Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is quite of a conundrum of a film to write about. I’m composing this review several days after having seen the movie and I feel much the same way I did when I first saw it. The movie, part of Marvel’s phase 4, is aggressively fine in total. Much like Captain Marvel, there’s a highly touted star on the rise and a driving need to launch this character to forward the next set of stories. Also, like Captain Marvel, its perfectly fine entertainment in the moment, but the overall staying power is pretty negligible.
The past is never far away and Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) learns this all too well when on a seemingly normal day hanging with his bestie Katy (Awkafina) when he is attacked by Razor Fist (Florian Muntenau), forcing him into action. This battle and the subsequent fall out draws him back into the clutches of his father (Tony Leung), leader of the Ten Rings and forces him to deal with his past and discover who he truly is.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a story that goes into some mystical directions so it requires an ensemble of actors to help guide us through this fantastical tale. Tony Leung as The Madarin/Wenwu, the leader of the Ten Rings was delightful. Leung is such a strong actor that no matter what way the script needs the character to move within the story, he never loses sight of what’s true in the moment. Loved everything about his performance, even though the script sometimes needs to take weird swings with motivations.
Simu Liu is as able bodied as any MCU hero and does have a kind of effortless levity that can be used for great effect balancing out his character’s super serious backstory. Awkafina, for all the problems I have with her earlier career choices, has shown strength as a capable actress in projects like The Farewell. I don’t think the movie makes the best use of either actor however, neither quite reaching their full potential as the range of emotions they play and their scenes fall a bit flat. It was nice however to see them get to play platonic friends in some funny ways.
Stealing the movie right from out under everyone is Meng’er Zhang as Xialing. She is absolutely dynamite on screen from the second she enters the picture as someone with a strong connection to Shang Chi and pulls focus from everyone no matter the scene she’s in.
Other than the scenes with her, the movie reaches its highest highs during its fights. It’s thrilling to not only watch great action photography but having it mounted by stars and stunt crews who know what they are doing, and people who know how to shoot them. The only issue is that the more fantastical the movie gets, the more the luster comes off those fights. By the time the movie reaches the inevitable CGI conclusion, the fights don’t contain quite the same thrill as they did when they were in more “grounded” setting.
The MCU isn’t what you would consider grounded cinema, so it was not a shock to see the movie barrel towards big set pieces involving nearly every character we had been introduced to with a villain quite unlike what we have seen before. It is nice to see Marvel take weird swings, but the movie feels unmoored the more fantastical it chose to get, especially as it saddles the villain with some flimsy supernatural reasons for why they need to act. So while Shang-Chi tries to elevate itself visually, the movie gets bogged down in the plot, dragging the whole picture into a place that feels like just a momentary experience that doesn’t have much staying power.