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Edmund Lee

1.5/5 stars
Inexternal is a Hong Kong martial arts fantasy that hits all the cheesy beats of those pulpy old-school kung fu extravaganzas of a bygone era – only to fall desperately short when it comes to the fighting.
If its psychedelic animated pre-title sequence raises reasonable expectations that viewers are in for some zany entertainment usually reserved for the midnight crowds, the movie proceeds slowly but surely to dash our hopes with its astonishingly clumsy storytelling.
The “story” centres around Chet (Angus Yeung Tin-yue, Social Distancing), an employee of a veterinary clinic who inadvertently gets on the wrong side of a gang of thugs. When we first meet him he is already badly beaten up and left in a coma, struggling to hold on to his life on a hospital bed.


In his hallucinatory state, Chet finds himself wandering alone in a dark fantastical world. There he meets the martial arts master Sifu Turtle (Dave Lam Ching) and his granddaughter Cloud (Macy Ma Sihui), who are hiding from Dragon (Louis Cheung Kai-chung), a powermonger in this underworld.
It soon transpires that Chet is the chosen one to inherit Turtle’s ancient technique of “Lethwei boxing”. And there is something about a sacred pendant, a bloody history between Turtle and Dragon, three other grandmasters ready to mentor our hero, a dragon lady working for Dragon, and so on.
If all these sound like martial arts novel clichés, it is because they are. In a parallel and sometimes amusing plotline, we learn that this story is actually being read to Chet from a book by his mother (Candice Yu On-on), who is doing her part to keep her son’s mind alive by his bedside.
Still, even by the loose narrative standards of films based around near-death fever dreams, Inexternal, which is co-scripted by director-producer Yuen Kim-wai and screenwriter Ryan Ling Wai-chun, is a surprisingly incoherent mess.

For instance, it’s not clear how Chet can picture Dragon as the villain in his dreams when he has not met the gang leader in real life. Similarly, while it is a clever gimmick to let Chet’s mother dictate his fate with her reading, the film never manages to show that correlation.
None of these would have mattered if the fight scenes were remotely watchable. Instead, the awfully edited, barely comprehensible martial arts sequences that pepper Inexternal only prompt one to wonder about the point of it all.
The film’s scramble to understand the appeal of its own genre is on par with Yuen’s first two efforts, Heaven in the Dark and Legally Declared Dead. It’s perhaps worth noting that Inexternal was shot three years ago – before the filmmaker finally impressed with The Moon Thieves, released earlier this year.
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Macy Ma (left) and Angus Yeung in a still from Inexternal. Photo: Emperor Motion Pictures

Angus Yeung as Chet in a still from Inexternal 
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Louis Cheung as gang leader Dragon in a still from Inexternal.

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Qu Chuxiao (left) and Zhang Zifeng in a still from High Forces.

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Terrance Lau as Wai in a still from Stuntman.

Tung Wai as Lee Sam (left) and Terrance Lau as Lee Sai-long in a still from Stuntman (category IIB, Cantonese), directed by Albert Leung and Herbert Leung. Philip Ng co-stars.

From left: Philip Ng as Wai, Tung Wai as Lee Sam and To Yin-gor as the director in a still from Stuntman.

Terrance Lau as aspiring stuntman Lee Sai-long in a still from Stuntman.

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Mark Cheng in a still from The Unwavering Brotherhood.

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Martial arts clichés, clumsy storytelling and terrible fight scenes all add up to a fantasy that is less than fantastic


Martial arts clichés, clumsy storytelling and terrible fight scenes all add up to a fantasy that is less than fantastic.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


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Review | Inexternal movie review: martial arts fantasy fails even to offer watchable fight scenes

Martial arts clichés, clumsy storytelling and terrible fight scenes all add up to a fantasy that is less than fantastic