll make sense of that weird cliffhanger. Anyway, I’m off to bed. Next time, I’ll need to beat the traffic before “Rush Hour” or something like that. Anyway, Peace, God Bless, and be careful out there.