Starring Xie Miao, Hong Jianing, Xiang Hao, Zhang Haosen and Wang Yukai. Written by Yang Bingjia and directed by Liu Wenpu.
Beijing Bona Film & Television Culture Co.

The Great Eunuch orders the large-scale hunting of tigers after being informed that the big cats can be used to create Tiger Golden Elixir, which will increase his ‘yang energy’ (this elixir is extracted from tigers after they’ve been scorched with an ancient form of flamethrower!) Liang City, situated near the southwest border, behind Thousand Mile Tiger Ridge, is used as the HQ (referred to as the Eastern Depot) for this tiger-hunting operation. But one of the captive tigers escapes, transmits ‘plague’ to the wild tiger population, and eventually the area is besieged by killer felines! Meanwhile, Zhang (Miao), new to the Imperial Guard, balks at being ordered to kill a rebel’s daughter, and he takes out the other guards instead, in a snazzily-shot sword skirmish during a nighttime downpour. He then heads for the Eastern Depot to look for his brother Liuping, a tiger hunter, and Zhang soon finds himself caught up in the tiger attacks. 

In due course Zhang discovers that the Eunuch’s warlock has infected the tigers with a rabies-like distemper to create the Tiger Golden Elixir. These tigers, just like dogs with rabies, fear water, which Zhang intends to use to his advantage, to help save a group of survivors trapped in an inn.

The CGI tigers ain’t all that, but the action in general, choreographed by action director Qin Pengfei, is good, and viewers are not shortchanged with regard to the amount of onscreen monster mayhem. Xie Miao, as Zhang, carries the movie with a committed performance, exuding a distinctive Ti Lung vibe throughout. This dude is pretty good.

There’s a full-on tiger attack on the walled settlement of Liang City, with lots of folks falling victim to the scabrous beasts (every tiger in the world must be here, I reckon, based on the sheer number of striped felines shown in these scenes!) Though they’re far from the best CGI critters ever committed to film, an occasional close-up of a tiger does look pretty sweet, with these killer cats possessing a semi-smirking expression on their faces.

MUTANT TIGER, aka MUTANT TIGER CHRONICLES, is a decent period-set creatures-attack adventure romp that does kill off characters I was sure would survive, including three lacy robes-clad fighting femmes. In recent Chinese films you can never be certain if the hero will make it to the end, and here Zhang has a last stand confrontation on a rope bridge, which is a nicely handled sequence, showing him fighting off tigers and one of the imperial villains, who has swallowed the coveted Tiger Golden Elixir pill and has become a zombie-like, white-eyed, black-toothed, rabid dude who can command the cats! A mid-credits scene, however, does offer hope for Zhang’s chances of surviving the tiger invasion…