Fist from Shaolin (1993)
aka Wong Fei Hung: Nan'er Dang Bao Guo
Chinese Title: 黃飛鴻之男兒當報國
Translation: Wong Fei-Hung: Man Serves the Nation
Starring: Wang Qun; Sharon Kwok
Sau-Wan; Ji Chun-Hua; Tam Chiu; Gabriel Wong
Yat-San ; Yau Gin-Gwok
Director: Martin Lau
Kwok-Wai Cheung Sing-Yim
Action Directors: Ji
Chun-Hua; Lee Wing-Fai; Tam Chiu; Liao Bin; Lu
Jun; Chen Zhin-Lin; Tam Ching-Hong; Tam Kim
There
was once an episode of The Simpsons where Springfield was holding a film
festival. You may remember it, as it boasted a guest appearance by Jay Sherman,
the Critic himself (voiced by Jon Lovitz). In the episode, Montgomery Burns was
determined to make his biopic win the top award of the festival. He tries to
rope Steven Spielberg into the project, but upon discovering that he's
unavailable, he demands to talk Spielberg's "Non-Union Mexican
Counterpart," a fellow by the name of Señor Spielbergo. Well, this movie
is the Non-Union Mexican Counterpart of the bigger-budgeted, all-star
casted Once Upon a Time in China films. It doesn't even
deserve prequel status like Iron Monkey or spin-off status
like Heroes Among Heroes and Kick Boxer. It feels
like a cheap rip-off, a sort of Carnosaur 2 to OUATIC's Aliens.
The
movie opens with a training on the beach sequence (just like that other movie),
with snippets of Jet Li's Shaolin Temple film spliced in for
no reason, other than that co-director Cheung Sing-Yim also directed that
movie. It makes me curious as to if Cheung actually participated in the project
as a whole, or if this is all the brainchild of low-level adult movie director
Martin Lau. Anyway, we get to hear a song that sounds like OUATIC's Naam
Yi Dong Ji Keung, but has different lyrics (trust me, I know--I memorized the
lyrics to both the Mandarin and Cantonese versions in high school). After that
we meet our heroes: Wong Fei Hung (Golden Dart Hero's Wang Qun),
and his students, Kuan (Tam Chiu) and Ah So (Gabriel Wong). They are on their
way to Canton to pick up Wong's westernized 13th Aunt (just like THAT OTHER
MOVIE) from the port. Aunt Yee will be played by Spider Force's Sharon
Kwok, who looks like a cross between Joey Wong and Elaine Lui and was probably
the best actress they could get for the film's low budget. Due to a mix-up in
calendar dates, they find that they have a month to waste in Canton before her
ship arrives.
That
night, they meet a pair of poor street performers, including a monkey kung
fu-practicing child and a female singer named Hsiao Lan, for whom Ah So falls
head over heels. When the local extortion gang, who'll be run by Yau Gin-Kwok
(essentially reprising his role as the Sha Ho gang leader FROM THAT OTHER
MOVIE), tries to take the lady's meager earnings, Wong and his men step in and
dish out the kung fu justice. They take Hsiao Lan and her brother in while the
two get back on their feet. After saving a rebel and the local butcher, Lam
Sai-Wing, from the gang, Wong is persuaded to open a clinic and kung fu school
in Canton.
This
is where things get muddled. The Not-Sha-Ho gang is working for the local
prefect, who makes money on the side selling opium and running a brothel out of
the local convent(!). The Prefect is in league with Ji Chun-Hua's (the villain
from Fong Sai Yuk 2 and New Legend of Shaolin)
character, who is sort of a business partner with Charles, the kickboxing
English railroad magnate. Ji has been kidnapping Charles's laborers (and
others) to sell into virtual slavery in the United States. Things get hairy
when Hsiao Lan's mother dies and she enters the convent/brothel to make some
extra bucks to pay for the funeral. The prefect tries to rape her, but is saved
by Aunt Yee, Kuan and Ah So, and eventually Wong Fei-Hung himself. The bad guys
get back at Wong by arresting him for allegedly harboring rebels at his clinic
and begin to torture him. He's freed, but has to step up to the bad guys once
more when he learns that Ah So has been kidnapped and is going to be shipped as
a cheap laborer to America.
