Born to Defence (1986)

Born to Defence (1986)
aka: Born to Defend
Chinese Title: 中華英雄
Translation: Chinese Hero

 

Starring: Jet Li, Paulo Tocha, Kurt Petersson, Song Jia, Dion Lam, Cho Wing, Yuen Fai, Biu Law Do
Director: Jet Li
Action Director: Tsui Siu-Ming

 

By 1986, Jet Li was well on his way to becoming the next great martial arts star, having accumulated quite a bit of good well for himself on account of his superior fighting performances in the Shaolin Temple series, which were very successful in Asia. The first entry in the series was so popular that supposedly kids all over Asia wanted to shave their hairs and study kung fu at the Shaolin Temple. The other two, especially the third entry, Martial Arts of Shaolin, were equally as popular, despite the fact that the genre had more or less died a year after the first movie came out.

I guess it was inevitable that Jet Li would want to try his hand at directing, as his contemporaries in Hong Kong, like Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, had proven themselves just as capable in the director’s chair as they were throwing punches and kicks in front of the camera. I think the script for this film, which deals heavily with Chinese Nationalism, also perked Jet’s interest, considering how much of a patriot he is. Unfortunately, the film’s production ended up being some of a disaster that nearly stopped Jet Li dead in its tracks. While he obviously was able to bounce back from it, Jet never again tried to direct a movie.

The movie begins with a prologue set in China during World War II. A platoon of Chinese soldiers are taking on the Japanese, whom are far more well-armed than their Sino counterparts. The Chinese are sustaining heavy casualties. Enter Jet (Jet Li, The One and Unleashed), a kung fu-trained soldier who starts flipping around the battlefield like this were a Chinese movie and not a sober war film…uhh…yeah. Jet’s antics help his men get the upper hand, although only for so long. Before long, the battle is over and we jump to the post-War era.

Jet and his companions are returning home from their service. They enter the city in a procession, thinking that the crowds are gathered in the streets to welcome them. What they don’t know is that procession is actually a parade for the American GIs and not the Chinese soldiers (shades of the Transcontinental Railroad can be seen here), and Jet and his pals are kicked off the street by the ignorant police.

After a brief KOMIC run-in with a prostitute at a brothel (providing some film with some brief, though non-sexual nudity), Jet finds an old war buddy, Zhang (Zhao Erkang, A Confucius Family) and decides to stay with him. Jet’s buddy is a rickshaw puller and Jet decides to help him out. Not much time passes before Jet comes into conflict with the American GIs. The first run-in comes when one of Jet’s colleagues looks into the window of a foreign car, and the Navy officer punches the guy in the face. Full of indignation, Jet tries to start a fight with the man, Captain Hans (Kurt Petersson, Bruce Lee’s Dragons Fight Back), despite his being almost twice Jet’s size. The police break up the skirmish, although the officer’s interest is peaked.

Some time later, Jet is at a bar that caters to the GIs and soon finds himself in the ring with another one of the Navy officers, a brutal son-of-a-gun named Bailey (Paulo Tocha, In Hell and Fist of the North Star). The two get into a traditional boxing match, which Jet finds himself having a hard time adapting to…until Bailey breaks the rules and gives Jet a reason to wushu the guy into oblivion. Bailey decides to take his loss as a reason to make Jet’s life a living hell.

After Bailey wrecks his friend’s rickshaw, Jet finds himself compelled to work at the bar as Bailey’s sparring partner, who wants nothing more than a reason to beat Jet down. After a savage beating, Jet is nursed back to health by a prostitute who turns out to be his buddy’s disowned daughter. By this time, Jet’s skills have interested Hans enough that Hans wants to take him on in the ring, which will no doubt end in Jet Li taking a beating, although he does end up winning the match. Unfortunately, his beating Hans will NOT mean the last of Bailey’s harrassment.

