Dr. Wei in the Scripture with No Words (1996)

Dr. Wei in the Scripture with No Words (1996)

aka: Dr. Wai in "The Scripture with No Words"; The Scripture With No Words

Chinese Title: 冒險王

Translation: Adventure King

Starring: Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung, Ngai Sing, Billy Chow,

Directed: Tony Ching Siu-Tung

Action Directors: Tony Ching Siu-Tung, Ma Yuk-Sing

Ching Siu-Tung. That name evokes mixed emotions from me. On one hand, he's considered to be one of the best fight directors to come out of Hong Kong and it's easy to see why. Anyone who's seen his Hong Kong movies know that they're filled to the brim with inventive and stylish (not to mention incredibly wire-enhanced) action sequences. On the other hand, I often feel like he allows his creativity to get out of hand to the point that many of his movies are never tour-de-forces for the talent that works with him. I felt that way after having watched The Heroic Trio and Swordsman II. His style can be described as being "balletic" in nature, as he specializes in swordfights, usually done with a lot of running, twirling, jumping, and a constantly moving camera. The effect is very beautiful, but his action scenes are rarely the good ol' fashioned beating that Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan have brought us for years.

In 1996 he teamed up with Jet Li for their second collaboration, Dr. Wei in the Scripture with No Words. The film, like Swordsman II, is without a doubt more of Ching Siu-Tung's film rather than Jet Li's film. That doesn't seem to matter, since it's an incredibly entertaining ride, even though a lot of people consider to be one of Li's lesser efforts.

The movie uses the "story-within-a-story" premise, much like The Neverending Story. However, Wolfgang Peterson's film never had wire-fu in it, but that's another story. For simplicity's sake, I'll go over the details of the human story and then Dr. Wei's story separately. Jet Li plays Chow Si-Kit, an author of a famous story series called "The King of Adventurers." However, these days, Kit has reached a point of almost incurable writer's block. Turns out that his wife Monica (Rosamund Kwan, of Once Upon a Time in China 2 and The Magic Crane) is wanting to divorce him. As much as Kit's assistants (Hero's Takeshi Kaneshiro and New Police Story's Charlie Yeung) try to console him, he just doesn't have anymore ideas.

One night Kit gets drunk and his spying assistants decide to bring him to his office to sleep it off. While he's passed out, the two decide to write his story adding their own little touches to it. When he gets sober, he adds to what his colleagues have written, but instead puts his own twists into the story. The rest of human side of the story involves an elevator accident and everyone at the hospital taking turns writing the adventure, with Monica finishing the story off.

The volume of "The King of Adventurers" that we get to watch tells the story of the search for "The Scripture with No Words." It begins with Dr. Wei (Jet Li playing Kit's alter-ego) and his assistant (Takeshi Kaneshiro playing himself) saving a bunch of slaves from a giant mechanical ox. I'm not sure who came up that idea. Maybe someone said, "Let's put this scene in the movie so can we can say, 'This film features Jet Li scaling a giant mechanical ox!'"

After that bizarre adventure, Dr. Wei is commissioned by a top Chinese official to get a hold of a magical box that contains the scripture with no words. He is informed that the information regarding its whereabouts are being held by the Japanese at the consulate. With the help of a drunken crime boss friend of theirs, Jet and Shing get into a party at the consulate by dressing in drag(!). Now you may find that weird, but Jet Li had already dressed in drag twice before that in Kids from Shaolin and Martial Arts from Shaolin.

After getting in, Dr. Wei and Shing manage to find the safe where the documents are located and escape, but not before having to take on fighting Billy Chow (who plays a Japanese general in an obvious nod to his role in Fist of Legend) and some Japanese guards in a fight involving excessive undercranking, a pen, and flying sheets of paper. He also flirts with a Japanese waitress named Cammy (also Rosamund Kwan) before high-tailing it.

