Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a Marvel Cinematic Universe martial arts plus chi-powers movie. Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) seems to be a typical Chinese American living in San Francisco, working as a valet parker with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina). But his secret is revealed when ninja assassins assault Shang-Chi and he reveals he's a martial arts master and son of Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung), the Mandarin who wields the Ten Rings and has lived a thousand years. Shang-Chi ran away from his bad guy father and has been in hiding but now must come out to save his sister Xu Xialing (Meng'er Zhang) and stop whatever plan his father has for taking over the world...

Martial arts action here is very good with kind of heavy CGI polishing to make it look clean and cinematic (more authentic looking martial arts in other movies just doesn't seem as four-color super heroic). The Mandarin had already appeared in Iron Man and revealed to be an actor (Ben Kingsley who returns as the actor who played The Mandarin) and that version was more comic book Mandarin with 10 finger rings that had different powers (though I forget if they showed that aspect in Iron Man).

This Mandarin the rings are metallic forearm bracelets that can be shot out at high speeds and can be recalled at will and I like the resulting powers that flow from that concept: besides shooting out as attacks, shooting behind you for propulsion or recalling and grabbing on for a bit of flight; using them to block attacks and in a Death Blossom attack when getting mobbed. Conversely defeating Wengwu is a matter of making sure his arms are never pointed at you, like fighting someone with a hand gun.

I'm not really into martial arts movies but this one was better than I expected. The story is good and the action makes me believe this is an MCU movie.