The Mystic Nine Side Story: Tiger Bones Plum Blossom (2016)

Possibly the beginning to an answer

This is a step up from the previous Mystic Nine web movie starring the Hong Er Ye character. This had some inkling of an interesting story and gave some background on Xie Jiu Ye, the head of the Xie clan. His character was hard to really understand in Mystic Nine. They gave you very little information on him, except that he was one of the nine. All you knew is that he had money and was lurking in the background behind Fo Ye someplace.

The movie begins with the murder of the 8th Xie master, Jiu Ye's father, making Jiu Ye the clan leader. It is up to Jiu Ye along with the help of Lt. Zhang to unravel the mystery behind a series of murders plaguing the Xie clan. In and of itself the story was good. The execution? Not so much. The graphics were mediocre at best. I excused them because half the time they were illusions or dreams brought on by "medication."

The acting of the lead actor was pretty bad. Yang Zi Jiang, who plays Jiu Ye, has a limited filmography. Many times that means the person is a stage actor. In his case I think it's just because he's not good. If everyone's performance was bad, I'd blame the director. Fortunately, I can not do that. They weren't fantastic performances, but they were good enough.

The music was ok and the re-watch is 0, but most things for me have a 0 re-watch value. I don't even factor that into my ratings.

If you watched Mystic Nine, you probably want to be sure to watch this and possibly the 2 movies that follow, as I believe we are getting the answer to who the mysterious old man Fo Ye and Bai Ye met in MN.

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Initially watched this for Lt. Zhang, but overall, it was an Okay movie

I wanted to watch the movie because Lt. Zhang was there, and he was a gem!
That aside, the overall plot/story was a typical detective troupe. Mysterious deaths that needs to be solved. Not too bad. I had early suspicions, but because I second guessed myself, I was wrong in figuring out the perp.

The acting wise, Jiu Ye was pretty much an iceberg for emotions lol Zhang Min En as Lt. Zhang was on point with acting wise. He showed emotion and clear facial expression.

Dubbing is a but iffy in the movie and the CG is rather choppy compared to Chen Pi's story (granted CP's story was mainly outside and didn't need any mechanism environment) So BE WARNED with the CG/Green screen effect.

Left with a cliff hanger/open ending with many questions still lingering, but, overall, it was decent to watch.

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