Five Kings of Thieves (2024)

Thief of hearts.

Five Kings of Thieves is a fast paced Republican period wuxia. Zhang Siye puts a mysterious artefact up for auction. This object is said to lead to the whereabouts of the first emperor's mythical cauldron. This draws many opposing interests out of the woodworks; including historic guardians of the treasure, the Five Elements Families. Revolutionary students determined to protect China's national treasures from Japan's Black Dragon Association also jump into the fray.

Huo Xiaoxie is just a scrappy orphan and the only treasure he is after is just some nice dim sum to celebrate his shifu's birthday. He sneaks into the Zhang mansion to steal some and bumps into Shui Yao'er, who is after a far more valuable object. They fight into love as they are caught up this high stakes treasure hunt with devastating and life changing consequences. Zheng Zedao a constable with an unknown agenda recognises his resourcefulness and bails him out of a few tight spots. As their enemies encircle them, this thief of hearts races to unlock his own hidden powers to secure the treasure and win the girl.

This is a low budget action packed adventure with many twists that weaves in many brave and colorful jianghu characters with their own side stories. I enjoyed both Ren Min and Darren Chen's slightly exaggerated acting and cute chemistry in this. Its a bit rushed at the end and I could see some of the twists coming early on but still enjoyed watching them play out. The slightly slapstick sequences and the look and feel of this entire production is nostalgic of the old HK TVB Republican era action adventures. Its quite campy and the editing is not the best but with only 12 episodes its a nice, quick watch. My rating 7.0/10.0

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Started decent, but got worse as it goes on

I was click-baited into thinking that I was gonna be watching an action-crime show, but that wasn't the case at all...

The story started off decent for the first 4 episodes, but when they started expanding the world and introduced lots of new characters, it slowly started going down the drain. I mostly stay within romance right, but sometimes I watch other genres for a change. When I saw this drama, I was like "Ahh, it's Ren Min. She doesn't do romance that much. It's probably action so I'm gonna get hyped". And yeah, that's what it actually was in the beginning. They went on this stealing from the rich, bringing justification to the preservation of history, and then trying to get away with it to martial arts superpowers with politics. Then suddenly they'd added romance in the mix out of nowhere, where one of the leads suddenly said "I have feelings for this person" Like, did I miss an episode or anything? or wasn't I paying attention enough? Where along the way did you fall for him? Because there was no scene that elicited romance that was highlighted at all. But yeah whatever, I'm a romance fan, so why not?

The story could've been better if it was longer, and well fleshed out, and this where it could've also benefited the 40 episodes law. There were a lot of interesting ideas that they managed to show, but because it was so fast-paced they ended up being bland. They couldn't even be consistent with the idea of having superpowers because most of the time the characters would just use martial arts, even the clan heads where they could've easily shown the power ceiling for how strong these leaders are. Although the action was pretty cool, the integration of element effects with it is jarring.

I should've known from the beginning that it's gonna get worse and they were just trying to ease me in because once in a while, there's gonna be a scene where they could've used to have a meaningful quick conversation to flesh out the characters more, but they don't, It would be just silent or would straight up ignore the character itself. For example, I don't even know that sidekick of ML in the 2nd half. Why did he want to be a sidekick? What was he doing in that village? Is he affiliated with one of the five-element families? If yes, then which? I don't know. He's just there. I guess we're not finding out.

The characters are just straight bland because there was not much characterization at all. ML and 2nd ML had that potential. They're both great actors don't get me wrong, they could've been like Naruto x Sasuke in terms of tandem and development because they brought up some interesting parts to them, but it wasn't much of a strong impact. I think I was more interested in 2nd ML towards the end because it was so amazing to see him being an upholder of justice to becoming an enemy, then realizing he's on this wrong path and trying to correct it at the end. Ren Min as FL, I loved her exaggerated playful acting, I liked her character in the beginning, but there's so much mystery to it and then suddenly they pulled this disease bullshit that wasn't built up at all. She and ML are pretty funny together when they are on screen, their characters have funny dynamic, but they don't have chemistry at all. There were some romantic moments that could've sparked it, but I just couldn't feel it. I'm sorry. And the Japanese characters in this show weren't believable at all. It's so immersion-breaking that they're speaking fluent Chinese. They could've had them speak broken Japanese, as much as they hated it, or they could've had "Translators".

Overall, this a very fast-paced show with lots of plot holes. I wouldn't recommend watching it. I was just here because of Ren Min.

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