LES FILS DU VENT

Alternate Title: The Great Challenge (International Title)
Country: France
Release Year: 2004
Genre: Action / Adventure
Language: French
Running Time: 90 minutes

[Cast]
Williams Belle
Châu Belle Dinh
Malik Diouf
Yann Hnautra
Guylain N'Guba-Boyeke
Charles Perrière
Laurent Piemontesi
Elodie Yung
Santi Sudaros
Burt Kwouk
Ian Kay
Charles Jarman
Gary Stoner

[Director]
Julien Seri


LES FILS DU VENT (2004)or better known as THE GREAT CHALLENGE had the potential to be a great Action slash Martial Arts film that the Yamakasi Team wanted it to be. It even had a young attractive cast to propel the story, because the Yamakasi Team a.k.a Urban Ninjas who scale walls, leap dangerous tall buildings without a single hesitation is no doubt ultra-cool!

As far as the acting, everyone did a decent job. The action sequences were kind of slow compared to today's standards but after all, this is a movie made to showcase not kung fu-esque techniques, or thai kickboxing moves ala' Tony Jaa in films like ONG BAK (2003), and TOM YUM GOONG (2005)no, this is a movie made to highlight the Urban Ninjas death-defying aerial leaps, and unbelievable acrobatic wall-scaling abilities properly presented in their first Luc Besson produced movie attempt in YAMAKASI (2001) the Urban Ninjas continue their propaganda in LES FILS DU VENT to show the world just why we should care about their sport. It's a good thing that YAMAKASI was released first, because after seeing LES FILS DU VENT it will make you forget about the Urban Ninjas in no time.



Unfortunately, LES FILS DU VENT was not produced by Luc Besson nor did he have anything to do with its production therefore, it lost a lot of the appeal of what made YAMAKASI such a joy to watch! First, and foremost LES FILS DU VENT's story was nothing but a mediocre script aimed at pre-teen audience, in other words it was a mindless hodge-podge of a story that is just too childish to bare. However it did a have an excellence premise: (The Yakuza based in Thailand wants to occupy the Triads' turf so they employ the services of a wannabe low ranking leaderless gang to kill off the Triads head boss) yeah I know it's been done before but so what? If this project was given to a competent director LES FILS DU VENT would have been awesome.

Another thing that I'll gripe about is the amateur-ish camera placements. This much is true, the camera man or whoever was in charge of the camera during the filming of the action sequences did not know how to capture the otherwise awesome action that was being performed by the Urban Ninjas, and the stunt team. Julien Seri obviously did not learn anything from Luc Besson nor did he even attempt to make sure the stunts were being filmed properly. He should have made sure that it was doing justice to the Yamakasi Team. Sadly, he failed.

Oh yeah....there's another thing. Why oh why did he have to make this movie so damn dramatic? I mean really, the symphonic chinese-esque composition used in some of the scenes are so over-dramatic It just made this movie so corny!!! It was sometimes painful to watch...really it was!



The Urban Ninjas did their part. They are awesome to begin with, the action choreograpy was no doubt excellent. It just wasn't filmed right, and because of this the otherwise jaw-dropping effect it would've given the audience was instead tarnished by Julien Seri's amateur-ish direction. Ultimately he is the one to blame for this film's rather lackluster action, and mediocre cinematography

However I must add that Elodie Yung, she played as Tsu is an absolute beauty. She is definitely a future super star in the making. If she get the right parts in key fims she will rise like the hot lava from a raging volcano. I do hope she gets offers from Hong Kong directors like Johnnie To, Tsui Hark, Fruit Chan, how awesome it would be if she starred in Wong Kar Wai films!!! She has the right look, and charisma to play parts in Action films, Comedy, Romance, and Drama. I hope she does well in the future.

Aside from the Yamakasi Team's great stunts, Elodie Yung is really the only reason to watch LES FILS DU VENT. I really wish there were other reasons I can give but there is none. I'm not saying to avoid LES FILS DU VENT like the plague or anything, I'm saying this is a type of movie that is perfect as a rental, it certainly does'nt offer anything else for us to look back to other than what was mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. So give LES FILS DU VENT a chance just don't say, I didn't warn you.