Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Or: Perfect Harmony

Trim and gorgeous, well plotted and its characters finely etched, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a breathtaking experience. It has all the flash and sparkle of its Marvel kindred but is solidly in a class of its own, writing its own formula and bearing an epic fantasy with a human heart. I lost how many times I gasped throughout, or clucked my tongue in appreciation, or clapped my hands together in delight.

Wu Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) or Shaun to his friends, is a laidback guy in a self-contained life. Little do his friends, principally his boon companion Katy (Awkwafina), know he is actually the son of immortal warlord Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung) and the guardian of a magic village Ying Li (Fala Chen), the latter having died in the obligatory tragic manner and the former marshaling his collection of magical bracelets and vast secret army to destroy the aforementioned magic village (all at the ventriloquisting behest of a soul-eating Cthulhu-Dragon aforementioned village is guarding.

Sounds like a lot? It actually plays out pretty well, each layer building on and complimenting the other, like a triptych or a layer cake.) Now Shang-Chi and his estranged sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) in attempt to steer their father from his evil ways or put him down once and for all.

Liu’s character development is more clipped and less perfunctory than other action heroes might be brought into. Not so much time is wasted on him dithering about his role as hero, but a more interesting journey of sorting through the rubble of his trauma to find the powered and empowered person he’s meant to be. I wish a little more of the same had been lavished on his sister. Zhang goes on the same journey of breaking down her armor and then girding it on again but much of the moments happen frustratingly off screen.

Perhaps the best bit of the film is that, much like its final battle, the heroism of the film is a team effort. Liu and Zhang carry the lead of the story, but are heavily supported by their aunt Ying Nan (Michelle Yeoh, always crystalline in intention), Ben Kingsley’s surprise return as Trevor Slatterly (a faithful laugh geyser decent attempt at Kingsley and the studio paying off their problematic debt) and most winningly by Awkwafina. Not quite comic relief, not quite love interest, Katy is a splendid blend of Awkwafina’s range as an actor, the slinky disbelieving grinner of grins and the crystalline reflection of turmoil. Her own growth would make a fine narrative of its own.

But I tell a lie, the best bit of the film is Tony Leung. Though we don’t quite get the full spectrum of what means to live a thousand years or captain an ancient marital society, we see Wenwu as the epitome of the villainous dad (a cut above your classic but uncomplicated “I am your Father” and heaps higher than other predatory paterfamilias marvel has to offer (yes, I’m looking at you Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, you with your giant gun.)

 The percussive physics of the ten rings (artfully and inventively explored throughout the whole) is nothing compared to Leung’s crippling expression of his disappointment at his children. He also gets to show a genuine softer side (especially in the world’s most violent meet-cute where in a verdant grove, he shares looks of shy appreciation with Chen as they each try to hand the other their teeth. He conducts himself with the devastating arrogance of a patriarch who has no need to rant and rail at his children, but with the equally maddening and believable assuirty of a man who knows that horse medicine will keep him safe from COVID and won’t you try some too?

The cinematography is lush and intricate, swimming around an assassination attempt on a public bus, to scoping out the sweat and rivets of a dark web fight club, and conjures the majestic beauty of creatures from Chinese myth around the ideal village of Ta Lo. But it’s not above pulling a little cinematic storytelling too, my absolute favorite being when Wenwu takes young Shang-Chi (here played by Jayden Zhang) on a little murder jaunt to a rivals den. The brutality of the ten rings, and the boys hitherto beloved father, caught out of focus or in the reflections of glass says all that it needs to, showing a beauty without making it the least bit beautiful and laying out room and a half for the actor the grow and work with the given screen.

And that’s what it is, a well matched, swiftly tilting world of a film, that satisfies deep longings in its viewers and whose stitched together places bear few if any scars. It’s well worth tracking to your local cinema (if suitably vaccinated, masked, and distanced) to see.