Heavenly Sword is amazing. Not amazing in a good way. Amazing in the same way as an atomic blast, or a cockroach that simply won't die no matter how hard you stomp on it. People who know me know how I have a very high tolerance for bad movies; even the worst piece of garbage can be entertaining. At long last, I have found my limit, and it's name is Heavenly Sword.
For those unaware, 2014's Heavenly Sword is an adaptation of the forgettable PS3 game of the same name, or as the opening credits inform us, "BASED ON THE HEAVENLY SWORD VIDEO GAME FRANCHISE FROM SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT". In my humble opinion, a single game over half a decade ago (followed up with an appearance in Playstation All-Stars) is hardly a franchise, but what do I know? It's difficult where to begin with this, seeing as how everything is just so godawful; I suppose I could start with the plot. As we are told through SEVERAL plodding narrations, there's some ancient artifact known as the Heavenly Sword. It's cursed or was wielded by a god or some such legendary nonsense (maybe it was a combination of the two) and the evil King Bohan (voiced by Alfred Molina, who must have really needed to eat that weekend) wants to get his big, gauntlet-y hands on it so that he can... do something evil, I'm sure. He doesn't really have a clearly defined plan outside of getting this sword.
The sword is kept in a small village by a clan of vaguely Asian warriors. With the exception of the protagonist's jerkass father (one of the three characters voiced by Nolan North, who does his hardest "I'm a white guy voicing an ancient Asian man" voice), all of these people speak with that generic English accent that all ancient people all around the world seemed to have. Once Doc Ock attacks the clan, the sword is entrusted to Nariko (Anna Torv, managing to conjure less emotion than a bowl of Rice Krispies); she's the most perfect, talented warrior that the clan has ever seen, but all of this is completely invalidated because she's a woman. So everyone respects and reveres her, but they also mock and look down on her. Sometimes at the same time. It's difficult to have a character be utterly perfect AND an underdog all at once; usually it just cancels everything out and makes them boring and uninteresting. If you need any evidence of my theory in action, just watch Heavenly Sword. She's accompanied by Kai (Ashleigh Bell), a horribly annoying piece of work who could only be more of a ripoff of Edward from Cowboy Bebop if she wore goggles and hung out with a corgi. Her voice is comparable to nails on a chalkboard during teatime at a dodgy South London brothel and I utterly loathed every second that she was on screen. One of the few times I smiled during this movie is when I believed she had been brutally murdered onscreen; because Heavenly Sword refuses to let those who view it experience any modicum of joy, she of course gets better, despite being stabbed through the stomach and hung for a solid five minutes at least.
There's a few other characters who show up and do very little; Thomas Jane of all people voices Loki, a character who apparently wasn't in the video game. As you may have guessed, he has about two minutes of screentime and then promptly dies (a shame, considering how much one would think the addition of The Punisher would spice this picture up). As I mentioned, Nolan North voices a few people, my favorite of which being Roach, King Bohan's morbidly obese son. He's the only entertaining part of this entire movie and that's because he's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Imagine if Sloth from the Goonies weighed five-hundred pounds and attacked people by rolling into a ball like an armadillo on pep pills. His slurred reading of "I'm gunna kill you now" is the only moment in the movie where I genuinely smiled at something I think was meant to be funny. Honestly, everything in this movie was put together with such staggering incompetence, from the writing to the action to the animation (that looks to be straight out of a high-end PS2 cutscene), I'm honestly not sure what I was supposed to think of any of this. Fifteen minutes in, I checked to see if it was almost over.
While watching the horror unfold, I devised a drinking game, thinking that perhaps alcohol will dull the horrible pain inflicted by this movie on any poor fool (like yours truly) who willingly decides to watch it.
The Official Drinking Game of Heavenly Sword: The Official Movie of the Game
Take a drink whenever:
-the words "Sony Computer Entertainment" or "Playstation" are on screen
-the film cuts away to expository narration with a flashback animated in a 2-D style
-a character or object clips through part of the scenery
-someone says "Heavenly Sword" (if you really wanna fly, drink whenever someone just says "sword")
-you hear "prophecy" or "chosen one"
-there's an audio glitch or someone's dialog is noticeably chopped together from different takes
-you hear a stock sound effect or scream
-you notice that the sound the bird-guy makes when he laughs is totally just Kazooie's voice from Banjo Kazooie
-someone lets out a "NOOOOOOO"
-someone makes a really stupid, uncanny valley face
-Nariko or Kai totally should have been killed, but the identical henchmen just stood there and didn't make any effort to attack them
-you check the time to see how much longer is left
-and finally, when Kai "dies", finish your glass; this is both in celebration and to build up tolerance to the reveal that she's totally still alive
I considered adding "whenever Kai is insufferable" to that list, but that would basically just result in nonstop chugging whenever she's on screen. Not only would this probably kill people, it would also cost them a fair amount of booze; I don't want to be responsible for either of those outcomes.
Incidentally, you might be wondering why there are so many spoilers in this review. It's because I want to spoil this movie. I don't want anyone to get curious and go watch this. Heavenly Sword is the Pet Semetary and I am the old groundskeeper. I never played Heavenly Sword on my PS3; I just remember hearing a collective "it's not bad" amongst all the obvious God of War comparisons. If you really loved the game and you simply MUST see what it's like adapted as a hour and a half long direct-to-video movie (or if you're just a humongous glutton for punishment), then you're going to do what you want to do. But don't say I didn't warn you.
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