War of the Shaolin Temple (1980)

War of the Shaolin Temple (1980)
aka: Monks Go Crazy; Thirteen Pugilist Monks in Shaolin
Chinese Title: 十三癲和尚
Translation: 13 Crazy Monks

 

Starring: Chen Chien-Chang, Shen Hai-Rong, Chen Chian-He, Mark Long Kuan-Wu, Alan Chui Chung-San, Chia Kai, Huang Fei-Long, Chang Chi-Ping, Chiang Sheng, Ricky Cheng Tien-Chi
Director: Chiang Nan
Action Directors: Alan Chui Chung-San, Mark Long Kuan-Wu, Fung Hak-On, Lau Fong-Sai

 

War of the Shaolin Temple is an interesting film, mainly because of its unintended relationship with other films. There are some general plot contours that remind me of Jet Li’s classic Shaolin Temple, which was still two years away. I think few people will come away from this movie not having a vague reminder of the better-known Mainland film. It is also set during the Song Dynasty, specifically during the period in which the famed general Yueh Fei was fighting to halt the advance of the “proto-Manchurian” Jin Dynasty. That would make a contemporary, story-wise, with another Mainland film, Yao’s Young Warriors.

When our film starts out, the Jin army has already kicked the Emperor and his entourage out of Northern China, thus giving birth to the Southern Song Kingdom. One of the generals, Chao Wei (the late Alan Chui, of Last Hero in China and Kung Fu vs. Yoga), has gotten a hold of the Emperor’s Seal, which the Han Chinese people in the south now want back. To that end, the famous Yueh Fei (who, like in Yao’s Young Warriors, never actually appears onscreen) sends some of his men to infiltrate the General’s manor and steal the Seal back. Most of the patriots are killed, although one of them, Wang (Chen Chien-Chang, whose other credit was Shaolin Temple Strikes Back), is able to escape with the Seal in tow.

Unfortunately for Wang, he is wounded during the melee, making him an easy target for the Jin soldiers. Fortunately, he is found by a young lady named Miss Bai (Shen Hai-Rong, of Eighteen Fatal Strikes and The Beheaded 1000). She brings him back to her place, where her dad (Chang Chi-Ping, of Valley of the Double Dragon) patches him up. It doesn’t take long for the Jin soldiers to follow rumors to the Bai household, where Miss Bai’s dad and brothers (Venom Mob troupe member Chiang Sheng and Five Element Ninja’s Ricky Cheng) hold off the soldiers while Miss Bai and and Wang make their escape.

The two fugitives eventually find their way to the Shaolin Temple in Hunan. Although the Abbot (Mark Long, of The Mystery of Chess Boxing) has “closed down” the temple in order to enforce political neutrality—the temple is now in Jin-controlled territory, despite the monks mainly being Han Chinese—the monks themselves are more than willing to bring in a Song patriot. After a strange interlude involving Miss Bai being kicked out of the temple after serving meat dishes to Wang (on temple grounds), Wang decides to become a monk in order to improve his martial arts and one day get revenge against General Chao Wei. But in order to really get his skills up to snuff, he’ll have to convince the notorious drunken “Crazy Monk” (Chia Kai, of Seven Steps of Kung Fu) to take him on as a student.

It is always a bit of a novelty to find a Shaolin Temple film not set during the Qing Dynasty. Jet Li’s Shaolin Temple was set during the transition between the Sui and Tang Dynasties, while this film takes place a few hundred years later during the latter half of the Song Dynasty (before the Mongols came and conquered the Song, Western Xia and Jin kingdoms). Not a lot of movies get to tell much of the story of the Jin and Liao Dynasties, which existed concurrently with the Song. So to a Westerner (with a mild interest in history) like me, this change of scenery is a treat.

I do find it interesting that while Hong Kong studios were generally content to rip off Drunken Master or adapt the works of Jin Yong and Gu Long into film at that time, Taiwanese studios showed a bit more creativity. Oh, they had their share of those aforementioned types of movies: even this film has scenes set in the Crazy Monk’s cave that were most likely inspired by Drunken Master. On the whole, however, they seemed to be more willing to tell stories set in different parts of Chinese history. For example, Shaolin Monk (1976) tells the story of Boddhidharma and is set during the Northern and Southern Dynasties Period (A.D. 420 – 589). The Snake, the Tiger, the Crane (1980) tells the little-known story of Li Tzu-Chung, a peasant rebel who briefly became “emperor” during the fall of the Ming Dynasty. And it was Taiwan that made a film about Pan Ku, the Chinese equivalent to Adam, in the 1979 fantasy In the Beginning.