Dr. Wei and Shing are about to deliver the documents to the official, but the meeting is broken up when the Japanese arrive and start throwing poison gas at the crowds. During the ruckus, Dr. Wei rescues Cammy from the gas and escapes on a train, which ends up going haywire and crashing through multiple buildings before stopping. I will make note at this moment that this film has about as much property damage as a typical Godzilla film. Similar to most of his films, when a character gets hit or kicked, there's a high probability that he/she will fly several yards back before hitting a wall and destroying it at the same time.

With the official dead, Dr. Wei and Shing begin to search for the box themselves. The documents point them in the direction of a newspaper. I guess this newspaper isn't very well-liked, as not only does it have barb wire and sand bags protecting the front of it, but people are constantly trying to assassinate the editor and burn the place down. Dr. Wei and Shing get themselves hired as security guards there. It turns out that the box is indeed being kept there, although it's being guarded by the editor, who likes to walk around with a cape and a basket on his head.

The Japanese, wanting to get the box, desire to hire a bandit named Hung Sing (Collin Chou, of Bodyguard from Beijing and Flashpoint), who's in charge of the Salt Gang, the same group of people that tried to steal the box a century before. Hung Sing and his gang raid the newspaper but the journalists all escape with baskets on their heads, trying to confuse the bad guys. During the fracas, Dr. Wei and the editor take on Hung Sing while Shing is captured by the Japanese.

Shing is taken to the Japanese HQ, where they try to execute him using poison gas. Dr. Wei arrives to save him, but soon discovers that General Chow and his army of ninjas and sumo wrestlers won't let them get away quite so easily(!)

Now, it is a proven fact that Ching Siu-Tung likes ninjas. I mean, what self-respecting martial arts film fanatic doesn't? Ching's first film, Duel to the Death featured ninjas prominently. Ninjas also were an integral part of the second two installments of the Swordsman films. Ninjas, or armed guys dressed up as ninjas are an integral part of the Ching Siu-Tung experience. Another reviewer of B-movies and I once agreed that Ching Siu-Tung must've been influenced by Japanese fantasy films like The Magic Serpent which featured ninjas doing crazy things. Whether or not that's true, I don't know.

Meanwhile, back at the ominous tower somewhere, Hung Sing and Cammy are fighting the editor for control of the box. By the end of the scuffle, Hung Sing is transformed into a monster, the editor is killed, and Cammy gets away with the box. Will she and the Japanese make it to the Great Wall and find the scripture with no words? Will Dr. Wei be able to stop them? Will Ching Siu-Tung come up with other crazy ideas for action scenes?

Most people will call this a low-grade rip-off of a certain film starring Harrison Ford that whose name we won't mention. It's true, as both films are epic adventures dealing with mystical artifacts and both are set during the pre-WWII times. However, the general direction of the two films is decidedly different, as this film tends to be more of a near-parody of both adventure and Hong Kong action films. Not only that, the film covers a whole lot of ground in less than 90 minutes, so the overall pace of the movie is quite fast. There's little to no time used focusing on close-up camera shots of Jet Li in a pensive stare. Oh no, that would detract from the time we need for everyone to break the laws of physics as we know them.

What I found unique about the movie is how all the characters of the story are based off the perceptions that the authors have of one another. Hence, Monica goes from a love interest to a sadistic villainess and back again as the film progresses. The main villains of the story are in fact, people that Chow dislikes in the real world. The entire story is based on elements and people from the real world (i.e. Chow's idea box in reality becomes the sacred box of the story). The fact that the fantasy portion of the film is actually a visualization of a written story, it allows Ching to work his wire-fu magic without having to really explain "Why are they doing that?" Simply put, it's pure fantasy.

As far as the cast goes, the film is in good shape. Jet Li's portrayal of Dr. Wei is quite likeable, a nice step away from his usual "stoic hero" persona. His character brings to mind his performances from Kids from Shaolin and The Master. Rosamund Kwan is as beautiful as always. Ngai Sing once again takes the role as a bad guy (he's been a bad guy in FIVE other Jet Li movies), a villain so scary that he says his name twice (Hung Hung Sing Sing) so people will always be scared of him. Helping out the cast, at least in the subtitled version of this film, are the most inept and unintentionally funny subtitles that I've read. Stuff like "He is jealousing" and "I was hoping to cut down on fight scenes", among others just enhances the tone of the movie.

