Film - Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

The latest in the Marvel series, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Ten Rings one as it is in my head) appealed to me as I’m partial to martial arts. It probably stems back to being bought up on a diet of Bruce Lee but we now are in an altogether more sophisticated modern-day version.

We are introduced to Shang-Chi as Shaun, living in San Francisco working as a car parking valet with his best mate Katy (Awkwafina, who should be everyone’s best mate as she often is on celluloid). That is, until the day he needs to use his fighting skills to save himself and the bus full of people from a determined killer axeman. Or should I say swordsman (no spoiler). I think this is the second time Awkwafina plays a surprised best mate as she learns of his skills for the first time. (Crazy Rich Asians? Nora from Queens?)

Shang-Chi/Shaun is conflicted by having no choice but to show his superpowers to save innocent people’s lives that he has unintentionally put in danger. 

We now know he is a fully trained fighter so we need to know the story and for that, we go back to his childhood. The film takes us there often, seeing the sweet Shang-Chi and his innocent sister Xialing with their mum in a faraway, mystical place.

I didn’t figure out why Katy would go with him to look for the Ten Rings Organisation and help put a stop to this wave of violence that has reached their peaceful Californian world. An unfamiliar world where battles are lost and won in person with skill and magic (magical to me) rather than the internet but it wouldn’t be a (Marvel) film otherwise. And she had plenty of scene-stealing moments along with Xialing and the mother. Just great to see all these women being men’s equal during the battles.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings provides great entertainment, and I got everything promised.

8/10

PS Stay all the way through the credits