True Legend (2010)

True Legend (2010)
Chinese Title: 蘇乞兒
Translation: Su Qi’er

Starring: Zhao Wen-Zhuo, Zhou Xun, Andy On, David Carradine, Jay Chou, Michelle Yeoh, Gordon Liu, Jiang Lixia, Leung Kar-Yan
Director: Yuen Woo-Ping
Action Director: Yuen Cheung-Yan, Yuen Shun-Yee, Tony Ling Chi-Wah

 

The announcement of True Legend made practically every single genre fan happy. First of all, it was to be Yuen Woo-Ping’s first directorial feature since Wu Jing’s Tai Chi II in 1996. Second, it would be Zhao Wen-Zhuo’s return to the big screen (his last film was the epic The Sino-Dutch War 1661 in 2001). The movie was to be about Su Qi’er aka So Hat Yee aka Beggar So aka Sam Seed (if you’re only exposure to Chinese cinema is the original English dub of The Drunken Master), an important figure in Chinese martial arts.

Obviously, Yuen Woo-Ping and his family had had ample experience in putting this character on the big screen. Perhaps best known of these was Yuen Siu-Tin’s (father of the Yuen Clan) iconic portrayal of Beggar So in Jackie Chan’s landmark hit The Drunken Master, and its sequel, Dance of the Drunk Mantis. The 1990s saw the character show up twice more. First, Stephen Chow played him in the action-comedy King of Beggars, which featured the action directing skills of Yuen Cheung-Yan, Woo-Ping’s brother. The other adaptation was Heroes Among Heroes, a spin-off of sorts of the popular Once Upon a Time in China series and a pseudo-biography of Beggar So, starring Donnie Yen and directed by Yuen Woo-Ping. I was never a huge fan of that movie, although I enjoyed most of Donnie’s fight scenes.

I had always wanted Zhao Wen-Zhuo, one of my favorite martial arts actors, to be in a Yuen Woo-Ping film at one point in his career. So when I found out that he would be doing a biographical film about the original drunken master, I was quite excited. Yuen Woo-Ping has, for most of his career, been a dependable guy in terms of bringing out the best in his players, especially if they’re already trained martial artists. Sammo Hung is arguably better, but Yuen Woo-Ping comes in a close second most of the time (The Banquet and Kill Bill vol 2 being two recent exceptions). So I was hoping that True Legend would be to Zhao Wen-Zhuo what Fearless or Fist of Legend was to Jet Li. And I was not disappointed.

The movie begins the way every movie begins, a large-scale set piece between some government soldiers, led by Su (Zhao, Mahjong Dragon and Body Weapon) and his foster brother, Yuan (Andy On, New Police Story and Star Runner), and some vicious bandits, led by Cung Le (Bodyguards and Assassins). There’s a lot of fighting here, and Su gets to show us that he’s no slouch when it comes to wielding the dao, or saber.

The purpose of the mission was to rescue a kidnapped prince, which he does. After the mission, Su turns down a promotion to general in order to spend time with wife. A few years later, we find Su spending his days training while his wife, Ying (Zhou Xun, Bodyguards and Assassins and Painted Skin), raises their son. Ying happens to be Yuan’s brother, which will play into the events that come. You see, Su allowed Yuan to take the promotion instead and when Yuan comes to visit Su’s father (Leung Kar-Yan, The Victim and Last Hero in China), he’s changed quite a bit. For one thing, his skin is deathly pale. He’s also a bit angry at his foster father having killed his real dad in a duel some years ago and has now mastered the Five Venoms Palm in order to get his revenge against the entire family.

Su’s father is murdered and beheaded and Su himself escapes an attempt on his life at the hands of Yuan’s bodyguards (one of whom is up and coming martial arts startlet Jiang Lixia). Finding that his wife and son have been taken by Yuan, Su confronts his adopted brother and the two duke it out. Unfortunately, Yuan not only knows the Five Venoms Palm, but in a neat twist to the old “iron vest” technique cliché that was so common back in the 1970s and 1980s, Yuan has had his armor sewn onto his skin, making him almost invincible.

Su and Ying are able to escape, but not before Su takes a near-fatal Venom Palm hit to his body. They are found by a master herbalist (Michelle Yeoh in a small cameo) who nurses Su back to health. Since Yuan still has their son, Su decides to train himself for the inevitable rematch with his brother. He starts having visions of a pair of Chinese deities, including the God of Wushu (Jay Chou, The Green Hornet and Kung Fu Dunk), who train him through a series of duels using different styles and weapons (including…*sheds a single tear*…the MELON HAMMER!). Of course, since only Su can see them, both Ying and the herbalist think he’s sliding down the greased chute into insanity. Finally, Ying gets so worried about her husband’s emotional state that she goes alone to get her son back. That, unfortunately, is not going to end well for everyone involved…

The first two acts of the movie play like your standard old school kung fu film, with the super-powerful villain defeating the hero, the hero going back into training (albeit in a more unorthodox way this time), and then the hero coming back to fight the villain a final time. I’ve said before that the old “Seasonal Formula” worked on two basic levels: either the hero knew no martial arts and learned them to defeat the bad guy; or he knew how to fight, still got beat, and had to learn a new style to win. This film follows the latter to a “T,” at least until the last act.