However, more important than the cast and story are the film's action scenes. I feel the same way about them that I feel with a lot of Ching's fight scenes: way too short. I often feel that a lot of his action sequences end before they begin, with few exceptions. In any case, this movie is as good a showcase for his wild imagination as any. I've mentioned two of the fight scenes already. There's another fight scene that involves a horse and carriage, a chain, a gun, a pen, an umbrella, and a puddle of water. As for the finale, let's just say that Ching Siu-Tung was channeling his inner George Lucas when he choreographed it. One thing that pleased me with this movie were a few fight scenes where Jet Li gets to show of some really fancy non-wire kicks. But other than that, it's business as usual. I may note however, that this film was nominated for Best Action Design in 1996 (another Jet Li film, Black Mask was nominated that same year) but lost to Jackie Chan's First Strike.

One guy that reviewed this movie said it was the best collection of special FX ever for a Hong Kong film. Now, granted this was said in 1996 before The Stormriders revolutionized the fantasy genre. There are a lot of special FX in this one: bullet-time shots, CGI shots of people disintegrating, the giant mechanical ox, in addition to the usual property destroying mayhem and wire-assisted martial arts. It's not necessarily great by Western standards, but the fact that the film never takes itself seriously ameliorates that problem.

On the whole, I really liked the movie. I really enjoyed the storyline and identified a lot with Kit's and Dr. Wei's characters, as I myself have written short stories (or at least summaries of short story ideas) and have put in as characters people I know. I liked the fight scenes, which were creative but also allowed Jet Li to do some impressive moves by himself. While this isn't Jet Li's film, it's certainly Tony Ching's film and one of my favorite examples of the madness that he capable of portraying onscreen.

Appendix

The above review was originally written in 2004. The following year, I found the Brazilian VHS for a couple of bucks and lo and behold! It was the alternate version that leaves out the real world story and just focuses on the adventure. It was a nice treat; I didn't expect to see this version. I thought I'd comment on some of the changes (WARNING: Spoilers!!!).

1. Takeshi Kaneshiro's character narrates the movie as Dr. Wai's son.

2. Jet Li is called "Dr. Wai" in this version, as opposed to the Chinese version, in which everyone calls him Mo Him Wong, or "Adventure King".

3. The consulate scene is extended with sequence showing Takeshi Kaneshiro conversing with guard dogs to calm them down and Jet Li and Rosamund Kwan having a bathtub encounter (and to you perverts, nothing is revealed).

4. There is more conversation showed between Charlie Yeung's character and the Headmaster.

5. The runaway train scene was actually supposed to take place after Jet's first encounter with Ngai Sing. This scene shows Rosamund Kwan getting poisoned by Billy Chow and Takeshi Kaneshiro being captured by the Japanese.

6. The scene where Jet storms the Japanese headquarters is fleshed out as we see that he's seeking the antidote as well as trying to rescue Kaneshiro's character.

7. The finale is a little more downbeat. In the revelation scene at the very end, whereas Jet's character is shown his real life alter-ego alongside Rosamund Kwan in a vision, here we are shown footage of Hiroshima(!) and the characters learn that Japan loses the war. The mystical being than goes off into some sort of religious speech about God, brotherly love, unity, etc. This is driven in further by Kaneshiro's character's narration talking about the need to trust in God! I have question whether this dialogue was really there or if it was added by the Portuguese translators and dubbers. I can't imagine a Ching Siu-Tung movie (or any Chinese movie) having so preachy dialogue.

That about sums it up. The new footage makes the adventure a lot more coherent, although the pace still is pretty breakneck. It's not as clever as the original but it's a solid adventure (now I want to watch The Raid and see how they compare). Like I said, it's real treat to be able to watch this version and I recommend both versions to everyone.