The Grandmaster (2013)

The Grandmaster (2013) Chinese Title: 一代宗師 Translation: A Generation of Grandmasters

Starring: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen, Zhao Benshan, Xiao Shenyang, Song Hye-kyo, Wang Qingxiang, Max Zhang Jin, Shang Tielong, Lo Hoi-Pang, Cung Le

Director: Wong Kar-Wai

Action Director: Yuen Woo-Ping

The Grandmaster came out at the height of Ip Man-ia in East Asia. Although Wong Fei-Hung was the “big thing” in Chinese folk heroes in the 50 and 60s, and then in the 90s, he was more or less replaced in the 00s with Ip Man…THE MAN WHO TRAINED BRUCE LEE!!!! I do find it cool how martial arts masters in China develop their own folklore that is miles removed from whatever might’ve happened in their real lives. Bruce Lee became the subject of that within a few years of his own death. Ip Man had to wait more than 30 years after his passing to reach that point. That means that in two or three decades, we’ll start getting movies about the martial awesomeness of Jimmy Wang Yu!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Ip Man-ia. It started in 2008 with the first Wilson Yip/Donnie Yen Ip Man film. Two years later, we got both a sequel and a pseudo-spin-off, A Legend is Born: Ip Man. That starts Dennis To—who looked A LOT like Donnie Yen—as a young Ip Man who has to fight Japanese terrorist babies and ninjas. By 2012, China had its own 50-episode Ip Man TV series being broadcast. The following year, we got Ip Man: The Final Fight and this movie. We eventually got two more “official” Ip Man films, a spin-off to those movies, and a whole bunch of low-budget Ip Man movies, including Ip Man: Kung Fu Master and Ip Man and the Four Kings.

Arthouse director Wong Kar-Wai apparently wanted to make a movie about Ip Man even before Donnie Yen started the trend. I’m guessing that his script went through all sorts of rewrites, plus he actually required his actors to train in the styles they were supposed to represent. Apparently, actor Chang Chen became proficient enough in bajiquan that he actually won a regional tournament. I guess actor Tony Leung broke his arm while training in wing chun, which is what ultimately held up production, although knowing Wong Kar-Wai, I wonder if he spent a good chunk of the film’s production time in editing.

The final product is a bit of an odd beast. It is about Ip Man, but in a lot of ways, it isn’t. In fact, the little life details that make Ip Man who he was are given so little attention that the film’s themes could have been explored with a completely fictitious protagonist and the result would have largely been the same.

The film opens in 1936 with Ip Man in his early 1940s. This is a year before the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 1945) started and Ip Man is still living well thanks to his and his wife’s families’ old money. He tells us in narration that the first 40 years or so of his life were relatively easy compared to what came later. Ip Man lives in Foshan with his wife, Cheung Wing-Shing (South Korean actress Song Hye-kyo, of John Woo’s The Crossing and “Descendants of the Sun”), and four children. But that’s really not important.

What is important is that Master Gong Yutian (Wang Qingxian, Red Cliff and Song of the Assassins) is retiring. Master Gong is an important figure in the martial arts for a variety of reasons. He is the first master to “combine” the internal styles of both baguazhang and xingyiquan (of hsing-I chuan) and he has opened martial arts academies all over China, including in the south. Thus, he is seen as something of a unifying force in the world of Chinese martial arts. As he is retiring and returing to his home in the north, he decides to duel with a representative of Southern Chinese kung fu in a “goodwill duel.” The representative of Southern China is ultimately chosen to be Ip Man, apparently chosen on the basis of a duel he had with a gang (led by True Legend’s Cung Le) at the very beginning of the film.

While Ip Man is preparing for the duel, Master Gong’s top student, Ma San (Max Zhang, of Rise of the Legend and Undiscovered Tomb), tries to insert himself into the mix as a “mini-boss.” You know, “If y’all can’t beat me, don’t even try to fight my master.” Well, Master Gong is incensed with his students behavior and send him home. But that’s not important.