It is during the first hour that Yuen Woo-Ping revisits some of his favorite themes from the old days, like the bad guy with the impervious armor (Born Invincible and Invincible Armour) and the palm attack that can poison people (The Magnificent Butcher and Iron Monkey). The latter is especially interesting, since in the half-dozen films or so that featured said technique; no explanation was ever given as to how it works. This time the script has the class to explain it, at least in fantasy terms: apparently training in the Five Venoms Palm requires the user to get stung and bitten by spiders, scorpions and snakes, whose venom he absorbs into his body, after which he transmits into the body of the person on the receiving end of the blow. The iron vest technique being “updated” by Andy On sewing pieces of armor onto his body is a neat twist on the old cliché as well.

It is in the last act of the film that the movie, from a story point of view, begins to lose its way. My colleagues at Stomp Tokyo used to joke that there was an unwritten cinematic law that all Chinese films have a mistaken identity subplot to them. I believe that law is no longer enforced, but has been replaced with one that states that all kung fu movies have the main protagonist take on foreign fighters at one point or another just for the purpose of promoting Chinese nationalism and proving that kung fu is superior to everything else. We can especially blame Fearless for this, although subsequent films (Ip Man 2, for example) have taken regressed to the early 1970s in terms of racist depictions of foreigners.

In the case of True Legend, we have Beggar So taking on a contingent of Russian wrestlers, whose manager just happens to be David Carradine (Kill Bill vol. 2 and Lone Wolf McQuade) in his last screen appearance. Beggar So’s son is about to be roughed up by the wrestlers, so So, who’s completely soused, goes buck with the drunken boxing on them, thus protecting his son and his nation’s pride in the process. It’s an unnecessary scene, compounded by the fact that Andy On’s Yuan was a far more fascinating villain who gets dispatched by the end of the second act. It would’ve helped things at least a little if Yuan had survived their second encounter and shown up for a final showdown. Better yet, the writers should’ve taken out this scene altogether and had So and Yuan fight to a draw in their second duel, giving So time to develop drunken boxing and win in the final, climatic showdown. Sadly, the script is a letdown in that department.

Thankfully, the film is saved in part by some good performances and LOTS of fight action, all of which exist to show Zhao Wen-Zhuo doing something different. This is the sort of movie he should’ve done early on in his career (I guess Yuen Bun wasn’t the best man for the job in making Zhao look as good as Jet Li). Zhao gets to do his usual wushu, drunken boxing (which throws in a bit of break-dancing), and show off his weapons skills with the saber (dao), the sword (jian), the pole, the assault blade (pudao), and the aforementioned melon hammer (I get excited because the weapon hadn’t been used meaningfully in a movie since 1993 in Yuen Woo-Ping’s own The Tai Chi Master, so I was welcome to see such a rare weapon get attention again). Interestingly enough, Beggar So was a Southern stylist and Yuen Woo-Ping strives to make Zhao’s style seem more Southern-looking (defined by low poses, animal claws, shorter movements, etc.) than the usual kick-based Northern wushu. It’s better than the flavor that Donnie Yen tried to add to his fighting in Iron Monkey and, as far as I know, Jet Li rarely tried to even mimic any Southern kung fu style in any of his films. From a fighting perspective, this easily beats out Blacksheep Affair as Zhao Wen-Zhuo’s best showcase film.

The supporting cast of fighters helps as well. Andy On, who has done some pretty good fighting in films like New Police Story, does a great job as the villain Yuan. He looks particularly good in his second fight with Zhao, which has been christened by some as one of the best fights of the post-Crouching Tiger era. There are some moments in which that fight looks like its copying Fearless, which exploding wine jars, but then it has them fighting in a well with snakes popping out of random spots in the walls and just enters a new level of awesome. The Russian wrestlers also make for good opponents; some have criticized their using professional wrestling moves instead of MMA techniques. I just shrug and say that the moves give them a bit of a Zangief feel, which I’m all for, personally. Jiang Luxia, who’s garnering praise as the next Michelle Yeoh for films like Co-Web and Bad Blood, gets in a couple of fights against Zhao and holds her own, even if she doesn’t do anything particularly memorable. Fans of David Carradine will be disappointed to find out that he doesn’t fight, although thankfully he doesn’t try to pull off a Russian accent. However, people will be more upset that Gordon Liu and Michelle Yeoh don’t fight, either.

From an acting point of view, most of the Chinese actors do reasonably well, with the stand-out being Zhou Xun as So’s wife. She’s a flawed but likeable character; her dedication to her husband and son surpass her love for her wayward brother. She trusts her husband at first, but when that trust falters (and we can’t blame her too much), she makes a rash decision which she soon regrets, even before the really bad stuff begins to happen to her.

If you’re a Zhao Wen-Zhuo fan or the type of person who couldn’t give a rat’s patootie about the plot and just want to see people wail on each other in increasingly awesome ways, then True Legend is the film for you. Those of you who grow tired of the Chinese nationalism creeping into more and more kung fu movies these days will be weary of the scenes involving the dumb, brutal Russians (although I admittedly don’t get to see them as villains very often in these movies). In any case, I have to put some support into any movie that reminds us that my pal Zhao Wen-Zhuo is just as talented as Jet Li and Donnie Yen when it comes to the wushu skills.