Awake not Woke!

For the most part this is a 2 actor film. There's a few others at the beginning but it's minor. The acting is pretty good though I didn't find Egerton's villain the least bit intimidating or scary. He's just kind of comical. There's the usual poor lazy writing with serious lapses in logic and characters doing stupid things. He seems to just magically know exactly where she is at all times. The scenery is beautiful, when it's real. There's a lot poor CG in both backgrounds and action sequences that make it look fake and almost like videogame renders. Honestly not much happens and it starts to get a bit boring after a while. If he really wanted to he could of killed her 10 times over but just doesn't, so there's not really ever much threat there. There's not a lot of woke here but the beginning has the usual feminist anti male stuff. All the men except for her partner at the beginning are bad and aggressive. The group of hunters that follow her and leer at her are completely pointless and could of been cut from the movie completely. They manage to keep the overpowered feminism to a minimum for the most part. While they never have her physically fighting him off there are several implausible scenes. The final half hour gets pretty ridiculous and could of been done much better. It's ok for background noise but that's about it.

I know this is an action comedy but man does it have to be so goofy. The action scenes are so poorly done and slapstick like it's hard to get into the movie. The lead is such a pathetic beta and for some reason the movie thinks just because he can't feel pain also seems to mean his body is immune to injury. The first kitchen scene alone would of caused some serious bodily damage and trauma. Don't even get me started on the ridiculous handgun in the fryer but it still works just fine scene. I can't count how many close up shots of handguns are shown without the hammer even being cocked back. Police officers who can't hit targets out in the open 20 feet in front of them. His hand is melted off from being in a fryer but still full mobility like nothing happened, shot in the arm same thing full usage and bleeding just stops with superglue. Just more lazy film making so common in everything now. Some minor DEI casting including the black female detective. The lead hero who works at the bank has no problem stealing bank money and gives it to the black store owner to keep him out of foreclosure from his own bank. The tattoo artist has a Nazi symbol on his neck. I called it quits at the ridiculous home alone trap house around an hour in. I really was hoping this would be decent but once again disappointed.

This is a 6 episode anthology series based on short stories posted to a subreddit. Sounds like a terrible idea already. Given there's only 6 episodes I'll do a short review of each one. Episode #1--4 woke 0 overall -There is no reason for this to exist. There's no story here. It's a half baked idea with no substance, no explanation of anything and no ending. On top of that it clearly had no budget and looks like it was filmed in the backyard of someone's apartment complex. Then there's the blatant racism. DEI good black characters. Black characters are smart and non aggressive. White characters are authoritarian, dumb, violent and aggressive. Episode #2--2 woke 3 overall--Appears to take place in the late 80's early 90's given the clothes and décor on the inside of the houses but there are modern cars everywhere indicating lazy filmmaking or general lack of budget. If budget is the issue than why not just make it modern. It's a basic slasher type story, nothing new but serviceable. Some decent gore FX as well. Woke consists of DEI casting choices. Lead is a Spanish male with 2 friends consisting of another Spanish male and 1 white male. Guess which one is the aggressive nasty bully. Episode #3--0 woke 2 overall--A play on gen z social media obsession and fame. It feels like I've seen something very similar before but can't recall where. The acting is not great and the story is very predictable. It's packed full of unlikable annoying characters and I would hardly call this horror. There's nothing woke but it's average at best. Episode #4--5 woke-0 overall--A seemingly very conservative religious couple gets pregnant and he asks her if she wants a boy or a girl and she says I don't care as long as 'they're' healthy. A normal person would say as long as it's healthy not they. This is clearly meant to show what appears to be Christians as crazy. The wife when told the baby will not survive birth immediately wants to schedule an abortion. This would never happen so easily for what's supposed to be a very religious person like this. The husband is shown to be an irrational, aggressive, crazy religious nut while the logical wife is the hero who easily questions and rejects her religion. The acting is pretty poor the ending makes no sense and the FX if you want to call them that are laughably bad. Episode #5--1 woke-1 overall. Some really bad acting in this one and another no budget episode that's half an idea with no ending. Once the 'surprise' at the end is revealed the entire story falls apart and previous scenes make no sense or seem completely impossible. Little girls only friend is Asian. The drugged out mom is violent and aggressive and the boyfriend? is a total beta loser. Episode #6--0 woke 2 overall--I believe this takes place in the 90's but not sure. The acting is decent but the writing again is not great. The two leads are said to be in middle school that would put them in the 11-13 range but look more like high schoolers. The story is pretty basic but if you have the headphones on the wall for a reason why wouldn't they be standard use when you go to bed and not wait until something happens. Bad lazy writing. At least the creature looks decent. Final thoughts--Overall I don't really see any reason to watch this. Episode 2 is the best of the lot but even that is barely worth it. There is a definite overall woke aspect to most episodes and they obviously had no real budget. I would skip this entire thing.

It's like they're saying, "You guys already know the story, so here's a SUMMARIZED live-action with many changes."

After reading the manhua (until vol. 10) and watching the 1st season of anime, there are LOTS OF CUTS, TONS OF CHANGES, extra scenes not in the original, and scenes combined in the movie. For example: 1. The 1st scene where Dao ma was beating the "goons" and going to the area where corpses were hanging on top are combined, but in the original material these are 2 different scenes. 2. The Tokharian mercenaries are almost always masked and terrifying; it's kind of their signature. But here the leader of the mercenaries just shows up unmasked and stays unmasked in battle, which just feels numb. And almost got beaten by Dao Ma and Shu! THEY DIDN'T EVEN FOUGHT IN THE ORIGINAL. 3. There are always strong female soldiers with Chief Mo in the original. But in the movie, even though there are some female soldiers, most of the time there's a black man named Malih as his bodyguard, which I've never seen in the original. 4. The whore Yan Ziniang never showed any interest towards women in the original. But in the movie she suggested "serving" both Dao Ma and Ayuya. 5. "Shu—The Jade Faced Ghost" is usually less talkative and more serious and doesn't deliberately make a plan to start fighting with Dao Ma after they joined the stagecoach in the original. But here he's just somewhat talkative and almost non-serious/smiling from the beginning. And makes a plan to kill/arrest Dao Ma suddenly and gets awfully humiliated. 6. In the original, Chief Mo directly told his people face-to-face to leave the land to save themselves and their own families. Some refused to go on their own and decided to stay & fight alongside to protect the land out of loyalty. This was a sad+brave moment in the original. But in the movie, there's like literally no emotions. Chief Mo ordered Malih to tell the people to leave, especially the women & children; those who wish to stay may stay. That's it. And the list can GO ON AND ON AND ON... I mean, I get it; it's a movie with limited runtime, and you can't fit all the chapters of manhwa, but it feels so weird and frustrating. The tension & the thriller of the original scenes are basically all absent. They spent too much on action sequences (some are very nonsensical) instead of the story. I don't even understand the reason to make this movie. There's already an ongoing anime adaptation. which shows more respect to the original source material even with some cuts.