The plot resembles Shaolin Temple in that both films are about a patriot of sorts who ends up at the Shaolin Temple to train for revenge against an evil warlord, and both films feature a sequence of the hero leaving the temple in order to rescue a female friend at one point. I have to wonder if the makers of the more popular Jet Li film had seen this and were inspired, of it was simply a case of convergent evolution. Like a lot of Mainland wushu films, War of the Shaolin Temple a demonstration scene of different monks performing forms with diverse weapons, including the pole and rope-dart.

There are four credited action directors, including the late Alan Chui, who played the film’s main villain, and Mark Long, who plays the Abbot. The bulk of the action involve group melees with weapons—pole, spear, saber and sword—and there is a fair amount of fighting throughout. The weapons choreography is generally solid, although not quite up to the best work of Sammo Hung (see The Odd Couple) or Lau Kar-Leung (see Heroes of the East and Legendary Weapons of China). A lot is made about the Shaolin Monks having a 13-Pole Formation, with our main hero ultimately being the monk who becomes the 13^th member of said Formation. Unfortunately, not much is really made of that from a choreography standpoint, so if you want cool pole formations, stick with Spiritual Kung Fu.

Lead actor Chen Chien-Chang acquits himself fairly well to the action. He only showed up into two movies—both about the Shaolin Temple—and then disappeared from film (at least). Taiwanese mainstay Chia Kai steals the show as the super-acrobatic Crazy Monk. Sadly, he doesn’t not participate in the climax, which I consider to be a huge waste of the man’s talents. Mark Long as the Abbot ends up participating in the action more than most Shaolin abbots do in these films. He teams up with Chen Chien-Chang to fight against Alan Chui in the finale, which features the film’s best action and most sustained hand-to-hand combat. The climax actually downplays the other monks fighting the Jin soldiers in favor of this two-on-one, which I thought was interesting. That said, Mark Long, whose talents rival those of Chia Kai, doesn’t reach the level of his landmark performance as Ghost-Faced Killer in The Mystery of Chess Boxing. And that really sums up War of the Shaolin Temple: everybody does what they usually do well, but they ultimately do it better in other films.

Brave: Gunjyo Senki (2021)

Brave: Gunjyo Senki (2021)
Japanese title: ブレイブ 群青戦記
Translation: Brave Ultramarine Battle Record

 

Starring: Mackenyu, Haruma Miura, Keisuke Watanabe, Noboyuki Suzuki, Hirona Yamazaki, Ken'ichi Matsuyama, Suguru Adachi, Shôdai Fukuyama, Tatsuomi Hamada, Tomohiro Ichikawa, Hiroki Iijima, Kaho Mizutani, Takuro Osada 
Director: Katsuyuki Motohiro
Action Director:  n/a

 

It's an ordinary day at the Seitouku Academy, one of the best producers of champion athletes in Japan. All of the clubs--baseball, karate, kendo, archery, boxing, etc.--are tending to their respective practices. We meet our main characters, a talented-but-underachieving archer named Ao Nishino (Mackenyu, son of Sonny Chiba) and his female BFF Haruka (Monster Hunter’s Hirona Yamazaki). Completing the threesome of friends is Kouta, their more self-asured kendo club leader (Noboyuki Suzuki, of Tokyo Ghoul), who is off doing kendo stuff with his colleagues.

There lives are changed forever when a freak lightning storm hits, transporting the entire school to some plain that none of the students recognize. Out of nowhere, an army of men armed with swords and kama (or sickles) pour out of the nearby forest and fall upon the student body. I’m pretty sure about two-thirds of the 300+ student population is cut down in the ensuing massacre. The only reason that anyone survives is that the different sports clubs finally “come to” and start using their respective skills against the marauders. The leader of the armed men, a masked samurai named Yanada (Kamen Rider Zi-Oh's Keisuke Watanabe), rounds up his men and takes several of the students hostage.

The first person to figure out what's going on is Aoi Nishino, who is a history buff as much as he’s an archer. From the name and dress of Yanada, he deduces that they have been transported back to the Sengoku Period, specifically the year A.D. 1560, a few days before the Battle of Okehazama. Yanada was an officer in the army of Nobunaga Oda, the man know to history as the guy who started the Japan unification campaign. That would mean that the other army that shows up after Yanada’s withdrawal is being led by Motoyasu Matsudeira (Haruma Miura, of Attack on Titans). While that name isn’t immediately recognizable, Nishino knows that he would go on to change his name to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the fellow who established the centuries-running Tokugawa Shogunate.

