Mojin: The Lost Legend

In ancient China, during the feudal battle between three kingdoms that fractured the nation (as outlined and romanticised in various books, movies and videogames), an emperor tasked treasure hunters with raiding the tombs of past emperors and royalty for gold and treasures to fund his armies. These treasure hunters were known as the Mojin Xiaowei, trained down generations in uncovering tombs, navigating crypts, avoiding traps and gathering all sorts of riches. But beyond their raiding, the Mojin were also taught to respect those places, and to place a single candle at the southeast end of every tomb. If the candle was to go out, the spirits were displeased and the Mojin had to leave the tomb, and any treasure, immediately. Or so says Mojin: The Lost Legend, a Chinese adventure film that seems to try and tick every single box on a checklist of generic tomb-raiding genre films. It’s astoundingly by-the-numbers, with an exceptionally basic story drowning in cliches and paper thin  stock characters, but for what it is it’s a fun, diverting little romp with some cool set pieces and special effects, even if it lacks originality and a satisfying narrative. Provided you just want to shut your brain off and watch tomb raiding nonsense, Mojin is fine.

Hu and Wang are lifelong best friends and Mojin Xiaowei, or Treasure Hunters, carrying the tools and knowledge of tomb raiders passed down through generations from feudal times. But after some failed expeditions they’ve given that life up and have illegally immigrated to 1980s America where they scrape out a meagre living selling junk on the street and evading immigration police. While the two wash-ups get drunk and lament their lives, their former partner, and Hu’s former flame, Shirley (Shu Qi) attempts to get them to sort their lives out, return to tomb raiding and go legitimate, something Wang is eager to do but Hu is opposed to.

Tired of Hu’s negativity, Wang gets hired by members of a powerful, affluent cult to head back to China and hunt down an ancient artefact known as the Equinox Flower. The treasure has an important link to an integral event in both Hu and Wang’s youths, some twenty years back in rural China in the sixties when they were travelling with enthusiastic communist Red Guard students. Determined to amend for a past mistake that haunts the both of them, Wang heads to find the tomb and the treasure for closure, forcing a reluctant Hu and Shirley to follow. Together the trio will face the tomb’s deadly traps, the nefarious plans of the cult and their own pasts.

 

Speaking of pasts, a big theme in the film, and the major bulk of the character development, is about letting go of the past. It’s here that the film weirdly gets stuck. The past is discussed at length, returned to (through a lengthy flashback) or focused on, with ‘the past’ being central to almost every character’s motivations and personality. It also largely dictates the film’s structure. The first half of the film mostly just introduces Hu, Wang and Shirley, with a bulky section being made up of that lengthy flashback to Hu and Wang’s near-fatal ordeal within an abandoned, cursed Japanese military base. It’s fun, spooky stuff, but having so much focus on the past (and that event in particular) makes the rest of the movie feel thin, so the stuff in the present lacks a sense of urgency or importance. When it comes right down to the actual real-day plot events, Hu and Wang are hired to investigate a tomb and then immediately go there and do so. The links to the past also make any and every twist or revelation blindingly obvious. It’s almost ironic that a movie about letting go of the past is completely unable to let go of the past.

We have some fun cliche characters, though they’re all tried-and-true stock characters and horrifically thin. Hu is our roguish hero, the sort of expert treasure hunter with confidence and swagger that these movies get, only this version is largely washed up (at least initially). He’s got the smirking confidence, charm and skills to back it up, and works well off of the other characters. He’s sort of likeable, made more so because of the pretty great comedic chemistry he has with his co-stars. Wang is largely the comic relief, the more enthusiastic but less skilled treasure hunter (he’s a bit obnoxious). He weirdly becomes a bit of a driving force for the film. Shirley, played by Shu Qi, brings some good comedic timing and chemistry as Hu’s partner/sometime lover, giving her character a sort of kickass girl personality. Offering more comedic relief is Grill, the hapless ‘representative/agent’ who eagerly tries to sell Hu and Wang’s talents and finds himself constantly being injured as he’s forced to follow them in the tomb.

