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The Golden Monk (降魔传) Movie Review

The Golden Monk Poster

The Golden Monk (降魔传) Movie Review | by tiffanyyong.com

Recommended Audience: Fans of Zheng Kai 郑恺, Zhang Yu Qi 张雨绮, Evonne Hsieh 谢依霖, Mao Junjie 毛俊杰, Law Kar Ying 罗家英, Wong Jing 王晶, Billy Chung 钟少雄 and fantasy/ comedy movie fans

The Golden Monk Poster

The Golden Monk (降魔传) Movie Synopsis

In the Xuanguang Temple resides a Buddhist monk with supernatural powers named Butong (Zheng Kai). One day, Butong’s mentor, Kong, is struck by lightning and realises that he is the reincarnation of Crouching Tiger Arhat, who came to the human world to give guidance to Butong.

Butong was the original Golden Child, punished by God to experience life and death one hundred times as he broke a sacred rule by falling in love with another fairy, Jade (Zhang Yuqi). While Golden Child’s memories were erased, Jade refused to forget their love and accumulated goodwill over one hundred reincarnations…

The Golden Monk (降魔传) Viewer Rating: 2.75/5 ***

The Golden Monk (降魔传) Movie Review:

Before watching the trailer, I thought this is another Journey to the West film about the Monkey God, (well, you can’t blame me when it has an almost similar name with Stephen Chow’s Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons 西遊·降魔篇). On the bright side, this was nowhere near it. However, after my experience with Soccer Killer (仙球大战), I entered the cinema with almost zero expectation.
The Golden Monk Zheng Kai as Jin TongThis is definitely fun (lame kinda fun) watch if you have a bad day and need to laugh at something ridiculous. From Marvel’s Hulk & Captain America (again!) to Dragon Ball’s Super Saiyan and Andy Lau’s famous ‘Forget Love Potion (忘情水)’ song, the movie has every lame joke you could think of. However, if you are in for a proper Chinese legend story, you would be quite disappointed.

The Golden Monk EffectsDon’t get me wrong, ‘The Golden Monk’ do actually have a pretty interesting story (I’m surprised!). But like the many recent fantasy dramas and films, it was spoilt by loads of unnecessary special effects. Props that could actually be actual objects (i.e a monster’s spine) were created using CGI, taking the audience out of story.

If there’s anything I really like about the film, it would be how the directors brought out the ill-fated lovers (Jin Tong 金童 aka Golden Child and Yu Nv 玉女 aka Jade) missed one other in the 100 lifetimes when they were reincarnated as different people. As I’ve been really curious about reincarnation, that’s definitely my favourite part of the film.

The Golden Monk Zhang Yu QiOn a side note, something (irrelevant) that I didn’t realised previously. Zhang Yu Qi (who acted in Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid (美人鱼)) is definitely not the first person I would associate a demure and gentle Yu Nv 玉女 with. But she has this timeless elegance in her which reminded me of Descendants of the Sun‘s Song Hye-kyo.

Do You Know?

Wong Jing took 3 years to prepare for this film and coincidentally, Zheng Kai received the script when he first entered the entertainment industry for a cameo. Several year later, thanks to Running Man China and his popularity rise, he was once again approached, this time for the main role.

The Golden Monk Xie Yi LinEvonne Hsieh said that she was conned into this film, being told that it was a romance film, only to know that she’s acting a male role in the movie, and the costume turn out to be neither masculine nor feminine during the fitting.

Behind The Scenes and Interviews

Check out The Golden Monk (降魔传) microsite!
The Golden Monk (降魔传) is out in cinemas on 23 November 2017.

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*Disclosure: Invitation from Shaw Organisation. No monetary compensation was received for the movie review.

12 thoughts on “The Golden Monk (降魔传) Movie Review”

  1. Ana Vukosavljevic

    This is something I definitaley wouldn’t watch, but my brother is crazy about these kind of movies. I need to show him this asap!

  2. This looks like a very interesting movie, I love movies a lot and I use to watch Chinese movies but its been a while that I have watched one. I will surely check this out, thanks for the detailed review.

  3. Hmmm..definitely an interesting one. Back when I was in my home country, Philippines, I used to watch movies like this. I love how they make fantasy movies, especially about the old era. I love everything from their costumes, to some special effects, and of course, the action.

    -Gerome of G&D Blog

  4. Preet@thevelvetlife

    The movie sounds so interesting, me and my husband usually love watching Chinese movies and we go for the dubbed versions of Chinese movies or with subtitles. This sounds like our kind of movie, will definitely add this to our list.

  5. What a great movie to watch! I mostly watch Netflix, I think I need to try watch this movie. This looks amazing and interesting.

  6. Corinne and Kirsty

    Sounds like an interesting movie. The trailer really intrigued me. I would need to find a version with english subtitles though

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