Fantasia Review: Cold Steel (2011)

Cold Steel is David Wu's latest film that charges right into the action with guns a-blazing. In terms of story it may have taken a generic blockbuster route, but it still managed to never have a dull moment, and I applaud it for that.


This is a story about an ordinary hunter who is skilled at using a sniper, and ends up joining the army. There are plenty of films that focus on guns out there, but it's been a while since I've seen one put the focus on the sniper. Although in concept this may make the action be very distant, the film managed to find ways to bring the battle close. Also, with the use of zooms and edits, the use of the sniper through the film was very smooth and never cut up the action scenes.

The story goes the route of making everyone's drive about love. We are presented with two separate stories, one with our lead male and the beautiful tea shop owner, and on the enemy side we get a glimpse of another love story unfold. Naturally, a lot of the character's drives throughout the motivation derives from these romances. Though, the way it gets portrayed is pretty much as cliché as it gets.

As mentioned, the story goes down a blockbuster route, taking a historical time, and then making a story that's extremely conventional. It's something you've no doubt seen hundreds of times. On account of this, I don't think down the line it will be very memorable. It at least managed to keep the plot pretty tight woven, making each scene have enough importance to be there, as well as having certain moments be important later on.

The film's purpose clearly was to be simply an amusing piece, where bullets are always flying and there's explosions at every corner of the screen. It's clear it chose to even take a more comic route, as a lot of well done comical moments were thrown in. Even the main character, was an extremely energetic and charismatic lead who would be hard not to love. He was bursting with personality, which worked well as a contrast to what could have been a dark film. The premise after all, was about technically about the Second Sino-Japanese War, but somehow the film did in fact manage to be nearly light hearted.

If you manage to forget some of the contrived plot points, and instead focus on the fun this film offers, you will no doubt enjoy watching it. It's playful while still delivering the action you want. It also is very well directed and edited. It isn't bad for it's genre, and if you're looking for a shooter film that decides to take a different route from the normal, with this case being the great use of snipers, this is a worthwhile film to see!