Review: Fight scenes, mystical powers, slow-mo bullet dodging… Wu Assassins gets better and be

Set in San Franciso, this awsome martial arts film sees a humble chef granted mystical powers, and with the help of his friends, hunt down five powerful warlords in Wu Assassins, a new supernatural action drama from Netflix.

Above: Iko Uwais stars as Kai Jin, a Chinese-Indonesian chef in San Francisco’s Chinatown who is granted a mystical power in the new Netflix series Wu Assassins.

MARTIAL ARTS AND FANTASY PLOT:

Indonesian martial-arts star Iko Uwais (remember the guy from The Raid, er, not so much in his new film, Stuber) stars as Kai Jin, a Chinese-Indonesian food-truck chef in San Francisco’s Chinatown who finds himself chosen as the last of the Wu Assassins, (Yip, Wu Assassin, you did hear us correctly), a long line of fighters tasked with killing the five Wu Warlords.

The warlords all possess elemental supernatural powers tied to fire, wood, earth, metal, and water. These powers were conferred upon them by the Wu Xing: five shards that are absorbed into the body when touched. Kai’s task is to kill the current crop of Wu Warlords, reassemble the shards, and send them back to heaven where they belong, thus ridding the world of their influence.

Not that the Wu Xing are necessarily evil (later, we learn they reflect the character of whoever possesses them). It just so happens that bad people tend to crave the immense power they bring to the beholder.

All this is set against the backdrop of the Chinese triad in San Francisco (damn triad’s are everywhere). Kai’s estranged adoptive father, Uncle Six (Byron Mann, The Expanse), heads the triad—hence the father/son estrangement when you watch the series. And Uncle Six turns out to be the Fire Wu, complicating matters even further.

Kai has a strong bond with three childhood friends, all of whom survived a warehouse fire as kids: Jenny Wah (Li Jun Li, Quantico), who runs a chic Chinese restaurant thanks to a loan from Uncle Six; her brother Tommy (Lawrence Kao, The Walking Dead), who’d be a great restaurateur if he could kick his drug habit and be a wannabe triad gang member; and last and not least, Lu Xin Lee (Lewis Tan, Iron Fist, Into the Badlands, yeah, that guy), who owns a custom garage that serves as a front for the triad. There’s also an undercover cop, Christine “CG” Gavin, played superbly by (Katheryn Winnick, Bones, Vikings), trying to infiltrate the triad.

We meet Kai in the same way we meet most everyman characters — living a fairly ordinary life, going about his daily business, and dreaming of something more. His story takes a quick left turn, however, when the mysterious Ling-Ling shows up and gives him (somewhat forcefully) the mantle of the Wu assassin.

Kai quickly finds himself in a lot of trouble with Chinatown’s Triad, but his powers allow him to hide in plain sight as he uses previous Wu assassin faces to disguise himself. In a matter of only a few hours, his life has become infinitely more complicated (thanks to his pure heart), but infinitely more interesting.

BOOM! And we have a recipe for a martial arts-laden fantasy quest. And from the surface its more than a martial arts show.

While the series takes inspiration from kung fu films and Asian mythology, it also explores the contemporary Asian-American experience. These include drug addictions and xenophobia. A standout scene in Episode 07, set in an Oregon diner, involves a white waitress who makes a passively racist assumption that Kai and his father (Byron Mann) aren’t “from here.”

ABOVE: Lewis Tan, Lawrence Kao, and Li Jun Li in Wu Assassins (2019)

Jenny and Tommy have a contentious relationship. There is plenty of love between the two, but they couldn’t be more different from each other. Jenny is practiced in the art of saving face. She dresses impeccably and never shows weakness. The success of their family restaurant rests firmly on her shoulders, and she’s been tasked with a mound of responsibilities that threaten to break her completely.

Tommy, meanwhile, tries his hardest to live up to the expectations of his sister and their overbearing, disapproving parents, but he never quite manages to keep his feet under him for long. He’s an addict who also happens to be mixed up with the Triad. He’s by no means a bad person, but he often finds himself in compromising positions that he can’t find his way out of on his own.

