Concept: A team of three former martial arts experts reunite to investigate the death of their mentor and teacher..

• • Fun, entertaining martial arts action comedy showing that an action movie doesn’t have to be uber-violent (like “The Raid: Redemption” or “John Wick”) or super-nationalistic (like many films coming out of China during the past few years) in order to be enjoyable.
  • All the characters give genuinely fun performances, but especially the main three characters—they have a great chemistry. Everybody involved seems to really be having fun making the movie, and it’s infectious.
  • Despite this being a first major movie from its director and having an ultra-low budget, it comes across as well-produced and with greatly choreographed action sequences.
  • This movie was first financed in Kickstarter, and that initial money was used to produce the videotaped sequences of the three main characters training as boys. Later, financing from different sources allowed the director to produce the entire movie.
  • Viewed on an Optoma HD28DSE projector, 92” screen, Netflix on Roku 3. Looked fine; I really liked the 16×9 proportions that filled my screen, rather than the typical widescreen proportions used in most Hollywood movies.

Paper Tigers (2020) 85%