What is important is that the duel goes as planned, although it is carried out in an unconventional manner, with Ip Man being victorious (albeit in a humble way). Master Gong retires, but his daughter, Gong’er (Zhang Ziyi, of The Banquet and Rush Hour 2), doesn’t like the idea of dad losing. So, she challenges Ip Man to a duel and sorta wins, I guess. But the duel reveals something of a mutual attraction between the two.

Before Ip Man can travel to the north to see her and check out her 64 Palms—I’m sure most men would like to test out Zhang Ziyi’s 64 palms—war breaks out and all of that old money is lost, plunging the Ip family into poverty. Ip Man eventually has to go to Hong Kong in search of greener pastures, but that’s not important. What is important is that Ma San has become a puppet for the Japanese forces, which leads to his expulsion from the Bagua school by Master Gong. So, Ma San just kills him and takes over the school anyway. Gong’er is angry about this and decides to throw away a promising marriage and career in medicine—do not ask me to explain the cultural implications of having a career only if married—in order to seek revenge against Ma San. Will the paths of Gong’er and Ip Man ever cross again?

As I stated before, the odd thing about The Grandmaster is how all the events in Ip Man’s life that separate him from “generic kung fu movie protagonist” are given the short shrift in the script. We find out that he is permanently separated from his wife after moving to Hong Kong, although the film only mentions it a bit of narration. We never find out the historical and political implications that led to their separation. We find out that his two daughters die (of illness?) during the war, but the film spends no time with his children, so we have little reason to care. Like the other films, The Grandmaster completely glosses over his (apparently) notorious opium addiction. I guess unless your name is Iron Bridge Sam, whitewashing your kung fu folk hero’s drug issues is important in saving face.

So what is the film about in the end? The first act is a celebration of the final days of the old wulin, or martial world. There is a certain nostalgia of the old days when kung fu masters would converge in brothels and bordellos in order to have duels (witnessed by prostitutes and their clients). These scenes represent the film at its most beautiful, with wonderful cinematography and art direction, thanks to Oscar nominees Philippe le Sourd and William Chang. This is driven home in one of the film’s final scenes, where Zhang Ziyi’s Gong’er is walking down a Hong Kong street at night. Observing all the smaller buildings used as kung fu schools, she laments, “Is this all that’s left the martial world?”

The second two acts become something of a series of comparisons and contrasts between the directions that Ip Man’s and Gong’er’s lives take after their fateful duel. Ip Man is forced into poverty and goes to Hong Kong, where he humbly spends the rest of his days passing on Wing Chun to a new generation. Meanwhile, Gong’er has it all, but willingly throws it all way in order to save face (or family pride). She gets what she wants—revenge—but it comes at a price, both to her and the kung fu style she represents. Indeed, an entire lineage of baguazhang is lost by the end of the film due to her actions.

There are two climaxes to the film. The external climax is actually shown in flashback form and details the final showdown between Gong’er and Ma San. That starts at about the 80-minute mark and lasts for ten minutes. Much like Wong Kar-Wai’s Ashes of Time, the real climax is emotional, much like Maggie Cheung’s monologue in that movie. In this case, it is the final meeting between Ip Man and Gong’er and her evaluation of the life that she has led. The first time I watched this, I was disappointed at how unlike a traditional kung fu movie the story structure was. Watching it a second time, I was actually quite moved by both Gong’er and her final soliloquy, especially when it flashbacks to the character as a child. We see the enormous potential in her, which ended up never getting realized as the result of both cultural norms and personal decisions. As someone who often feels like his own potential by the directions his life has taken, it hits me in the feels to see that happen in a character in such a stark way. 

If you can get around the film’s unconventional story structure, I would say that the main flaw of the film is Chang Chen’s character, The Razor. Introduced tangentially as an anti-Japanese agent, he follows a life path rather similar to Ip Man, finding a similar niche in the Hong Kong martial arts scene at the same time Ip Man’s reputation is taking off. The problem is that his character literally never crosses paths with Ip Man and doesn’t have a particularly meaningful moment with Gong’er when taking in the story as a whole. The entire film could have been shortened by the duration of his scenes and it would not have affected the final product. That said, his big fight scene is a banger.

