I was going to watch this German martial arts movie long time ago, but did not have a time. Now I put my hands or eyes on it and ready to tell you what I think.
First of all Kampfansage or Challenge or The Last Apprentice plot is: The World has become a lawless place. Anarch rules the streets, and warlords take power by brute force. The streets are ruled by warlords. One warlord is Bosco, a ruthless killer who is obsessed with perfecting his power through martial arts. Together with Cleo, Boscos lascivious partner, he kills Master Thach, keeper of a sacred book of marital arts.
The movie started with a short story about what is happened to the world and it reminded me the Fist of The North Star about a Legendary Warrior Battles Against The Forces Of Evil. There was the same evil lord who was keeping the world in tyrrany and a hero who was searching for revenge. Here is the story looks particulary the same, but in European style. During beginning titles you can see Jonas practising kung fu and sometimes he reminded me Patrick Swayze in Road House. Too many comparisons may be, but this is not the end, there was a big hi to Bruce Lee with rubbing a nose gesture. But anyway, guys did their job very good and movie looks smoothly.
Fight sequences looks spectacular, somewhere they are too long and not down to ground. I noticed that stick fighting in the Kampfansage martial arts movie could be more entertainment, but guys prefer to focused on acrobatics and viet vo dao. All fights were choreographed by Mathis Landwehr together with his partners.
Fact: They were supposed to have two shooting-nights for Vinzent-Jonas fight, but in the end they did not have more than eight hours to shoot the whole scene. Due to the fact, that guys were really well prepared, it turned out to be a nice scene…
Like in any other low budget movie all scenes happen in some small places in one area. Filmmakers used special effects very well, but truck chase looks like a game mixed with close-up scenes of actors. Two main heroes get a positive feelings when watching their adventures and on my opinion Volkram Zschiesche has got more potential as an martial artist than Mathis Landwehr. After displaying some awesome martial arts ability, and some considerable screen presence in Kampfansage, it can only be a matter of time before Mathis Landwehr moves onto bigger things. Now he makes one or two movies per year and his last project was tv series named Lasko about a monk, dedicated equally to the discipline of the monastery and to the ancient secrets of martial arts, becomes a staunch defender of the poor. Lasko was shown in theaters in china and did pretty well.
Fact: Lasko also stars Arnold Vosloo who is quite a famous face. The trailer for Lasko makes it look more like a mainstream action film than pure martial arts, but Mathis was a little bit disappointed in the way how the martial arts action was shot and I dont like the sequences at all.
Talking about sacred book you can only have some feelings that you have seen it somewhere before. Of cause you have, a lot of Chinese martial arts movies used this story.
If do not pay attention to a story, it is not the main point in such kind of movies, I can say that I liked Kampfansage. So if you still have not seen this movie I recommend it to buy and watch.