A terrifically entertaining movie that sees Tsui Hark utilising all manner of dizzying cinematography, creative editing and special effects to deliver a manic piece of action-fantasy cinema about two seductive snake demons who transform into humans.

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A ‘90s Hong Kong classic based on the popular Chinese folk tale ‘Legend of the White Snake’, Green Snake has been proclaimed by many over the years to be one of the best ‘Snake’ films. 

It is a terrifically entertaining movie, but I caught an abysmal restoration that is an insult to ‘4K restorations’.  I hope this won’t be the film’s final form, but it is at least more watchable than any 480p DVD rip on YouTube. 

One of the most innovative filmmakers from that golden era, Tsui Hark utilises all manner of dizzying cinematography, creative editing and special effects to deliver a manic piece of action-fantasy cinema. 

While Green Snake is certainly more mythological with roots in the wuxia genre, it shares a similar ‘bonkers spirit’ with Johnnie To’s The Heroic Trio, also released in the same year.  What a double-bill that would be. 

“What is it like to be human?”

Superstars Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong play Green Snake and White Snake respectively, slithy snake demons who transform into humans.  They seek love and companionship, with White Snake eyeing a naïve scholar. 

At the same time, a Buddhist monk must resist the temptation of lust when Green Snake tries to seduce him.  Romances are always complicated but Tsui’s hyper-visual style keeps it straightforward, engaging our senses and disrupting all notions of realism. 

The climax is outrageous, a whirlwind of what has transpired thematically—an epic battle of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ as the fallibility of religion and the morality of human desires and sufferings are expressed with abstract strokes of martial arts movements, ridiculous superpowers and natural elements (particularly water) that threaten to wash everything away like the biblical flood in Noah’s Ark. 

Grade: B+

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