Hu and Wang share a fixation on Ding, the Red Guard girl they both had a crush on in the sixties and the reason for their issues – letting go of the past means letting go of Ding. There’s a problem with this – Ding isn’t interesting or likeable and you can’t understand why they’d be so thoroughly entranced with her to the point where twenty years later they’d still be thinking of her. She’s naïve, she comes across as ignorant, and besides a pretty face and a love of flowers she’s astoundingly not interesting. She’s played by actress/model Angelababy, who has given somewhat similar roles in the past a lot more pep and humour, but Ding is underwritten and bland, which sadly fits for a character written more as a plot device than an actual person. She’s just a bit weird and a little creepy, especially since she’s basically a hard core communist. Actually the whole ‘travelling with communists/maybe being communists’ past angle is really strange.

If there needed to be more characterisation for anybody, it’d be the villains, who are paper thin and basic. They’re a mysterious cult determined to find a powerful artefact, which is exactly the same antagonists in just about every treasure-hunting movie ever. There offer no surprises, and even their leader’s twist at the end can be seen coming from a mile away. Apart from the creepy leader, a cult-leader sort with mismatched eyes who has total control over her blindly loyal followers, there’s also a shifty businessman and a dual-hatchet wielding badass girl whose evil organisation’s outfit seems modelled on schoolgirl clothes. They fit their part, but aren’t exactly memorable. They’re also idiots, either blindly walking into or triggering every single trap.

Speaking of idiots, the Red Guard communist students in the flashback are almost wilfully stupid, blindly following their communist ideology to their deaths. The moment they come across some ominously creepy statues in an obviously sacred place they decide to stop their journey in the middle of the night to knock them over. This backfires spectacularly (blood-thirsty mosquitoes are pretty horrifying), forcing them into the abandoned military base, where they find more creepy statues and the entire dumbass dance starts again, this time with mummified Japanese WW2 soldier zombies. It’s actually pretty awesome, especially seeing those idiots get comeuppance at the hands/spears/swords/rifles of the shuffling, dried out undead.

Movies about ancient treasures and tombs are always poised to deliver some great fun with deadly traps, creepy ruins, glorious treasures and ancient thrills. Mojin delivers on all this. We get swarms of blood-drinking mosquitos, several different types of zombies (seriously, there’re a few of them), unnatural green flames and collapsing tombs. While not especially original, it’s all done exceptionally well and make for a very fun time. The mystery behind the tomb ends up being pretty simple, but the journey there is a fun one. Also adding to the fun is the weird way the Mojin Xiaowei navigate them, using a mystical compass and either Feng Shui or the Chinese zodiac (I’m not entirely sure). It’s novel and strange, though it doesn’t get much of an explanation.

If this all sounds fun as mindless adventure film fodder, then that’s because it mostly is – the movie manages to coast on the inherent enjoyment of tomb-raiding treasure-hunting stories. It’s fun enough without managing to transcend or improve on the sort of films it apes. It is a bit too long towards the end where it drags out a bit, especially because it starts to repeat itself. Hu and Wang argue about the past constantly, even being to sole focus of two consecutive scenes of them having the same argument. The romance between Hu and Shirley and whether they’ll get together is a redundant concern, same with the ‘are these cult people secretly evil?’ thing, since the answer to both is a blaringly obvious yes. And Ding! We can’t ever seem to get away from her, always popping up in flashbacks and hallucinations. In an interesting sort of twist on the usual formulae though, the main hero isn’t the one with the drive and personal stakes; instead it’s the comic relief character, Wang, who finds himself compelled to finish the job and uncover the tomb. Of course the hero, Hu, does eventually eclipse this, taking Wang’s guilt and drive and sort of stealing it for the finale, but for a while it was interesting to see the comic relief sidekick as the actual emotional core, even if only for a moment.

Mojin: The Lost Legend is fun enough. While its faults are mostly directed to the thin, basic, stock nature of its story and characters, the rest of it is pretty earnest, with some cool special effects and set/costume design. The effort is there, but not spread evenly across every aspect.