Speaking of which, the fight scenes were staged by Yuen Woo-Ping and his team, which won Yuen a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Action Choreography, beating out Donnie’s Special I.D. and Andy Lau’s Firestorm, among others. Early trailers suggested that this would be about as wired up as Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy, but that really is not the case. The fight scenes are grounded for the most part, save people getting knocked back ten or fifteen feet on occasion. There is a lot of slow motion in the choreography, which gives the fight sequences very much an artistic, “beautiful” feel. We get to see a lot of styles on display: wing chun (Tony Leung), bagua (Zhang Ziyi), hsing-I (Max Zhang), and even some hung gar courtesy of old school actor Lau Kar-Yung (Dragon’s Claws and The 36 Crazy Fists). The choreography is great and photography and editing are just gorgeous. The most intense fight is the aforementioned one between Razor and his colleagues, where he gives a lesson in bajiquan, which uses a lot of elbow strikes. The big fight between Gong’er and Ma San is a highlight, as the two go at with two of the major Chinese internal styles on a train platform in slow motion as the train is leaving the station. The entire sequence is just shot to perfection.

I think The Grandmaster is the sort of film you need to watch more than once. The first time may be off-putting in the way the plot progresses, especially if your expectations are based on Donnie’s Ip Man films. But once you get past the shock of its unconventional storytelling, there is some important martial wisdom and poignant character moments to experience, even if they don’t involve the characters you would expect in a Ip Man biopic.

Ashes of Time Redux (1994 / 2008)

Ashes of Time Redux (1994 / 2008) Chinese Title: 東邪西毒 Translation: Evil the East, Poison in the West

Starring: Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Kar-Fei, Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Jackie Cheung, Charlie Yeung, Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau

Director: Wong Kar-Wai

Action Director: Sammo Hung

Way back in the old days of Youtube, almost twenty years ago, people would upload Hong Kong movies to the platform in smaller-video increments of 10 minutes. It took a while for the videos to upload with the Internet capabilities of the day, so I often would open a bunch of windows for each part and let them load for an hour or so before sitting down to watch it. That is how I ended up watching Ashes of Time for the first time. I actually thought it was pretty good: not as boring as some reviews suggested (“Dragon Inn minus ‘good’, plus ‘suck’”), with just enough action to satisfy a fight junkie like myself.

A couple of years later, Wong Kar-Wai released his “Redux” cut, which ended up seeing release here in Brazil. I ended up buying a copy at some point, although it took me a few years to actually sit down and watch it—the problem with having money as an adult is that you have more to splurge on movies than you did as a kid, so it’s more probable that you’ll buy more than you have time to watch at a given time. I think I was just nervous about watching Ashes of Time Redux because of some reviews that suggested that the action quotient had been reduced to almost zero. That’s not really the case: the fighting montages that bookend the film are all but removed, but the fight scenes in the story proper itself are still there.

The movie was filmed in 1992 and took two years to edit, which was such an exhausting experience for director Wong Kar-Wai that he made guerilla-style arthouse Chungking Express as a way to unwind from that experience. Ashes of Time was not a huge box office success, although it was a critical darling: Christopher Doyle won awards at three different venues for Best Cinematography; Wong Kar-Wai was nominated for Best Director in Hong Kong and Taiwan (and won at the Hong Kong Critic’s Society Awards); William Chang won awards for both Art Direction and Costume Design; and even Sammo Hung was nominated for Best Action Choreography…to name a few. Director Wong also produced a parody of the source material, Eagle Shooting Heroes, during the editing process for this film. I haven’t seen the film yet, but apparently it features antagonist Ouyang Feng being defeated by a man in a rubber dinosaur costume at the end(!).

