I've always quite enjoyed Usual Suspect, though not to the extremes of the praise it's usually given. But I thought it was well crafted, Stephen Baldwin and Benicio Del Toro are funny as hell in it. And I thought the ending was fine, perhaps predictable, but I enjoyed that it cast almost the whole movie in doubt, that was pretty bold I thought. Normally a technique like that would really piss me off, some kind of it's all in his head machina thing, but nah, somehow Usual Suspects didn't bother me much with that. Though sure, it's definitely not a movie I think about very much. Way of the Gun however (written by the same guy), that movie rules, love that one way more.
I'd seen this maybe 8 years ago, somewhere around then, and I didn't really remember much about it beyond the ladder fight. It was a pretty good movie. The plot isn't really much to speak of, westerners are kind of moseying into China and taking advantage of the local population, whether it's tricking them into slave labor or whatever else, they're just a bunch of jerks, and Jet Li's character um, kind of gets involved? It's really indirect how it is there, he kind of operates parallel to that whole part of the plot. But that doesn't really matter for this kind of movie because it's all about the fights, and for the most part, those are great. There are some pretty cool ideas and locales explored there, and the choreography is pretty exciting. I think the fight in the market is probably my favorite part, though it's obviously that the ladder fight was supposed to be the big spectacle, and it's highly commendable, but I just think there was so much more going on in the market.
The characters in this movie though ARE RIDICULOUS. Wong is fine, I mean he's the lead so at least he's well rounded. But everyone else is mostly a cliche caricature of some kind, though for the most part it's done in a way that makes the all unique and identifiable, though still extremely cartoony. And those are just the protagonists. The villains are just insane, especially the white guys. They just shoot everything. 'There's someone over there!' *pow pow pow pow powpow powpowpow*, it's hilarious. And that guy Shaho or whatever, he's got to be the most bitter dude on the planet. First he tries to rape a girl, gets his head cut in the process, and then when she's on the verge of being rescued, he gets mad at her and decides to try and melt her face off, haha.
Anyway, fun movie, if you apply any thought to it, you can see it as an interesting look on the clash of technology and culture and the divide between the two. And how the artful/spiritual practice of martial arts competes with the crude technologically superior use of firearms. Yeah, neat movie, there are six of them I think.