An action movie set in the 1930s, Twin Daggers tries hard to overcome its many limitations but doesn’t quite do enough to be anything spectacular. It does, however, do enough to put itself just above average.
Rhett Giles is Scholar, Veronica Bero is Body, Joey Covington is Flex and Vasilios Elovalis is Ghost. The four of them are deadly assassins who used to work together but disbanded after a big job went sour for them. Now hired by a woman (CoCo Su) to kill her twin sister, the assassins are offered the job as a unit but quickly show a preference for working individually. And Scholar complicates things even further by falling for the target and deciding to protect her.
Director Keun-Hou Chen is very hit and miss here but shows potential for the future.
He doesn’t have the most talented cast but they haven’t been picked for their acting ability – there’s no denying the impressive amount of acrobatics on display. The action scenes are enjoyable and lively, only ruined by stylish touches (some slow-motion here and there that isn’t required, attempts at “bullet-time” shots, choppy editing). When the characters are just left to hit each other and the camera is in a good position this is great fun, reminiscent of any number of old-school 80s martial arts movies that could feature American protagonists showing how they could also earn black belts.
The story isn’t actually all that bad, with some twists and turns throughout, but is again let down in places by the execution. Some better acting would have helped the whole thing to be more convincing and there’s also a feeling that the movie thinks it’s more clever than it actually is.
There’s also a bizarre end scene that would feel more at home in a Muppet movie than an action genre flick.
Put up with badly delivered, and often poorly written, dialogue and wooden acting and annoying directorial flourishes and you have some good fights to enjoy. Which is sometimes all that is required from a martial arts movie.
Twin Daggers fights for DVD shelf space on Monday 15th August here in the UK.
DIRECTOR: KEUN-HOU CHEN
STARS: RHETT GILES, COCO SU, VERONICA BERO, JOEY COVINGTON, VASILIOS ELOVALIS
RUNTIME: 89 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: CHINA
Film Rating: 
