A spartan embrace of aesthetic; on a warrior’s quest through Chilean beauty with violent effect. The coolness of “South American Shaolin/Wu-Tang/Shaw Bros with secret Incan secrets taking the place of ancient Chinese techniques” is palpable, while also heaping dollops of westerns and anime into this melange of martial influences making an oh so savory stew. It embraces its styles and elemental forebears, reveling in its tropes and Grindhouse-adjacent limitations, but expressing a core that is unique and impressive.
More about the ruminative grace of nature and its intertwining with peak physicality of the fighting form than gritty violence, there is an elegance of art both martial and native. Impressionistic in its use of an almost pastel psychotropic meditation for a color palette. It belies the ferocity and deadly expertise that Zaror and his opponents (namely the captivating Eyal Meyer who specialized in Kalripayattu, an Indian martial art that is one of the oldest in existence) deliver with aplomb. Animal fluidity and bestial brutality, milking preparatory pensiveness that only soaked each punch and impact with import.
It never shied away from its roots and embraced the silliness and slip shod nature of some of the narrative. This isn’t going for any Oscars, but damn was this cool, fresh, and an invigorating genre inflection.
