Past is a Blast

3 stars

I’ll admit, for the first 20 minutes or so, I had a bit of trouble figuring out the intricate storyline of Back to the Past. That’s understandable, given the fact that the film is based on the popular 2001 TV series A Step Into the Past (Chum chun gei), all 40 episodes of which are now available on Tubi. The directors, Jack Lai and Yeun Fai Ng, do a good enough job to get you started with a quick prologue, but that many episodes of drama and action is a lot to cover.

I will also admit that feeling a bit lost didn’t really hinder my enjoyment of Back to the Past once the action kicked in. 

To avoid getting any of the details wrong, I will use the studio summary to explain the basic plot of Back to the Past: “After two decades of peaceful solitude, Hong Siu-lung is drawn back to the Qin Dynasty when the six states—long united under Emperor Ying Ching—are threatened by a time-traveling adversary, fueled by revenge over his wrongful imprisonment.”

Don’t worry about connecting the dots. Sit back and watch the good guy ninjas on horseback wield swords and shooting arrows against the bad guys on motorcycles and flying hover boards with high tech pistols and machine guns. It sounds like it would be completely one-sided, but the directors and their stunt teams make it work. And while the plot details may be a bit thin for some, Lai and Yeun do a good job of connecting the emotional dots between the characters to add depth to all that action.

Back to the Past ends on an odd note: it has two endings so polar opposites that it’s difficult to understand what it all means. Maybe it takes a little homework. I am now on episode eight of the original series with plans to rewatch the movie as soon as I finish episode 40.