Review | Iceman: The Time Traveler film review – Donnie Yen’s sci-fi action sequel an insult to the paying public
- A film so incoherent and nonsensical as to appear incomplete, this hopeless sequel to the awful 2014 film Iceman has rightly bombed at the China box office
- Yen reprises his role as a time-travelling Ming dynasty general, with Simon Yam as his scheming nemesis
0.5/5 stars
There are badly scripted movies, and then there is Iceman: The Time Traveler, a film so lacking in coherence, common sense and the most basic character arcs throughout its 87-minute runtime as to be an insult to the paying public. Even hard -core fans of Donnie Yen Ji-dan should think twice before seeing it.
A sequel to 2014 3D martial arts fantasy Iceman that was supposed to hit cinemas in the same year, The Time Traveler had been shelved indefinitely until this month – perhaps because no sane viewer would choose to watch this until they’ve completely forgotten about the original film, which is just as awful but at least tells a relatively complete story.
Since it opened in China in early November to overwhelmingly negative reviews, The Time Traveler has bombed at the box office and stirred up an online war of words between its Chinese production company and Yen himself – not surprising given the film appears to be incomplete and a mindless assemblage of errant scenes.
The omens are not good when the first 10 minutes of the film are dedicated to a voiced-over montage about the science of time-travelling and an overlong recap of Iceman.
This reviewer laughed for the first and only time upon seeing Simon Yam Tat-wah’s police inspector be told, without irony, that a body in the morgue still has a pulse. It is not a joke, and the film goes downhill from there.