Henchwomen Fight

In 2025 movie Battle of the Wolf. Actresses Luan Mingyuan and Chen Fei play as female villains Scarlet Yunying and Kala.

A Chinese action movie, and it's 1 hour 30 minutes, so hope it's not unnecessarily bloated and fun to watch, the movie premise is probably similar to High Forces.

The movie break the pacing and take us into a flashback of former fight of the protagonist, which I really don't like, the pacing actually matters, and the idea they keep forcing other stories in these movie, I really don't like that, like instead of focusing on the situation and the plane and keep us exploring the villains according to what they say and reveal over time in the movie, and introduce the target they are after, the movie take us into irrelevant theme, with flashback confrontation and connect both themes, and also doing it break the pacing, like you have a quite pacing with the passengers being onboard of the plane, then take us back into a fight scene, which kills the pacing of the movie, I guess it has something to do with how Chinese audiences may tune out of the movie if it's not introduced with a fight scene, as such scene confirm it's an action movie to them and keep them interested, but in this case, it break the pacing of the movie. 

Ok, the movie apparently explaining to us why the protagonist was in handcuffs, it still kill the pacing of the movie, such backstory can be introduced way better, like imagine this scenario, the protagonist with a female protagonist are together hiding from the villains, she's nervous and in fear that the villains would find them, but at the same time curious about how the protagonist ended up in cuffs, so she hesitantly ask him "How did you end up.. You know..", he replies "You mean, in cuffs?", then give her the backstories, that way it would serve the drama better.. Also by giving us the backstory this early, it destroyed any mystery about the character, which isn't a good thing, now till the end of the movie, the protagonist being in cuffs doesn't keep me interested or curious.

Anyway we first see our gorgeous villainess around 6 minute time mark breaking into the airport with other villains who call themselves The Wild Wolf.

Ok, the movie is introducing us to the villains so we don't get confused, and I kind of like it, because in many movies some characters are either rarely called by the name, or even their name is being lost in translation.

And the movie introduce us to our first villainess, Purple wolf aka Purple Kala, a member of the evil organization of The Wild Wolf.

We have a flashback, and I laughed a lot than I should, like the movie go back to something happened 6 years ago and the villains shot some guy and I don't care, it looked funny.

We have David Torok playing Black Wolf AKA Wizard, I really hope he's fun in the movie.. 

We see our villainess again around 15 minutes, celebrating taking over the plane with a drink.

Ok, some passenger lost conscious and the villains found a doctor for him afterwards, like, in the start of the movie one of the villains shot flight attendant to show how merciless they are, which was too early in my opinion, if it was me, I wouldn't make them shoot anyone this early, think about it, they are villains not idiots, doing it at the start would make people to panic, but once they take over, it would serve a dramatic purpose, it would be shocking, and it would show how heartless they are, again it's the pacing.

Around 20 minutes mark, Kala started to set explosive on the plane, and preparing parachutes, so probably planning to destroy the plane and jump, after kidnapping their target Chen Guoxian..

The movie show us the true target of The Wild Wolf organization, their plane after all was to kidnap Chen Guoxian, a brilliant scientist working on the quantum communication system, and after they get him, they can jump from the plane, take the scientific research with them, and make it look as the plane had an accident, with the research in their hands, they can earn tons of money from it.

The villains took a passenger who they mistakenly thought him to be Chen Guoxian, yet after investigation, he turned out to be someone else.

Around 39 minutes Kala join Green wolf to go after the hero who have been causing so much trouble and ruining their evil plans.

We see the final fight of  Purple wolf around 42 minute mark..

Now, let's keep watching..

Black Wolf have a good fight around 45 minutes, ended stupidly LOL..

Basically the hero manged to capture the two villains who survived, yet, the evil organization had a secret weapon, what the hero didn't know, there's another villainess, Scarlet Yunying AKA Red Wolf who kept herself under rader in case their plans went south, and freed the other two main villain.

 Red Wolf isn't like any other villain, she's the wolf team strategist, she kept monitoring everything happening till now, and gave no reason for the hero to suspect her, studying the hero, knowing his weaknesses, and when the time was right, she used all the info she collected in her favor, proving to be one of the most effect villain among them all.

In secret she have been sending singles to the team on which target they go after and which passenger represent the highest risk for their plans..

Ok, now the movie problems..

1- The pacing in the movie is off, it's unorganized and messy.

2- The movie keep jumping from a story line to another, it's like the movie trying to make the villains are being the villains of multiple movies in the same movies, it's like the movie can't contain itself in a single story, so it goes back and forth with flashbacks, as if it's a checklist of not just having them the bad guys of the story, but every other possible story, which feels forced, like, why not just make them the villains in a plane movie, why enforcing many irrelevant plots and over complicate things.

3- Realism, the fight scenes in the movie feel so limited because the movie is trying to stick to realism, the movie thinking "Well, they are in a plane, so the fights in tight places.", and TBH, the fight scenes don't look great and repetitive, like why we don't have a fight in a room, with not so tight place if needed?! No one is forcing the movie to be restricted with the tight places of the plane, and it can ignore and unrestrict itself from it if needed, if a fight scene needed a space, even if it doesn't make sense, give a space for the fight scene and threw realism in the trash, as realism only matters when it serve the movie not when it weight it down.

4- There's not enough stakes, the movie keep trying to give a motive and unable to give a motive within the same story, so, it always try to enforce multiple stories to make up for that, while it could've been avoided, like I said, before, like how the hero being stuck with the heroine, while the villains looking for them, the movie could've made the scientist the villains are looking for a female scientist, played by Zina Blahusova or make her like ambassador or some big foreign official, and make the contrast, a big foreign official hiding from the bad guys, and stuck with some protagonist with a criminal record, and she's nervous while hiding, and also can't trust the only guy who is protecting her, and over time they build their trust, that's a stake, that's a goal, and the viewer would understand what the stakes are, instead of making the stakes in the movie around other stories from the past, making the movie unfocused.

I'm not saying the movie is bad in anyway, I really enjoyed it, it just could've been way much better, especially with the fight scenes, like many of the actors who played the villains in the movie are actually champions in real life, and you can see how the characters they played were so underused because the movie restrict itself with narrow spaces to achieve realism..