Ashes of Time is a prequel to Jin Yong’s Legend of the Condor Heroes, a super-important wuxia novel that has been adapted to film (like the Brave Archer series) and television numerous times over the decades. Set several decades before Jin Yong’s novel, the film tells the origin stories of some of the older kung fu masters in the book, most specifically the main antagonist, Ouyang Feng. Ouyang Feng here is played by Leslie Cheung, one of Wong Kar-Wai’s “muses”—he had been in Days of Being Wild and later in Happy Together. Ouyang Feng has recently left White Camel Mountain after the love of his life (Maggie Cheung, As Tears Go By; Days of Being Wild; and In the Mood for Love), has married his brother. He ends up in the desert in Western China and sets up a little post where he hires out swordsman for different jobs—usually hunting bandits. He is periodically visited by an old friend, Huang Yaoshi (Tony Leung #2, i.e. Leung Kar-Fei, of New Dragon Inn and Bodyguards and Assassins). On one visit, Huang Yaoshi presents him with a wine said to cause a person to forget their past. Huang drinks it, but Ouyang Feng refuses to, presumably for fear of forgetting about his past love.

The narrative then goes into a sort of anthology format, telling the stories of three people who show up at Ouyang’s post. The first is a woman (or man?) named Murong Yang (Brigitte Lin, of Chungking Express) who wants to hire Ouyang’s services to kill Huang Yaoshi. Apparently, Huang had promised to marry Yang’s sister, Murong Yin (also Lin), but stood her up. Murong Yin then shows up and asks Ouyang to kill Yang instead. It soon becomes apparent that they are the same person. According to the Wikipedia entry on the film, Murong Yin and Murong Yang are basically a representation of the character Dugu Qiubai, who is a fabled “greatest swordsman” in the novels whose stances can defeat any possible style.

The second story involves a swordsman who is slowly going blind, played by Tony Leung #1 (i.e. Leung Chiu-Wai, who is Wong Kar-Wai’s other muse: Happy Together; Chungking Express; In the Mood for Love; 2046; and The Grandmaster). He wants to make enough money to be able pay for medicine that will enable him to see the “peach blossoms” in his hometown one last time before he goes completely blind. We later learn that “peach blossoms” is his wife’s name. She is played by Carina Lau (Days of Being Wild and 2046) and she has apparently been seduced by Huang Yaoshi, too.

The final story involves a young swordsman, Hong Qi (Jackie Cheung, of As Tears Go By and Days of Being Wild). He arrives at the place looking for work in order to boost his reputation in the Martial World. He takes on two jobs, including a request by a poor girl (Charlie Yeung, of Fallen Angels) to avenge her brother’s murder, in exchange for some eggs. Hong Qi is the character Hong Qigong in the novel, who is the Head of the Beggars Clan and Ouyang Feng’s mortal enemy.

It has been almost twenty years since I saw the original version of Ashes of Time, so although I remembered the general story and individual scenes and character interactions, I didn’t remember enough to make a full-blown comparison between the Redux cut and this one. Reviews say that the story is more cohesive the second time around, the editing flows better, and the score was completely rehauled from Frankie Chan’s synethesizer score to something more orchestrated, complete with music from Yo-Yo Ma (that post-Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon influence).

Fellow B-movie critic Scott Hamilton once made the joke that Wong Kar-Wai movies often feel like they could be the origin stories of a serial killer. In the case of Ashes of Time, that really is the case. Leslie Cheung’s Ouyang Feng is not evil here, but is definitely callous and hurting from his rejection by his (new) sister-in-law. By the end of the film, his unhealed emotional wounds have festered to the point that he is becoming toxic…quite literally: his character in the Condor Heroes novels is known as the Poison of the East.

Like most (all?) Wong Kar-Wai films starting with Days of Being Wild, there is a running theme of amnesia and forgetting the past. In this case, it is quite literal and comes in the form of a special wine that causes people to forget their past. The wine is given to Huang Yaoshi by Maggie Cheung’s character, who wants Ouyang Feng to forget about her and move on. Huang himself drinks it as a way of forgetting his own woes: he never found someone who truly loves him and was jealous of Maggie’s undying love for Ouyang (her rejection notwithstanding), of which his constant womanizing was an ill-chosen coping mechanism. The wine itself is hinted to be a temporary solution at best: those who drink do indeed forget, but are forever haunted by specters of the past that they simply cannot identify.

