City of
Darkness (1999)
Aka Black City
Chinese Title: 黑色城市
Translation: Black City
Starring: Tso Hsiao-Hu, Chen Chi-Chiang, Lee Luo,
Donnie Yen, Collin Chou, Chang Yi-Teng, Billy Chow, Kim Maree Penn, and
assorted non-MA characters we don’t are about
Director: Lam Man-Cheung
Action Director: Yam Pak-Wang
Three youngsters, including Tso Hsiao-Hu (of the Kung Fu Kids series) and Chen Chi-Chiang (best known for playing Goku in infamous live-action adaptation of Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins from the early 1990s), initially have nothing to do with each other. But they are kidnapped by an evil crime boss (Collin Chou, of Bodyguard from Beijing and Flash Point) who knows the truth: they’re actually siblings and each of them has a jade pendant, which, when placed together, leads the way to a secret treasure. They escape and are soon chased all over the Taiwanese countryside by the boss’s minions and the police, headed by a corrupt commandant. They do get some assistance from a good cop, played by Lee Luo (of Crazy Mission, the low-budget Taiwanese equivalent to Gen-X Cops), and his hot-headed colleague, played by Donnie Yen.
Fight
Scene Breakdown:
Fight 1:
Chang Yi-Tang vs. flunkies – When Japanese criminal Collin Chou does a hostile
takeover on his Taiwanese counterparts, his right-hand-man (Chang Yi-Tang) cuts
up a bunch of crime bosses, plus their flunkies, with a pair of curved knives.
The scene lasts a few seconds, but is slickly mounted.
Fight 2: Chen Chi-Chiang vs. Triads – While performing a rock song at a club, a bunch of Triads show up to make trouble. Chen fights them off with an electric guitar and some nice kicks. He does a few good acrobatic moves, but it’s mainly a Jackie Chan-esque object fight.
Fight 3: Chen Chi-Chiang and Tso Hsiao-Hu vs. Triads – The same triads try to kidnap both men during a bicycle race. Our heroes perform some decent kicks on and around their bikes. Then they get in an argument and get into a good ol’ 80s-style one on one, with Chen impressing more with his kicks. At the end, both men are captured.
Fight 4: Donnie Yen vs. robbers – In his first scene, Donnie is doing some grocery shopping when some men invade the store, armed with shotguns. The action is mainly centered around Donnie dodging shotgun blasts, but he does a few kicks and takedowns here.
Fight 5: Chen Chi-Chiang and Tso Hsiao-Hu vs. Triads – Our heroes are taken to a nightclub, where they are questioned about a treasure they haven’t heard of. The break free and fight off Collin Chou’s men, who are armed with metal bats and choppers. More solid 80s-style choreography, with Chen doing some decent kicks around a stripper pole.
Fight 6: Chen Chi-Chiang and Tso Hsiao-Hu vs. Billy Chow – While running from both the bad guys and the cops inside a forest at night, our heroes stumble upon Billy Chow, still bald and sporting goatee from The Death Games. Our heroes double-team him, but he’s not budging. He easily fends off their blows and reaches Fist of Legend heights of rock-hardness. His punch-and-block combinations are fast and his kicks are powerful.
Fight 7: Lee Luo vs. Billy Chow – Police officer Lee Luo picks up the slack from the previous fight. His character is a better fighter than the other two good guys, but still no match for Billy Chow. Lots of good one-on-one choreography here.
Fight 8: Chen Chi-Chiang and Tso Hsiao-Hu vs. Billy Chow (Part 2) – This fight starts in a cramped apartment, moves into a stairwell, and finally into a basement full of found objects. The two-on-one choreography just keeps on getting better, and Billy Chow shows the rapscallions just how experienced he is. Their fight is mixed up by the arrival of some bat-wielding goons, just to keep things interesting.
Fight 9: Lee Luo vs. Billy Chow (Part 2) – The rematch goes about as you might expect: Billy Chow is more than a match for Lee, but both of them throw some nice kicking combinations. This segues into….
Fight 10: Donnie Yen vs. Billy Chow – This is their rematch following Iron Monkey 2 (1996), and it’s a solid one. Donnie’s character is faster and stronger than the other three protagonists, so obviously he’s more of a match for Billy. Donnie does his patented jumping back kick and, at the end, launches into a barrage of punches that resemble a mix between his wing chun machine gun punches and his Legend of the Wolf blur punches. He takes out Billy with a flying drop kick to the face.
