TIME RAIDERS (盗墓笔记) (2016)

Genre: Adventure/Action
Director: Daniel Lee
Cast: Lu Han, Jing Boran, Ma Sichun, Wang Jingchun, Zhang Boyu, Mallika Sherawat
Runtime: 2 hrs 3 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 25 August 2016

Synopsis: This fantasy-adventure film tells the tale of Wu Xie (Luhan) who is an antique shop owner with a family history of tomb raiders. While he delves into his family trade he finds lost treasures of the Warring States as well as the answers to the tragedies of his family’s past. With the help of his grandfather Zhang Qiling‘s (Jing Boran) notes and his team, Wu Xie sets out to find the lost treasures as well as the people responsible for the extermination of his family.

Movie Review:

If you need further proof that China’s filmmakers are chasing after Hollywood’s former glories, then the latest CGI-laden modern-day fantasy adventure ‘Time Raiders’ is the perfect specimen. Bearing many glaring similarities to the last film in ‘The Mummy’ trilogy, this big-screen version adapted by the author of the Internet novel on which it is based – who goes by the moniker Uncle Three -  is like its inspirational predecessor loud, overblown and often utterly nonsensical, even as its compendium of extravagant action sequences does offer mildly diverting fun.

Like ‘The Mummy’, the protagonist here is a young budding tomb explorer with an irrepressible sense of curiosity and optimism. Oh yes, we’re not sure if Lu Han (aka China’s ‘Star Wars’ ambassador) had researched Brendan Fraser’s Rick O’Connell to prepare for his role as Wu Xie, but he sure channels much of the same attitude. Ignoring the warnings of his Third Uncle (Wang Jingchun), Wu Xie follows the trail hinted at by an ancient clockwork key he finds while stumbling around The Widow’s Tomb, which leads to an underground city of labyrinthine passage-ways and booby traps that turns out to be no less than the legendary tomb of the Snake Empress (Mallika Sherawat).

Just as Jet Li’s Dragon Emperor in the last film of ‘The Mummy’ trilogy, Sherawat’s Snake Empress thirsts for immortality, and has preserved herself, her lover King Xiang (Sammy Hung) and his armies for the past 2000 years in order to return and conquer the world through might and sorcery. At the point Wu Xie unearths the key, the countdown is set to end eight days later; and by the time he and his Third Uncle assemble a team of strongmen that includes Jing Boran’s Zhang Qiling, it is mere hours before the planets align and the Snake Empress wakes from her slumber. They will however encounter unexpected adversaries in the form of a team of foreign mercenaries led by Captain Ning (Ma Sichun), under orders by a mysterious backer Hendrix (Vanni Corbellini) who wants the Empress’ secret for himself.

As much as Lee invests much of the first act developing Lu Han and Jing Boran’s respective characters – the former still traumatized by an incident in his childhood years where he came face to face with a man in a golden mask and the latter as an ageless monk who saved his number from Hendrix’s attack on his temple some fifty years ago – there is little in either that is compelling enough for us to recognize them as no more than stock types or for that matter regard the movie as more than a special-effects laden spectacle. Sure enough, it is only when our ragtag band of explorers get to the Snake Empress’ tomb that the film comes alive with one CGI-heavy action sequence after another.

Obviously not a lot of logic applies here, with no less than flesh-eating beetles, eerie wooden puppets and Groot-like warriors the stuff that Wu Xie and his buddy cum protector Zhang Qiling have to contend with. Lee can’t quite match the visual imagination of his Hollywood counterpart Rob Cohen (director of ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’), but his deliberately over-the-top posture does make for some madcap fun in between the self-serious moments. Oh yes, from deus-ex-machinas like Wu Xie turning Pied Piper to chase the beetles away to the ex-EXO singer turned lead actor putting his former dancing moves to good use, there is evidently much leeway Lee requires from his audience when it comes to suspension of disbelief.

And yet even then, that goodwill is pretty much exhausted by the time we get to a poorly conceived finale which relies too much on cut-rate CGI and too little on actual practical stuntwork. The showdown between Jing Boran’s Zhang Qiling and Sammy Hung’s King Xiang is a letdown, and Sherawat’s entry thereafter is just as anti-climactic given how she is mainly called upon to snare menacingly while her CGI-ed venom suckers go jab-jabbing away at Qiling. It is also too much of a stretch to believe that Wu Xie could all of a sudden morph into Indiana Jones, especially since he remains no more than a pretty boy throughout the earlier parts of the movie.

Mostly therefore for worse, ‘Time Raiders’ shows China still trying to play catch-up with Hollywood, whether in terms of the kinds of stories that it tells or the standard of its visual effects. There is some throwaway fun to be had in this summer blockbuster, but not enough for you to check out this China-made copy of much superior Hollywood ‘tomb raiding’ pictures that have come before it. It is even less than ‘The Myth’, the Jackie Chan romance-across-time adventure which also starred Sherawat, and considering how that was a decade ago, just proves how ultimately unnecessary this journey across time is. 

Movie Rating:

(Loud, overblown and often utterly nonsensical - 'Time Raiders' represents an ultimately reductionist effort by China to capture Hollywood's former glories)

Review by Gabriel Chong