Simu Liu teams up with director Destin Daniel Cretton for a superhero origin story with more family psychodrama and better action than the Marvel norm.
that comes down the pike, the Marvel movies tend to practice a feminism that’s both self-congratulatory and weirdly hesitant — a failure that feels all the more glaring for the filmmakers’ obvious attempts to address it. In drawing attention to Xialing’s personal history of neglect, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” insistently telegraphs its awareness of its own shortcomings.
Xialing, frankly, may well deserve the lion’s share. Shang-Chi is the designated hero, but as inhabited by Liu, who’s better in motion than at rest — and at his best opposite Awkwafina, with whom he works up a sharp, funny rapport — his emotional arc comes only fitfully into focus. It makes sense that he would feel guarded about his past, but Liu seldom finds the necessary tension in that reserve.
That’s neither a fatal flaw nor a surprising one, and not just because few actors here or anywhere can hold the screen against Leung. Reductive as the comparison may be, it’s hard to watch “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and not flash back on the superior— not just because both movies represent a departure from the mostly white history of Hollywood superheroics, but also because they’re bound by a dramatic structure with its own built-in strengths and limitations.
That world must, of course, fit snugly inside a larger one, and from time to time you’re reminded that you’re watching not just a movie but an installment, a feature-length cog in the relentless Marvel machine. Doctor Strange’s monkish sidekick Wong shows up, as does another company player whose identity I’ll keep under wraps even if the internet hasn’t. Pockets of Sue Chan’s production design are strewn with references to the five-year “blip” from the last two “Avengers” movies.
But “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” is most enjoyable when it shakes off the tedious franchise imperatives and forges its own path. The movie’s late-breaking highlights include Michelle Yeoh’s performance as Ying Nan, a mentor figure to Shang-Chi and Xialing who dispenses pearls of wisdom with customary poise and offers a warm counterweight to Leung’s brooding chill.
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