Fight 11: Chang Yi-Tang vs. Kim Maree Penn – Following the death of Billy Chow’s character, Collin Chou flies in Kim to deal with our heroes. Chang is skeptical about giving the job to a woman, so the two have a brief exchange of punches and kicks. It’s a short duel, but well mounted.
Fight 12: Chen Chi-Chiang and Tso Hsiao-Hu vs. Triads – Set at a restaurant, the bad guys dress up as waiters and bus boys to ambush our heroes. The triads are armed with knives and choppers, while the heroes using a mixture of acrobatics, kicking and throwing plates and cups at the bad guys. Tso shows off more of his acrobatic skills in this fight with a series of somersaults, and gets to perform a butterfly spin over a chair, which is immediately followed by a side kick, all in the same movement. Villain Chang Yi-Tang joins the fray with a wire-assisted split kick, but our heroes run away.
Fight 13: Lee Luo vs. Kim Maree Penn – Lee confronts Collin Chou at his mansion, but passes up on trying to arrest him when he finds out that Chou’s men are following the heroes out in the wilderness. When he leaves, he’s confronted by Kim Maree Penn, and a fight breaks out (natch!). Kim is a superb kicker and gets lots of chances to show off her footwork here.
Fight 14: Chen Chi-Chiang and Tso Hsiao-Hu vs. Chang Yi-Tang – Another fight between the three has some good choreography, but for some reason, the action directors wire up Chang’s movements more than any other character. It’s not too invasive, but it’s noticeable. I assume it’s to show us just how much of a martial arts dynamo his character his and how out of their league our heroes are. Tso does some wire-assisted jump kicks, too. It’s mainly noticeable because he seems to stay in the air an extra second longer than a normal person might. The fight ends after a child co-star pelts Chang with firecrackers.
Fight 15: Chen Chi-Chiang, Tso Hsiao-Hu, and Lee Luo vs. Kim Maree Penn – This is a great fight, with Kim holding her own against three trained martial artists simultaneously. She really struts her stuff here, and the choreography is impeccable. The fight actually lasts a while, with our heroes unable to get the upper hand until the aforementioned child sidekick hits her with a taiser, which allow the good guys to beat her to death.
Fight 16: Chen Chi-Chiang, Tso Hsiao-Hu, and Lee Luo vs. Chang Yi-Tang – This isn’t as good as their previous dust ups, as the three mainly to try to avoid getting hacked to pieces with Chang’s curved blades while using some grappling to try to restrain his hands. Our heroes get bloodied up real good in this fight. It’s broken up by fight #17, which I’ll discuss below. Donnie Yen shows up briefly and bests Chang with a metal baton (shades of Sha Po Lang), and then Chen and Tso double team Chang yet again. It ends with Chen side kicking Chang, followed by Tso doing a whirlwind kick as Chang is falling backward, and Tso follows up with a butterfly spin that ends in an elbow drop.
Fight 17: Donnie Yen vs. Collin Chou – Sort of a preamble to Flash Point, these two men just go buck wild with the kicks. Chou has a blade hidden in his shoe, giving Donnie a run for his money. Donnie responds with some Legend of the Wolf machine gun punches, and then takes a page from Who Am I? and gets in some good hits while manipulating Chou’s tie. It ends with a nice jumping spin kick from Donnie.
City of Darkness is a low-budget Taiwanese fight fest brought to you by Lam Man-Cheung, who choroegraphed the Kung Fu Kids films and The Death Games (1997), and Yam Pak Wang, who had assisted Lam on The Death Games. Both films are similar in that they have Billy Chow, Collin Chou and Kim Maree Penn in their casts, with Billy Chow sticking out the most. The film has a distinct Crystal Hunt feel to it, with majority of the screen time being about people fighting with gang bosses until the end, when the story becomes a half-assed Indiana Jones film.
Despite
frequently being referred to as a Donnie Yen Movie, Yen is mainly relegated to
an extended cameo, showing up whenever the script requires him to beat people
up. He certainly does a great job of that, but he’s obviously done more and
better fighting in other films.
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