I felt myself getting stupider and stupider the longer I watched this mess of a film!
Ameera is an incredibly dumb action sci-fi film. When it begins in the year 2020, it may not look dumb but believe me, as you watch you’ll notice that the film becomes worse and worse and even worse! The characters are often ill-defined and one-dimensional comic book-like morons and the stunts have some of the worst CGI I have seen in a very long time. In fact, there is very, very little I liked about the film. I didn’t even enjoy the final credits, as it then announced that the story was to be continued!!
Ameera is some sort of ultra-hot female Chinese secret agent. Often, she changes for normal clothing into weird stuff that looks like it was created by a very sexually repressed 13 year-old—complete with leather, lots of flesh and no reason for it existing on a real human being. Or, perhaps the producers just went to a store specializing in bondage and fetish paraphernalia to find her clothes. All I know is that Ameera seems to have little reason to be there other than to be hot and to be a school boy’s fantasy. She certainly didn’t seem human or to have any depth to her whatsoever.
- Ameera
- Directed by
Honghui Xu - Cast
Patricia Hu, Ambrose Hsu, Collin Chou, Andrew Lin - Release Date
May 2014 - Martin’s Grade: F
When Ameera’s parents are kidnapped and held for ransom by a comic book villain (a guy who is just too goofy to describe—suffice to say he’s a bit like Davros from Dr. Who and Han, the guy with interchangeable hands, from Enter the Dragon). She and her boyfriend respond by taking on an entire army of baddies and winning. How? Well, in this bizarro world, bullets and physics simply don’t affect our duo!! Again and again, this occurs—sort of like if they have a real-life version of an invulnerability cheat code for a Nintendo built into their DNA! Additionally, she can almost instantly disable ANY computer system or weapon the baddies have—even, of course, their doomsday weapons! None of it makes any sense and again and again, I kept thinking that it’s inconceivable that anyone got paid to write this crap! I could tell you more about the plot, but I find my brain is, at least temporarily, made stupider for having watched the film.
*****
So, is there anything I liked about the film. Ummm, … no. The stunts were usually terrible—with real explosions replaced by CG ones that would have looked cutting edge back in 1999, and completely impossible tricks that would make James Bond say “who would believe this?!” The script is incoherent with characters completely changing sides periodically through the course of the film, and the ending simply made what was left of my brain shut off completely. Please understand, however, that I do like foreign films and have nothing against Chinese action movies. This was, in fact, the second Chinese action film I saw today and the first (As the Light Goes Out) was excellent and I recommend it. But that film had one huge difference from Ameera—it was not totally stupid.
Review by Lead Entertainment Writer & Film Critic, Martin Hafer
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