There is a lot in this film about love and how people do stupid things to those they love, only to regret it later. That is basically the entire story of Maggie Cheung’s infamous monologue at the end. We also see it to a lesser degree with the little-seen Peach Blossom character, who is introduced by an image of her “sensuously” sitting atop a horse, with her bare feet dangling in a way that would make Quentin Tarantino happy (note: it was Tarantino’s love for Chungking Express that helped Wong Kar-Wai become known in the West outside of HK cinephile circles).

The action sequences are few and far between, staged by Sammo Hung during his most difficult professional period. As filming took place in 1992, it would have been at the same time that Sammo had directed the wuxia fan favorite The Moon Warriors. Sammo later worked with Wong Kar-Wai on Eagle Shooting Heroes the following year. This is the film where Sammo really developed his art of blurry slow motion, which would later show up in films like Kung Fu Cult Master; Thunderbolt; and even Mr. Nice Guy. Wong Kar-Wai is not really an action director, so his goal was not to one-up any of the films that Yuen Woo-Ping or Ching Siu-Tung were making at the time. Thus, the short sword battles are more like Impressionistic displays of motion more than complex ballets of traditional Chinese fencing augmented with wires. For the film’s purpose, they do their job. But if you want Sammo doing wuxia, stick with Blade of Fury or Kung Fu Cult Master.

This is one of those movies that I think all Hong Kong cinema fans need to watch at one point, even if it ends up not being their cup of tea. It is well acted by a wonderful cast of Hong Kong legends. It looks great, especially in the Redux version. The direction and editing are very good. It’s just good filmmaking altogether, even if it is a bit slower than what mainstream audiences might be accustomed to.

O Cinema de Wong Kar-Wai

 O Cinema de Wong Kar-Wai

Last September, I reviewed the DVD set “Cinema Yakuza Volume 1,” which was released by Brazilian niche distributor Versátil Home Video. This year, they released a number of nifty sets for Asian movie collectors, including “Sci-Fi Japonesa Vol. 3”; “Obras Primas de Terror: Terror Asiático Volume 2”; and “Cinema Policial: Hong Kong.” Among these sets was “O Cinema de Wong Kar-Wai,” which compiled some of his films, which had previously been released on individual discs in the 2000s by Wonder Media/Continental. Those are out of print, but you can still find some of them for about R$ 40 (about 8 dollars) per film. This one cost me R$ 100, which ended up being a bargain compared to the older discs.

As Tears Go By (Hong Kong, 1988: Wong Kar-Wai) - So far, I have only seen Ashes of Time (the original cut) and The Grandmaster as far as Wong Kar-Wai films are concerned. I recently purchased a Brazilian set of his films and will be working my way through it over the course of these next few weeks. I'll watch them in order, so I'm starting off with this one. There isn't a real plot per se. It's mainly about the travails of low-level Triad Wah (Andy Lau) as he has to deal with fallout of the actions of his impulsive and hot-headed dai-dai Fly (Jackie Cheung, in the sort of unhinged performance that would serve him well later in Bullet in the Head). Most of these problems have to do with another Triad, Tony (Alex Man), to whom Fly owes money. At the same time, Wah finds himself developing feelings for his (second?) cousin Ngor (Maggie Cheung), who has come to his flat from the sticks (Lantau Island) for a few nights seeking medical treatment.

The film goes back and forth between the three leads. At one point, Fly becomes such a liability that Wah encourages him to get a real job as a street vendor in order to stay out of trouble. Of course, Fly is not able to stay on the straight and narrow for long--it doesn't help that Tony is a douchebag. Near the end, it feels like that Wah may be willing to tone down his Triad activities in order to stay with Ngor, but when Fly volunteers to carry out a hit against a stoolie, Wah has to choose between love and brotherhood. I'm guessing this is a Wong Kar-Wai thing (or an arthouse director thing), but there are lots of quiet scenes of people smoking cigarettes and staring off into the distance.