That’s usually when Jenny steps in.

Rounding out this quartet of characters is Lu Xin, who owns a custom garage and steals cars on the side for the Triad. Unlike Kai and Jenny, he has no problem committing crimes in the name of the Triad, but unlike Tommy, he’s actually good at it.

STANDOUT CHARACTER:

Li Jun Li, who was born in China but grew up in New York City, plays the politically ambitious “Jenny” in the majority Asian cast of Wu Assassins.

[Jenny] finds herself battling her own burden of expectations from her parents when they leave the family restaurant for her to run, which has forced her to take her own dreams to the back-burner. It’s taken a toll on her relationships with the other characters in the show.

Wu Assassins is such an awesome film, it does a great job introducing a show that has mainly Asian actors at the forefront. Yip, there has been a lack of diverse representation behind and in front of the cameras. Alongside Wu Assassins, shows like Kim’s Convenience, Fresh Off the Boat, Warrior, and Season 2 of the AMC horror anthology The Terror have explored the numerous facets of the Asian diaspora.

Above, C.G. (Katheryn Winnick), better known as Christine Gavin, is an undercover cop and a car thief who’s trying to stop a race war from breaking out in Chinatown between the Triad and some Russian mobsters. She gets a job in Lu Xin’s garage, where she plans to prove herself and get herself in deeper with the Triad.

And Zan (JuJu Chan) round out the other series-long term character who is Uncle Six’s number two, a badass motherfucker who will stop at nothing to be the Head of San Francisco’s Triad movement.

THE BIG BAD:

Timeline aside, we’re introduced to the series’ main villain after a few episodes. Alec McCullough, the former Sons of Anarchy actor is a warlord who controls wood and is looking to be reunited with his family. He’s more one-dimensional than Uncle Six, but he poses a serious threat and proves to be a cunning and resourceful antagonist to our hero.

In fact, it’s easy to sympathize with McCullough, even though it’s obvious he’s willing to do anything to accomplish his goals. He was given a power he did not ask for and lost his family in the process. Time, grief, and magic have warped his mind, but it’s hard to blame him for just wanting to go back to his old life.

But the fact that McCullough has a whimsy feel to him, the bad guy is actually a  complete let down to the main story of the show.

WE LOVED:

Kai’s profession. Perhaps the best non-fight sequence in the first three episodes is a montage of Kai and Jenny preparing a meal in the restaurant. They chop, they spice, they flame, they flirt. The choreographed moves around the kitchen act as a nod to the choreographed battles. Watching the dance-like food preparation was terrific, and we hope to some more great moves in a future season two between the characters.

THE END IS NIGH:

With Big Bad, the Wood Wu Alec McCullough who would have upset the balance of time itself by returning to the past to be with his long-dead family now dead. The various Wu Xing’s restored, Kai, his adopted siblings Jenny (Li Jun Li) and Tommy (Lawrence Kao), and Lu Xin sits down for a family-friendly dinner.

DUM, DUM, DUM...

Of course, the Earth shakes, the ground trembles, and the restaurant collapses around them as Ying Ying returns—seemingly in the flesh, not on the spiritual plane—to tell Kai “it’s not over yet, the world still needs the Wu Assassin.”

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Wu Assassins does pretty well with the first season, mixing drama with the fight scenes. Even with the power of the Wu Assassin, though, sitting through the whole series may be an almost impossible challenge if you do not like martial arts/fantasy.

A lot is much funnier than intended throughout Wu Assassins season one, thanks in large part to creators Tony Krantz and John Wirth‘s decision to play this bad boy absolutely straight. The cast is uniformly fantastic across the board—Uwais is one breakout from becoming a mega-star.

It’s an electric lead performance from Iko Uwais and the rest of the main characters, throwing down Jackie Chan moves and Big Trouble In Little China fantasy story-telling vibe.

4.5/5 STARS