Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

 Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

 

Starring: Robin Shou, Talisa Soto, Brian Thompson, Sandra Hess, James Remar, Lynn Red Williams 
Director: John Leonetti 
Choreographer: Robin Shou, Pat Johnson, Ridley Tsui


Before The Matrix revolutionized the American action film by creating a trend of using CGI-enhanced martial arts and the such, Hong Kong influence actually had begun to make quiet inroads into the Silver Screen with some certain "transition films." These brought in Chinese choreographers or did the choreography with a certain Hong Kong flavor, but without necessarily drawing attention to itself. Among these movies were Blade (1998), The Big Hit (1998), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and the already reviewed Double Team (1997). However, the first of these transition films was a successful film called Mortal Kombat (1995). 

Two years after the first Mortal Kombat defied expectations, a sequel was made. Interestingly enough, Paul W.S. Anderson’s name is nowhere to be found on the credits, with cinematographer John Leonetti (who photographed the first film) taking the chair for his freshman directorial effort. Now the first movie had ended with our heroes walking triumphantly into the Temple of the Order of Light (in Southeast Asia) after having defeated Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat tournament. However, the sky then goes dark, and the Emperor Shao Kahn appears, and announces that he shall steal the souls of the good guys. And that's where it left off, and that's where the sequel begins. 

Shao Kahn (Lionheart’s Brian Thompson), his generals (Sheeva, Montaro, Ermac, Rain, and Sindel), and an army of ninjas drop out of the dimensional gate. Shao Kahn proclaims the destruction of both Earth and humanity, saying that it will all happen in six days. Raiden (The Quest’s James Remar) challenges Shao Kahn to a fight and begins to wipe the floor with him. However, Shao Kahn results to treachery and when the smoke clears, Johnny Cage is dead. I'd like to note that in neither of the two films does Johnny Cage get to throw a Shadow Kick that actually connects with the intended target. I'd feel gyped if I were him. 

Our heroes (Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, Kitana, and Raiden) escape into the bowels of the earth in order to seek help. Liu Kang and Kitana decide to search for Nightwolf in the American southwest while Sonya sets out to find her partner Jax. Raiden decides to look for the temple of the Gods to find out why Shao Kahn and his armies are being able to attack the earth. 

While underneath the earth, Liu Kang and Kitana get into a bunch of fights with Smoke (MK3 cyborg form, played by HK veteran Ridley Tsui), Scorpion (now played by J.J. Perry), and a bunch of ninjas. Evening out the odds is Sub-Zero (now played by Keith Cooke, who’d played Reptile in the previous film) who comes in to assist the good guys. When all is said and done, Kitana is kidnapped and Sub-Zero leaves Liu Kang to continue his journey. Now, if I were Liu Kang, I'd be a bit upset with Sub-Zero, since I'd expect him to contribute more to the saving of humanity than simply fighting a couple of guys. I'd want him to stick it out to the end—sort of a running gag with supporting characters in this film.

Anyways, Liu Kang finds Nightwolf on top of a mesa, who teaches him how to perform an "animality." Like Sub-Zero (and Scorpion), Nightwolf then disappears from the film for no good reason because…why? Don’t either of those two losers worry about taking a more proactive stance in saving the Earth? Waking up from a dream-like state, Liu finds that it has inexplicably begun to snow and that there's an Asian girl (Siberian supermodel Irina Pankaeva) with him in an outfit not unlike what Raquel Welch wore in One Million Years B.C.. She first tries to seduce him (why couldn’t she perform the mythical “nudality” that 13-year-old boys used to talk about in those times?) and when he spurns her advances, she becomes Jade and begins to fight him. Like an old kung fu movie, you’re never five minutes away from the next fight scene in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. 

Sonya finds Jax at a government laboratory. Incidentally, he's had a some surgery performed on him and now has some cybernetic strength-enhancers put on his arms. What I wanna know is why everyone else at the lab vanished into thin air, but he's still there. Anyways, their reunion is broken up by the appearance of another cyborg, Cyrax (also J.J. Perry), and some more ninjas. After that fight, they set out to find Raiden and the others, albeit not before getting into another fight with Mileena (Dana Hee, a Hollywood stuntwoman and Tae Kwon Do commentator). Well, if you're seeing a pattern, you're right. The heroes go somewhere and get into a fight. They go somewhere else and get into another fight. They go somewhere else and...you get the point. 

I won't hesitate in saying that this is a flawed film. It is very flawed. You see, our characters have to not only fight the forces of evil, but they have to engage in mortal kombat with a badly-written script, a bad plotline, and their own acting limitations. The plot seems to exist mainly as a way of finishing up where the first movie left off, but for the direction that it goes, it tries too hard to include most of the characters from the game in order to please video game fans. One possibly way of handling the storyline would've been to make it an essential remake of the first one, with the emperor calling a new tournament and having our heroes recruit some fresh blood to compete against the villains. I mean, the result would've been the same, but the sudden appearance and disappearance of all these characters wouldn't have been so jarring. As it stands, it is full of holes and plot devices that go nowhere: two-thirds of the movie is spent on chasing a legend that ends up being a complete lie; the revelation that Jade is a spy for Shao Khan doesn’t impact the film in any way; characters show up and vanish for no reason whatsoever; etc.