People
familiar with the original OUATIC movie will recognize a lot of
parallels between this movie's story and that of OUATIC. Both
movies try to mix messages about the plight of the Chinese in the late 18th
century with kung fu action and some broad comedy. The problem here is
that OUATIC had a good actors, good writing, a two-plus hour
running time to develop its characters and give each of them moments of drama
and light comedy, and still have time for some nice kung fu battles. Fist
from Shaolin has a lot of characters, three sets of bad guys, a number
of fights, but poor writing and (not the filmmakers' fault) bad dubbing. The
result is that we see a lot of characters we recognize, but the film is largely
made up of broad comic sequences and jarringly violent sequences, which creates
a bizarre tonal inconsistency. There isn't enough characterization and
convincing drama to balance out the wannabe laughs with the occasional
brutality on display.
Wong
Fei-Hung and Hsiao Lan have the closest thing to a character arc. Aunt Yee is
practically a non-entity here, as opposed to Rosamund Kwan's interpretation, in
which her Western education frequently conflicted with the things that
traditional Chinese valued. There's some talk of a possible relationship
between Wong Fei-Hung and Aunt Yee, but it's quickly forgotten about. Lam Sai
Wing is introduced and portrayed as one of the reasons that Wong Fei-Hung sets
up shop in Canton, but the film soon forgets about him until the final fight.
In OUATIC, Ah So had similar conflicts (he was raised in the West, so his
Cantonese left a little to be desired), but here he's just comic relief. These
sorts of plot holes and sketchy characters detract from the non-fight portions
of the film.
The
original OUATIC brought up the hyprocrisy of Western
influences in China, that promised riches in California but instead would
employ the Chinese as laborers on the railroad. Such injustice was only
exacerbated by the Qing officials continuously sucking up to the foreigners at
the expense of their own people...well, the Han people. It did, however,
balance out the anti-Western stance with a sympathetic portrayal of the
Christian priest, who really hoped to do what was right at the expense of his
own life. In this movie, there is only one Western character and he ultimately
turns out to be reasonably sympathetic. We never see the faceless Americans
buying the kidnapped laborers or those who sell opium to the prefect. We only
see the Chinese (and Manchurians) screwing over those weaker than them. In
other words, OUATIC can be said to have the message that the
Chinese people were screwed on all sides, while this movie tells us that their
problems were largely in-house.
The
action was brought to you courtesy of the film's wushu-trained cast. Ji
Chun-Hua had the most experience, having worked on numerous Hong Kong and
Mainland films by this time, including Jet Li's Shaolin Temple trilogy.
The other action directors had far more limited experience. There is some
wire-work, but it's not very intrusive and is used very sparingly. I find it
unlikely that purists will be very disappointed with the wushu on display. Wang
Qun, who plays Wong Fei-Hung, does some nice fighting and uses quicker and more
economic moves, much like Jet Li in Kiss of the Dragon. While he
does some unnecessary umbrella-based fighting (LIKE THAT OTHER MOVIE!!!), there
is also some solid kwan do work from him at the end (I was surprised that
everybody fought with the kwan do here, which I didn't see a whole lot of in
the 90s New Wave movies). He's upstaged by Tam Chiu, who plays his student
Kuan. Tam Chiu performs some excellent aerial kicks and makes you wish that
Tsui Hark and the Yuen's had let Yuen Biao cut loose like this in OUATIC.
The villain performs some nice Ying Jao Pai and Ji Chun-Hua performs more
actual wushu than he did in his bigger-budgeted HK appearances. The last fight
is reminiscent of the the final fight in OUATIC, both in terms of
context and setting. But there is a lot less wirework here and more actual kung
fu, so purists should enjoy it.
No comments:
Post a Comment