Some people label this a Heroic Bloodshed film, and it does have three action directors--Stephen Tung Wai (who helped invent the Bullet Ballet), Poon Kin-Kwan, and Benz Kong--but there really isn't much action aside from a few Triad beatings and a brief shootout at the end. My favorite scene comes right before the climax where Fly has a final confrontation with Tony. It is actually a very intelligent moment for an otherwise irresponsible nutjob, as he leverages his temporary "Triad Hero" status to destroy his adversary's credibility. A lot of people also enjoy phone booth kissing scene, set to the Cantonese version of "Take My Breath Away." The direction is good, the performances are good, and I like Andrew Lau as a cinematographer more than I do as a director. But beyond that, I'm guessing that contemplative dramas are not really my cup of tea.

DVD Extras - "Extended" ending - Not really different from the one we got. "Happy" ending - Probably for the Malaysian and Singaporean markets, which dictated that films about criminals (and vigilantes) should end with them answering to the law and going to jail.

Days of Being Wild (Hong Kong, 1990: Wong Kar-Wai) - Wong Kar-Wai's sophomore effort is a (very) leisurely-paced character drama set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s. Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) is something of a womanizer, the sort who will seduce anyone who catches his eye, but will casually move on to the next, even after the femme-du-jour has fallen for him. When we meet him, he's doing just that to a young woman, Sou Lai-Zan (Maggie Cheung), who works in a snack bar. He discards her when she asks to move in with him, moving onto a dancer named Leung Fung-Ying (Carina Lau). Leung is determined to make an honest man out of him, however. Sou Lai-Zan vents her feelings to a lowly policeman working the graveyard shift, played by Andy Lau. We learn that Yuddy was raised by a prostitute (Rebecca Pan), who refuses to tell him who his birth mother is, leading to a toxic tug-of-war between them. Yuddy eventually goes to the Philippines in search of his mother. 

There isn't much of a narrative. It's mainly characters meeting and interacting. The film is mainly a tour-de-force for Leslie Cheung, who is really good at playing a prick. Andy Lau and Jackie Cheung, who plays Yuddy's friend, play their roles the complete opposite of their characters in As Tears Go By. Jackie's character is essentially a Beta Simp. A nice one, but a simp nonetheless. The actresses acquit themselves well; both Carina Lau and Rebecca Pan were nominated for Hong Kong Film Awards. There is a brief outburst of violence at the end, which is out of step with the rest of the film. And like most Wong Kar-Wai films, there is talk of memories and forgetting things and that sort of thing.

Chungking Express (Hong Kong, 1994: Wong Kar-Wai) - So, I finally watched this. It sat in front of me at Blockbuster Video on the corner of Pershing and Robinhood in Stockton, CA for years, but I was too interested in renting The Killer and Hard Boiled for the upteenth time. I think I would not have appreciated it back then, so maybe it's better I saw it now.

Like the other Wong Kar-Wai dramas I've seen over the past couple of weeks, this is more of a character interaction film than something with a standard beginning-middle-end narrative. The first story involves a brief meeting between a lovelorn cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and a female criminal (Brigitte Lin), who uses Indian immigrants as means of transporting heroin. Then there's the meat of the film: a beat cop (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and the quirky fast food clerk (Faye Wong) who becomes (non-violently) obsessed with him.

Although Tony Leung won a HKFA award for Best Actor for this film, the real praise goes to Faye Wong, who simply magnetic in her role. The way she moves her body as she listens to LOUD music at the restaurant and interacts with Tony and her co-workers is hypnotic. And it's not even in a sexual way. She has a quirky air about her that is just fascinating. I honestly just loved watching her mill about Tony's apartment (played by Christopher Doyle's apartment) and do random stuff. I loved the scene where Tony was half-heartedly looking for his ex in the pad while Faye was hiding from him, often in plain sight. The entire sequence makes me wonder if it's a commentary on modern women being more attracted to the "idea of men" than men themselves. And now I can't get "California Dreamin'" out of my head. Thanks, movie.

