Plan B (2016)

Plan B (2016)
aka: Plan B: Scheiß auf Plan A

 

Starring: Can Aydin, Cha-Lee Yoon, Phong Giang, Eugene Boateng, Laurent Daniels, Julia Dietze, Gedeon Burkhard, Henry Meyer, Florian Kleine, Mike Möeller
Director: Ufuk Genc, Michael Popescu
Action Director: Can Aydin, Cha-Lee Yoon, Phong Giang

 

I think we can all agree that the Golden Age of Hong Kong Action, which went from about 1983 until the early 1990s, is long gone. We’ll probably never get it back. Oh of course, there were movies like Sha Po Lang (and its prequel, Flash Point) that gave us home for the future. But to be honest, as long as Donnie Yen was able to shoulder the burden of quality Hong Kong action by his lonesome, he could only do it for so long. The man is pushing 60 now. He might’ve passed the baton onto Wu Jing, but that guy is now making stupidly successful propaganda epics in the People’s Republic of China now. Vincent Zhao is pushing 50 and is unlikely do anything special outside of TV. And now that Chinese censorship is in full force today due to diabolically-implanted security laws, even those classics from the 80s and 90s are in danger.

Nonetheless, all is not totally lost. The previous decade saw a ginormous uptick in 80s nostalgia in popular culture: remakes, reboots, reference-heavy stuff like Stranger Things and Ready, Player One; etc. Filmmakers outside of Hong Kong also had the opportunity to make movies and shorts paying homage to their favorite action flix. There was the IndieGoGo film Unlucky Stars (2015), which took about three years to film and edit before it hit the festival circuit. There was loopy Kung Fury, which didn’t parody any specific film, but mainly a number of 80s action conventions in general.

Then we have Plan B, a German film made by a bunch of talented martial artists who apparently spent their formative years on a steady diet of Sammo Hung and (early) Donnie Yen movies.

Can Aydin, Yoon Cha-Lee, and Phong Giang play the creatively named Can, Cha and Phong, a trio of stuntmen who can never seem to land a gig. A lot of it has to do with Can being a bit of a diva: he always fights with the director in how the action scenes for whatever production he’s auditioning for should be filmed. Their “manager”, U-Gin (Eugene Boateng), gets them an audition just as Yoon is ready to leave the company and get a real job.

There is a problem, however. You see, U-Gin, is supposedly not very good with numbers. While normal people would understand this to mean that he can’t do math, what this means is that he’s borderline dyslexic when it comes to listening to and writing down numbers. So he and his three fighting friends show up at the wrong address for the audition. Instead of a low-budget action film, they stumble upon a kidnapping plot.

The victim is Victoria (Julia Dietz, of the Iron Sky films), the wife of a powerful crime lord named Gabriel (Henry Meyer). Much of Gabriel’s power stems not only from his illegal transactions, but also years and years of accumulating incriminating media (photos, videos, etc.) of important politicians and law enforcement officials. In other words, he’s untouchable because anyone who might oppose them has some dirty secret that he’s privy to. The kidnappers, led by a guy named Eddie (Florian Kleine), want to find the safe where Gabriel keeps the dirt.

But the thing is, only Gabriel really knows where it is. However, he has left clues to its location in four different locales in Berlin. Victoria knows the first locale, but not the others. The appearance of U-Gin and the three stuntmen presents Eddie with an intriguing possibility: instead of risking his own men’s lives on a wild goose chase, he’ll take one of them—Phong—hostage and send the other three out to retrieve the clues under threat of death. Considering that Phong’s wife is now pregnant, U-Gin, Can and Cha will be more than willing to do it. And thus the adventure begins…

So that’s the set-up for an action film that sees our heroes storming cafés run by Turkish gangsters, a strip club, a cemetery run by Devil worshippers, and more! As you might guess, every location our characters go to will be staffed with armed goons and martial artists for our characters to fight. There are also a pair of policemen—one whom is named Kopp (Laurent Daniels)—who are on their tale. Those guys don’t do much fighting, but help give the climax a John Woo flavor. Kopp also narrates the film.

The acting seems decent. The main characters have a good rapport going on between them. If you look at their filmographies, they worked together as stuntmen on numerous films: The Matrix Resurrections; Attrition; Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw; Cloud Atlas; Skylines; and Hitman: Agent 47, among others. They’re not quite Jackie, Sammo and Yuen, but they get along well onscreen and are insanely talented in the martial arts department, too. Being an 80s homage, there is a gag about the four leads dressing up as 80s pop culture characters: Can dresses up as Sylvester Stallone from Cobra; U-Gin dresses up as Michael Jackson from the “Thriller” video; Phong dresses up as Marty McFly; and Cha wears a yellow jacket a stripe on it a lá Game of Death (not quite 80s, but almost). A second running gag has Can so obsessed with Stallone that he quotes his movies verbatim throughout the film.

The action was choreographed by the three leads, who’d already had ample experience working in Hollywood (and Netflix) by this point. The movie opens with a gonzo action sequence in which our heroes take on an entire building full of bad guys with guns a-blazing and fisticuffs. The gunplay is so stylized and over-the-top that it feels like the gun-kata from Equilibrium, only more kinetic. When the sequence is over, we the viewer learn that the whole scene was just a visualization of action scene as dictated by Can.

The next fight sequence is more conventional group fight between Can, Cha and a bunch of Turkish gangsters. There is some great bootwork here, but viewers will notice one thing that may (or may not) turn them off to the film on the whole: the scene (as well as later fights) is undercranked like a 1990s Donnie Yen movie. I think they were going for the more natural, only-slightly sped-up aesthetic that the best Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung movies featured. However, they seemed to kick it up an extra notch, putting it closer to Crystal Hunt and Iron Monkey than Police Story.

A later fight at the Least Sexiest Strip Club Ever pits Cha and Can against a female stripper-bouncer, whom I believe is played by Heidi Moneymaker (Scarlett Johansson’s stunt double in the MCU films). That’s a really good fight with some solid two-on-one and one-on-one choreography, with some nice moves by Moneymaker. The next big fight pits our heroes against a bunch of Satan-worshipping cultists, which is an obvious nod to Armour of God. The cultists are led by German action heavy Mike Möller (One Million K(l)icks), who plays a kung fu vampire(!). He faces off with Cha-Lee Yoon in a whirlwind exchange of kicks and take-downs.

The finale starts out John Woo—complete with two characters firing guns at each other on opposite sides of a partition—and ends as In the Line of Duty IV. Phong Giang fights a thin kung fu master who’s fighting style recalls that of Cho Wing from that movie. The latter throws in a small amount of shapes-based fighting to complement the 80s-style kickboxing choreography. Meanwhile, Can Aydin fights a large, muscular black man in a fight that is obviously a nod to Donnie’s scuffle with Michael Woods from that film, right down to them locking hands and twisting them downwards until one of them concedes. The fight is brutal, with Can going overboard on the brawling-esque punches at the end. And like In the Line of Duty IV, the film on the whole is a constant showcase for perfect, crisp, and over-the-top footwork, even moreso than its inspiration: jump kicks, spin kicks, roundhouse kicks, side kicks, foreward somersault axe kicks, backflip axe kicks, no-shadow kicks, etc. Plus the usual HK-inspired flips, falls, tumbles and broken furniture.

If you want pure action of the sort we don’t get anymore, Plan B should quench your thirst in that regard. You might argue that the sped-up fights are a little too Hong Kong for your tastes, but since Hong Kong can’t seem to do what Hong Kong used to do—at least without a myriad of wire assistance—than that should be a small price to pay. Since Plan A (Hong Kong) no longer delivers, try Plan B instead.