However, prior to Ieyasu’s continuation of Nobunaga’s Ambition, he served under a rival daimyo named Imegawa Yoshimoto. It was after the upcoming Battle of Okehazama that Ieyasu switched sides, so for now, Matsudeira is their tentative ally. Nishino and Kouta are able to convince Matsudeira that they are not enemies and that they need to storm Yanada’s fort to rescue their comrades. Matsudeira relents, although he doesn’t have any men to spare. That means that the best athletes of the Seitoku Academy are going to have to draw up the courage to venture into enemy territory and face off with Yanada’s army by themselves.

There are two “but’s” that should be considered. The surviving school nerds have figured out that the Sacred Stone that adorns the school courtyard has mystical magnetic properties that reacts with electrical storms. That means that in a couple of days, according to their calculations (or historical record), there will be another storm that will present them with a short window with which to travel home. That gives our heroes a short deadline to do the impossible.

Second, we later learn that Yanada isn’t the historical Yanada. Instead, he is a former Seitoku student named Rui Fuwa who went missing the year beore. Despite his martial prowess, Rui was a loner with a mindset of a school shooter. Armed with the knowledge of history and an axe to grind, he’s ready to really screw up history for good. That means that rescuing the hostages—who are being raped and murdered by the day—isn’t enough: our heroes will have to protect history, too.

Brave: Gunjyo Senki plays like the Toy Soldiers version of G.I. Samurai (or more specifically, its remake Samurai Commando Mission 1549) with a strong helping of Born to Fight (and a dash of Back to the Future), what with a bunch of athletes using their skills against an army that is better armed than they are. What it isn't, unfortunately, is as fun as either of those two films. It's a bleak, violent affair (not that those aren't) with most of the Ra-Ra action replaced with LOTS of melodrama and tragic deaths, not to mention a huge helping of teenagers being slaughtered wholesale.

There is obviously more character development here than in Born to Fight, where characters barely had any defining characteristics beyond their individual athletic skills. The baseball and (American) football clubs are team players dedicated to rescuing their kidnapped colleagues, completely willing to put their lives on the line to save a single teamate. The karate expert and the fencing expert are initially at odds—the latter is a bit of an elitist who looks down at his “vulgar” counterpart—but eventually set aside their differences to fight in tandem. Most importantly, Nishino Aoi has the complete arc, having to overcome his lack of self-confidence that has always kept him below his potential and rise to the occasion for the good of others—at one point, his mission becomes intensely personal.

On the other hand, the historical figures are a bit more one-dimensional. Motoyasu Matsudeira (later Tokugawa Ieyasu) is little more than a wisdom dispenser for Aoi, although he is involved in one of the plot’s biggest twists. Likewise, Nobunaga Oda is an honorable figure, even if its his army that represents the film’s antagonists. On the other hand, while the villain’s motivations kind of make sense, we never really find out what his actual plans are. We know he aims to change history for the worse, but how he intends to do it is rather murky. I’m guessing he plans on killing historical figures like Hideyoshi and Ieyasu in battle before eventually usurping Nobunaga Oda and molding a unified Japan in his image. But that’s never clear.

Action-wise, this film doesn’t really cover much new ground. Born to Fight did the whole “athletes vs military” bit better. Some viewers may enjoy watching high school kids do American football tackles on samurai foot soldiers or the fencing and karate kids teaming up against their enemies, but much of the choreography is traditional Japanese style swordplay, without any of the stylish Hong Kong (or Thai) touches that other movies from the Land of the Rising Sun have enjoyed in the past 20 years. Fans of Japanese period pieces may find something to enjoy here, while action junkies may appreciate the no-holds barred, take-no-prisoners approach to the action. Nobody wears plot armor in this film.

3 Capsule Reviews of Zhang Yimou Dramas

Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
Chinese Title: 大紅燈籠高高掛
Translation: Red Lanterns Hang High

 

Starring: Gong Li, Ma Jingwu, He Saifei, Cao Cui-Fen, Zhou Qi, Kong Lin, Jin Shu-Yuan, Chu Xiao
Director: Zhang Yimou

This is one of those all-time classics of Chinese cinema that I could have rented at Blockbuster during the late 90s, but never did. I'm pretty sure I would have dismissed it as "slow" had I watched it as an HK action junkie teen. The film is well shot and well acted, but the pacing is very deliberate and that may turn some viewers off. 