The script and acting needed a bit of work as well. James Remar does a pretty good job filling in Christopher Lambert's shoes as Raiden. Robin Shou is alright as Liu Kang; he did better in the first one. Brian Thompson overacts as only Brian Thompson can, while Talisa Soto underacts to the point that you wish the camera would just focus on her rear. The others struggle with a script that seems more at place in a Power Rangers cartoon than in a film based off of an ultraviolent video game. I guess that's the big problem, the presentation of this film is more suited for kids and pre-teens than it is for older audiences. And re-watching this after the release of the Expendables 4 trailer, can we stop writing black characters in action movies to say, “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout!”?

So what'll really make or break this film is the martial arts. I mean, good martial arts can redeem even the worst movies to some degree. Like the first movie, the choreography is divided between Hong Kong veteran Robin Shou and Pat Johnson (who also did second unit directing). And like the first movie, you can obviously tell the difference between the work of both choreographers. Shou's choreography is pretty good and Johnson's pales in comparison. This is especially noticed in the fight between Sonya and Mileena, which at one point, becomes devolves into a mud wrestling match between the two girls (too bad Sammo Hung didn't choreograph the fight, he did an excellent job with a hand vs. sai fight in Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars). The best fights of the film occur in the first third of the movie and involve the two fights under the earth's surface and Sonya's and Jax's fights in the laboratory. 

As far as the actors are concerned, they all make a pretty fair showing. Robin Shou, who although he is no Jet Li (or Donnie Yen or Zhao Wen-Zhuo), does a good job and does some nice-looking moves, especially in the finale—come to find out, many of his acrobatic moves were performed by an uncredited Tony Jaa. Swiss model Sandra Hess, who plays Sonya, sells her fights better than Brigitte Wilson ever could. James Remar's stunt double is Ray Park, who’d later go on to play Darth Maul in Star Wars Episode 1. His fight with the Reptiles is pretty good—although in another plot hole, three Reptiles are shown, but only two of them fight Raiden. Keith Cooke impresses in his fight against Scorpion, showing off some nice aerial kicks. Cooke is actually a very talented wushu stylist and is arguably the best thing about the China O'Brien movies that Cynthia Rothrock made.

The visuals in this film have not aged well in the ensuing 26 years. While the CGI used in the energy blasts and stuff is alright, the digital monsters are atrocious. I liked the idea of Shao Khan transforming into a hydra obviously inspired by Jason and the Argonauts, but the Random Flesh Demon and Liu Kang’s Dragon were pathetic. The costumes are a lot more vivid in their coloration than they were in the previous film, making them look chintzy and fake. Goro looked good; Sheeva looks goofy. Between the bright colors and excessive posing, you can tell that the filmmakers thought they were making a Power Rangers movie more than they were making a Mortal Kombat film. But still, the movie is worth checking out just as another example of the transition that American martial arts movies made from the static old style to the imaginative and intricate Hong Kong style. The following year, films like Blade; Rush Hour; and Lethal Weapon 4 would really show audiences how it could be done.

Mortal Kombat (1995)

Mortal Kombat (1995)

 

Starring: Robin Shou, Linden Ashby, Bridgette Wilson, Christopher Lambert, Talisa Soto, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Chris Casamassa, François Petit, Keith Cooke
Director: Paul W. S. Anderson
Action Director: Pat E. Johnson, Robin Shou

 

It’s a long-running joke that video game adaptations are almost guarateed to suck. It all started with Super Mario Bros., in which the writers decided that transforming the material into a dystopian, Blade Runner-esque sci-fi movie set in an alternate universe where reptiles evolved into people was the right approach. That was followed by the lamentable Double Dragon, which toned down the martial arts in favor of scenes like Alyssa Milano with an ugly haircut feeding spinach to Abobo. Right. Then there was Street Fighter, which ditched the martial arts tournament angle in favor of what was essentially a parody of 80s action movies.

There have been some successful movies. Nobody expected the Resident Evil movies to make it to six theatrical releases, but it did. Quality-wise, well, yeah. A lot of people enjoyed the Silent Hill film. The more recent releases of Sonic the Hedgehog and its sequel also showed that you could place video game characters in the “real” world and have a reasonably entertaining outcome. That said, the first successful—financially and with fans—video game movie was Mortal Kombat.

It came out during the summer of 1995. I recall taping a making-of documentary of the film off of TNT a few weeks or so before its release. I was rather excited about the project, although for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to make it to opening weekend. I eventually saw with my brother—who had seen it during its first few days in the theater—when it reached the dollar theater in Stockton. I had a lot of fun with it and eventually bought myself a copy on VHS because, let’s be honest, no martial arts movie fan in the 90s could do without one.

