Rating: R | Runtime: 130 minutes
Release Date: January 19th, 2023 (Hong Kong) / April 14th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Mandarin Motion Picture / Well Go USA Entertainment
Director(s): Donnie Yen / Ka-Wai Kam (co-director)
Writer(s): He Ben, Chen Li, Sheng Lingzhi, Lejing Shen, Xu Yifan & Wei Zhu / Louis Cha as Jin Yong (novel Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils)

I’m just an ordinary person who sticks to the right path.

With six credited writers, Donnie Yen’s passion project hardly seems to have been an easy adaptation. Choosing to focus on one of three main characters in Jin Yong’s Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, Yen and co-director Ka-Wai Kam’s Sakra take us back to the warring Song and Liao Empires to follow the exploits of the region’s most respected and unbeatable hero Qiao Feng (Yen).

A master of martial arts at a young age, Feng is currently the leader of the Beggar’s Sect with use of the fantastical “18 Dragon Subduing Palms” and a compassionate soul quick to offer his enemies a helping hand after soundly beating them into submission. So, it’s an unfamiliar feeling when his world suddenly turns its back on him with homicidal ambitions. Rumors state Qiao killed one of the Sect’s own, then his parents, and then his master. People say he’s a Khitan spy who learned the Song ways to defeat them from within.

The first hour is Qiao’s quest to uncover the truth of these heinous crimes left at his feet and get his comrades back on his side after unluckily being found at the wrong place at the wrong time more than once. Because anyone who dares to challenge him ends up on his back, however, he roams freely to gather facts and meet new acquaintances along the way.

One is Azhu (Chen Yuqi), a young woman working for the Yan Empire and its leader Murong Fu (Wu Yue) when she finds herself mortally wounded. In order to save her, Qiao will need to let his life become forfeit in exchange. He won’t just let his old friends kill him, though. He will instead mutually relinquish his bonds of brotherhood with them to fight one against a hundred without holding back. His hope is to either be the last man standing or first to shake hands with them all in the next life, as friends once more.

The second hour is Qiao’s journey towards revenge—both for the crimes he’s being accused of committing and the murder of his parents thirty years ago that left him the adopted son of a Song family. This narrative is much more complex than act one’s straight line to oblivion with new characters (Eddie Cheung’s Duan Zhengchun and Cya Liu’s Azi) introduced and more clarity on the topic of Qiao and Azhu’s familial pasts.

Because Bai Shijing (Du Yuming) and Kang Min (Grace Wong) still want Qiao’s head on a platter, everything begins to overlap with Azhu’s penchant for disguising herself as anyone else (with Mission: Impossible level masks) confusing things even further. It’s not too difficult to keep up, though. At a certain point you can simply agree that Qiao is the protagonist and anyone not by his side is worthy of death (unless they eventually join him later).

Regardless of that chaotic drama (not to mention multiple epilogues setting up sequel potential while finally showing why the soon-to-be sixty-year-old Yen cast himself as thirty), however, the real draw is the action and fight choreography. If you need convoluted secrets and a plot to frame the world’s greatest hero as its most despicable villain to get countless people to want to battle Yen, so be it.

Because the wirework and special effects paired with the speed at which everyone on-screen is operating makes the dizzying battle scenes exhilarating. Whether with swords, sticks, fire, or wind, they jump on rooftops and walk up walls to gain leverage for physically punishing kicks that throw victims through brick walls. Qiao might be a genial Robin Hood at the start, but witnessing mankind’s cruelty soon allows him to do whatever is necessary for justice.

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Donnie Yen in SAKRA; courtesy of Well Go USA.