Scott Hamilton, one-half of the duo that was Stomp Tokyo (a popular B-movie review site in the late 1990s and early 2000s), one (facetiously) pointed out in his blog ("My God, It's Full of Nerds") that Wong Kar-Wai movies often come across as the origins of a serial killer. He mentioned in a post about My Blueberry Nights that Jude Law's character had a lonely routine of closing his bar, collecting misplaced keys and putting them in a jar, and watching security footage of his patrons from that evening. He said that "taking home a prostitute and murdering her" almost felt like the next logical step.

I got that vibe from both Takeshi Kaneshiro's and Faye Wong's characters. With the former, had he not gotten the birthday message from Brigitte Lin, one can (humorously) imagine him going off the deep end and stalking women in Tsim Sha Tsui and murdering them (starting with his unseen ex and then the girl at the fast food place), especially after all that obsessive business with the pineapple. The same goes for Faye Wong: if she had never gotten found out, you can (once again, humorously) imagine her obsession growing to the point that she would start stalking and stabbing flight attendants* to avenge her man (or her idealized idea of him).


* - And for the record, Faye looked hot in a flight attendant outfit.

Fallen Angels (Hong Kong, 1995: Wong Kar-Wai) - WKW's follow-up to Chungking Express originally started life as a proposed to third story to that film, although I'm guessing that the Tony Leung/Faye Wong segment from the earlier movie took on a life of its own and this was one was left on the chopping block. The two films are a bit similar while being completely different from each other. On one hand, both films are set in and around Tsim Sha Tsui and have scenes set in Chungking Mansions and the show the Midnight Express restaurant. Moreover, there is a recurring theme involving Takeshi Kaneshiro and canned pineapple, although his character here at an expired can and has to pay the price (in Chungking Express, he ate them before the expiration date).

The film is a series of interconnected tales of emotionally-isolated (and downright kooky) people living among the dregs of society. One of them involves a hitman (Leon Lai, of Seven Swords and Bullets of Love) and his assistant (Michelle Reis, of Fong Sai Yuk and Swordsman II) and the latter's obsession for the former, despite never having formally met him. Her job is to stake out the locales where he is to perform hits and fax layouts over to him, in addition to keep his base of operations clean whenever he's not around. She yearns for him, but their professional relationship prevents them from having any sort of personal contact. He eventually falls in with a manic pixie girl, played by Karen Mok (Black Mask and God of Cookery) with blonde hair. However, unlike Faye Wong's adorable character, Mok's character is 90% manic and only 10% pixie, if you catch my drift.

There is also a mute kid (Kaneshiro, of Hero and House of Flying Daggers) who prowls the streets at night, opening businesses and forcing his fellow nightcrawlers to buy his services. He falls in with a wack-job, Charlie (Charlie Yeung, of High Risk and New Police Story), who is jealous that an old boyfriend has moved on.

The film is often criticized for being so emotionally distant and an exercise in camera work experimentation more than a compelling narrative. I can see that. There is some gunplay in it, staged by Poon Kin-Kwan (Dragon Chronicles - Maidens of Heavenly Mountain and Return to a Better Tomorrow), but nothing special. As with most WKW films, this is more about the visuals and acting and less about plot and action.

The best performances in my opinion belong to Takeshi Kaneshiro and Charlie Yeung. The latter was especially interesting because her character was so delusional in her first scenes that I had a hard time watching her, but her performance was so good (such a far cry from her squeaky-clean character in New Police Story) that I couldn't look away. The same goes for Michelle Reis, playing a 180º opposite of her proper and dutiful wife of Jet Li in the Fong Sai Yuk films. She is not the most relatable, but it's Michelle Reis in tight black leather and fishnet stockings playing with herself on a couple of occasions. That alone is worth the price of admission.