The film tells the story of Songlian (Gong Li), a young woman who is forced to drop out of a university following her father's untimely death. At her stepmother's behest, she decides to get married, becoming the 4th wife of a wealthy man named Chen (Ma Jingwu). She quickly finds herself in competition with wife #3 (He Sai-Fei, whose credits include Lust, Caution and something called Double Gunned Man with a False Face), a former Opera singer, for her new husband's attentions. Wife #2, Zhuoyun (Cao Cui-Fen), is initially sympathetic toward Songlian, while wife #1 (Jin Shuyuan) has more or less resigned herself to her fate: she's probably too old for her husband to show interest in anymore. Complicating matters is the fact that Songlian's maid, Yan'er (Kong Lin, who has a supporting role in Ride On), is jealous because she thought she would become wife #4.

Raise the Red Lantern is interesting in that it concerns itself purely with the internal politics of the Chen family, specifically with the interactions of the wives, especially #2, 3 and 4. In a particularly bold movie, even the husband, for whom all the hub-bub is about, is portrayed in an almost purely abstract manner: Zhang Yimou never once gives us a close-up of Ma Jingwu's face. There is no dialog to really explain what Mr. Chen does or how he makes his money, nor is there any indication about how external events may or may not be affecting his business--the film is set around 1920, so that would place it during the Warlord Era. Zhang Yimou did something similar in Shanghai Triad, but to a lesser effect. It works here because the sexual politics of a polygamous family is the focus and is interesting in its own right, as opposed watching the machinations of a Triad family two degrees removed from the main action.

The movie suggests that polygamy in China may be good for the husband, but it is anything but for the wives. There's a lot of scheming and backbiting going on here, and these women are more than willing to do horrible things to each other to guarantee their strength over the household. Moreover, it's clear that once a woman's beauty and childbearing prowess has faded, she will receive little love and attention from her husband, who'll be too busy lavishing his love on his younger wives. If she's lucky, she'll have a son to occasionally keep her company. Songlian can see all of this from the outset and, after her initial disgust of "the game," she tries to play it to her advantage, after which she simply removes herself from the equation altogether. But that brings with it loneliness, despair and ultimately insanity. As with most Zhang Yimou films, the technical aspects are fine and the acting is good, but it is pretty depressing, especially in the last 20 minutes or so.

Shanghai Triad (1995)
Chinese Title: 搖呀搖！搖到外婆橋
Translation: Shake! Shake! Shake Grandma to the Bridge[1]

 

Starring: Gong Li, Li Bao-Tian, Li Xuejian, Sun Chun, Wang Xiao-Xiao, Chen Shu, Fu Biao, Liu Jiang, Jiang Bao-Ying
Director: Zhang Yimou

 

I recall seeing this film for rent at Blockbuster back in the late 1990s, although I never picked it up. That applies to most Asian films in the Foreign Film section there; if it was action and was Asian, it usually went into the Action-Adventure section. The movies that I was mature enough at the time to appreciate would have been action movies; teenage me wasn't ready for drama. But now I have to pick up the slack.

The film is told from the point of view of a 14-year-old country boy named Tang Shuisheng (Wang Xiao-Xiao), who has been sent by his family Shanghai to work with his uncle. His uncle, Liu Er (Li Xujian, of The Emperor and the Assassin), is a servant for the biggest crime boss in Shanghai, Boss Tang (Li Bao-Tian, of Judou and Raise the Red Lantern). Shuisheng is sent to be the personal servant of Boss Tang's current squeeze, a nightclub singer named Bijou (Gong Li, of Dragon Chronicles and Curse of the Golden Flower). Bijou is beautiful and talented, but she's also stuck-up, shallow and greedy. She also deals with her lover's constant absence by carrying on an affair with Song (Sun Chun, of New Police Story and 1911), Tang's right-hand man. At one point, there's an assassination attempt on Boss Tang and Tang flees with his entourage to an island in order to recover and regroup. Stuff...

At the Kung Fu Fandom forum, we once had a Mutual Movie Review series, which started in 2015. The second theme chosen was "Triad Movies." User Secret Executioner (known at the time as Godfrey Ho Worshipper), reviewed this film and gave it an overwhelmingly negative evalutation. Said he:

 

Most of the action occurs off-screen and you only get some sound effects and the aftermath of a fight. Otherwise, you get a lot of singing/dancing numbers in the first half and a lot of plotting and talk in the second half - when they go hide away on some island. hkcinemagic puts this in the drama and triad categories, and it's way more of a boring drama with some triads mixed in...My opinion on this though ? Well... It's DREADFUL. I thought Robo Vampire and OUATIC were the worst Asian movies I'd see this year, but nope this one is even worse with NOTHING to save (even the other two films I mentionned had something to enjoy like a cheap Robocop rip-off or a few nice action sequences)...