This post-War drama shows a bit of promise in the story department, as it once again shows us how the Chinese were treated as second-class citizens in their own country. This time, however, the culprits aren’t the British or the Japanese, but the American GIs. The theme here is reminiscent of films like Fist of Fury and Once Upon a Time in China, but unfortunately takes the former as a blueprint more than the latter, in that its portrayal of Americans is almost universally negative. Bailey and his cohorts (one of whom is black), are portrayed as nothing but a bunch of oversexed thugs and would-be rapists. Captain Hans fares a little better; he simply wants to have a good opponent to fight with and even disagrees with the antics of his men, though he doesn’t do a whole lot to stop them. Had the film been a bit more balanced, like in Fist of Legend, the story would’ve been a lot more compelling. That said, it wasn’t quite as bad as I expected it to be.

Jet Li has written on his website that he made the film to denounce the Chinese government’s tendency to treat its foreign visitors far better than it treats its own people (Jet had to deal with this while working with the Lau clan on Martial Arts of Shaolin). I guess something was a little lost in translation, because we don’t see a whole lot of the Chinese officials encouraging the Americans to drink and sleep with Chinese women. I can understand his desire to denounce China’s practice of favoring the gwailos, but the idea isn’t developed as well as it should on film. The end result is an “foreigners: BAD, Chinese: GOOD” type of a film that we so often saw during the early 1970s.

I mentioned a subplot of the film, regarding Na, Zhang’s daughter. Her character is a prostitute who services the American GIs, and has been considered dead by her father. She comes to like Jet, who figures out who she is and goes about trying to reconcile her with her father. Jet included her to show how Chinese girls were more-or-less forced to be prostitutes for the Allied forces, which was essentially condoned by the Nationalist government. Being a Chinese movie, you just know that this subplot won’t resolved in a happy manner.

The action in this film is furnished by Tsui Siu-Ming, the “other” Sammo Hung. Tsui Siu-Ming is best known by old school fans for his role in Yuen Woo-Ping’s The Buddhist Fist, although he’s an accomplished choreographer and director too, working on classic films like Mirage, Holy Robe of Shaolin, and Bury Me High.

Some of the fights feature more Western boxing than Chinese kung fu,  although Jet gets ample opportunities to show off his wushu skills, especially in the finale. He gets in some really good kicks in this film, kicks of a level that he wouldn’t be able to copy later due to back and leg injuries in this film and in others. He applies his weapons skills in the finale when he picks up a chain and starts swinging around like a traditional chain whip.

 Jet has two ring matches with Bailey, a long ring match with Captain Hans that ends in a bar brawl (complete with gratuitious scenes of people falling on tables), and the final duel with Hans in a warehouse, complete with hammers, chains, and pickaxes. The two matches with Bailey are reasonably entertaining, although some viewers won’t want to see Jet’s skills be muted by the fact that he’s forced to fight with only his hands in first and can’t fight back in the second. The two fights with Hans are quite better, although the first one goes on a bit too long.

As good as the fights are, I do have to comment about Jet’s acting. He runs the whole gambit between naïvete, righteous anger, and good-natured friend. He really does a good job here and is far more charismatic than in a lot of his other films. It’s quite a shame that so few of Jet’s western films allowed him to really capitalize on his acting ability and cast him as a stoic butt-kicker. Romeo Must Die showed it to a certain extent, although Unleashed is easily the best example of Western filmmakers  making a Jet Li movie and letting the man actually act.

As I mentioned earlier, the production was a bit of a nightmare for Jet (probably for going over budget–notably in the opening action sequence), compounded by the fact that he was seriously injured during the film’s production. It got to the point that Jet asked his action director to help him finish the film. Tsui Siu-Ming commented that Jet insisted in putting Tsui’s name in the directing credits, although Tsui told him that it was his (Jet’s) film in the end. That’s what I like about Jet, the man is humble and knows where to give credit where credit’s due.

This is a fascinating film with some good fights and a noble, but flawed attempt at presenting a good social message. I won’t recommend to everybody, and conservative types will be put off by the brutal violence, profanity, and brief nudity that show up. But at least we can see Jet Li trying to do something more than the usual chopsockey revenge type of plot, even if it isn’t altogether successful. That’s more than we can say for lots of other films of its ilk.