 

Fellow user and Hong Kong cinema expert Shawn McKenna offered the following counterpoint:

 

Now Shanghai Triad is a weaker film in the oeuvre of Zhang Yimou and is generally considered so by most critics. It came at a time where after he was suspended and had confrontations over several of his past films with the Chinese censors (remember this is something he could have went to jail for and possibly never directed again.) But it is in no way one of the worst films ever.* When you are viewing a film there are many different attributes it can be judged on. To paraphrase David Bordwell: Film is a photographic art. Film is a narrative art. Film is a performing art. Film is a pictorial art. Film is an audiovisual art. On many of these facets Shanghai Triad is actually successful at. The cinematography is well done with beautiful composition, flourishes etc...

 

My opinions about this are that it does make for an interesting companion piece with The Road Home, which I watched the same day. It was neat to contrast the pastoral simplicity of that film with the complexities of modern society (and organized crime), which is driven in some part by greed and materialism. That said, the characters in The Road Home were far more likable and relatable than the characters here. But then again, that was sorta the point.

My qualms about this film is that the film is called Shanghai Triad, but the story is told from the point of view of a character two degrees removed from the actual triad activities. Shuisheng is a country hick with no idea at how the modern world function, what technological marvels (by 1930s standards) adorn it, and barely any idea of what his actual place in it is. His boss, Bijou, is essentially a gangster's moll, but even she isn't directly involved in that lifestyle (it's considered bad luck for a Triad's wife or lover to be present during male discussions). That means that most of the actual story is told from a distance too far to become truly involved with. And yes, the occasional moments of violence happen offscreen, or far enough away (as Shuisheng witnesses it) that there is no visceral impact.

The best moments from a storytelling perspective occur at the end, when we finally learn who Boss Tang truly is. It's almost a twist to learn just how ruthless and vicious the man is, compared to how we saw him in earlier scenes. Beyond that, the film has some good performances and the expected Zhang Yimou technical viruosity, from the costumes to the cinematography. In the end, Shanghai Triad is too distant to enjoy, but too attractive on the surface to simply discard.

The Road Home (1999)
Chinese Title: 我的父親母親
Translation: My Father and Mother

 

Starring: Zhang Ziyi, Sun Hong-Lei, Zheng Hao, Zhao Yu-Lian, Li Bin, Chang Gui-Fa
Director: Zhang Yimou

 

Leo Tolstoy reported said, "All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town." In the case of this film, a man comes back to town after having journeyed to the big city to make his fortune. That is the start of this simple family drama about a guy remembering the story of how his parents met following the death of his father, whose own story is Premise #2 in Tolstoy's quotation.

Luo Yusheng (Sun Honglei, of Seven Swords) was raised in a small mountain village whose economy revolved around pastoral activities. He went into the city, like many of the youngsters of the newer generations, to find his fortune, but has returned upon learning that his father has passed on. His mother, Zhao Di (Zhao Yulian), wants to perform a local burial tradition in which the coffin is carried from the place of death (his body is at a hospital in a neighboring city) to the place of burial, so that his father's spirit will be able "find his way home." The main problem is that most of the local adult men are old, as the young men have all left for China's urban centers. As Yusheng ponders what to do, he tells the story of his parents' meeting some 40 years prior.

This was Zhang Ziyi's first film, and if you think she's beautiful, then you should see this as she practically carries the vast bulk of the film, which is full of loving close-ups of her (pretty) face. The film is a very simple tale of a woman's devotion and loyalty to the man she loves. She has no ambitions of her own, she just loves her husband and spent her life dedicated to him and supporting him as the only teacher in the village for four decades. It's the sort of love story that might not be well received by contemporary, more entitled (and dare I say "narcissistic") audiences, what with their "I'm marrying myself to show my self-love" weddings and what not. Zhao Di (played in her youth by Ziyi) finds her love of self through love of others, be it her blind mother or her husband. 

There are secondary themes of the slow death of old traditions as the younger generations seek out the urban centers; respect for one's elders and filial piety; the honor that we people owe to the teaching profession; and some oblique references to the effects of the Cultural Revolution on local cultures. But they are handled subtlely in what is a very understated film.

As it goes, this currently has the IMDB rating of 7.8. That puts it--if you ignore his Olympics work and appearances in documentaries--at #4 among Zhang Yimou's work among mainstream audiences (as going by the IMDB); To Live would be #1 (8.3); Raise the Red Lantern #2 (8.1); and Hero #3 (7.9).

---

[1] - The title refers to a lullaby that is mentioned in the film.