The movie begins with a young Chinese kid named Liu Chan (Steven Ho, Donatello in the second and third Ninja Turtles movies) taking on the powerful sorcerer Shang Tsung. He loses the fight, at which point Shang Tsung looks into the camera and declares that he’ll still Chan’s soul…and then “you’re next.” It turns out to be a dream that Liu Kang (Robin Shou, of Death Cage and Tiger Cage 2) had, shortly after the notification of his brother’s death. Apparently, Chan had been training to take part in the Mortal Kombat tournament after Liu Kang chickened out and went to live in America. But now that Chan’s dead, Liu Kang blames himself and wants to enter the tournament for revenge.

At the same time, we meet our other main protagonists. One of them is Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby, of “Teen Wolf” and “Melrose Place”), a martial arts actor of the Van Damme variety. Cage has been dogged by the press in recent months, with tabloids accusing him of being a fake when it comes to the fighting. A visit from his old sensei—actually Shang Tsung in disguise--convinces him to join the tournament.

Finally, there’s CIA (?) agent Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson, Billy Madison and House on Haunted Hill) who’s in Hong Kong looking for a master criminal named Kano who’d murdered her partner. When we meet her, she and her current partner, Jax, are infiltrating an underground, multi-ethnic metal rave…do those exist in Hong Kong? Anyway, she learns that Kano is hanging out at the port, exactly where the ship that will transport the participants of Mortal Kombat is due to arrive.

Once on the ship, our three heroes meet both Shang Tsung and the God of Thunder, Raiden (Christopher Lambert, of Beowulf and Highlander: Endgame). Raiden then explains the game: every generation—how long is that?—there is a martial arts tournament between the best fighters of the Earth realm and another realm known as Outworld. If a realm loses ten consecutive tournaments, the portals open and allow for the winner to invade and conquer the other. The current leader of the Outworld, Emperor Shao Khan, wants to conquer Earth and has already won nine tournaments. If Earth loses this one, it’s doomed. Only the combined skills of Liu Kang, Johny Cage and Sonya—with some assistance from Raiden and Princess Kitana (Talisa Soto, of License to Kill and Vampirella)—can save the world!

Mortal Kombat is little more than an FX-heavy retread of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon. Martial arts tournament on an island? Check. Chinese martial artist as a hero? Check. White guy who’s not a real martial artist playing second fiddle? Check. Final battle between Chinese hero and Asian tournament organizer? Check. Pat Johnson helping with the action? Check. That said, it is almost ironic that critics universally dimissed this film as nothing but a collection of fight scenes, while praising Enter the Dragon for the same reason. For example, let’s take Leonard Maltin: 

ETD: “Almost perfect Kung Fu film that forgets about plot and concentrates on mind boggling fight scenes.”

MK: “Elaborate special effects and impressive set design are helpless against weak story, uneven akting, and komikally thin karakters…Mostly just one fight after another…”

Obviously, the special effects have not aged well at all (28 years later), but really, were the characters in Enter the Dragon all that deep? And if a thin story was acceptable for Enter the Dragon, why not for Mortal Kombat? And Enter the Dragon didn’t have the interesting costumes and art design that this film had. It’s not fair, I tell ya’! That said, the dialog is very cheesy and recalls 90s action-adventure cartoons. I mean, it isn’t quite as cringe-worthy as your typical episode of the Power Rangers (or either of the 90s films), but it is very stilted.

But the action! What about the action?

For the most part, the action is still pretty solid. Robin Shou steals the film as Liu Kang, giving us the flashiest moves and best fight: Liu Kang vs. Reptile (Keith Cooke, of China O’ Brien and Heatseeker). Shou himself choreographed it, bringing with him almost a decade’s worth of Hong Kong film experience. Cooke was a fellow wushu stylist and the two were perfectly matched punch for punch, kick for kick—the fight also has an awesome theme song. He does some of Donnie Yen’s trademark kicks, like the jumping back kick and jumping double back-kick, during the climatic fight with the souls of the warriors defeated by Shang Tsung.

Shou also choreographed the big fight between Linden Ashby (and his stunt double, J.J. Perry) and Scorpion (Chris Casamassa, who reprised the role on the “Mortal Kombat” TV series). According to the aforementioned documentary, the script called for Cage to dodge Scorpion’s alien-worm-rope-dart weapon, only to defeat him with a single shadow kick. Boring. So, Scorpion transports him to this other world that was patterned off of SE Asian burial platforms and the two go at it, Hong Kong style. It also ends of the film’s most violent fatality.

The other fights are decent. Bridgette Wilson as Sonya Blade isn’t the most convincing screen fighter: my 14-year-old daughter has seen a few Jackie Chan movies under my tutelage and even she thought that Wilson couldn’t sell herself as being tough enough to take down Kano. Thankfully, that’s her only real fight. The lion’s share of the action goes to Robin Shou, who obviously knows what he’s doing. However, I do have to fault cinematographer John R. Leonetti for placing the camera too close to the combatants during some of the fights; that has always been a Hollywood limitation for filming martial arts and it detracts from the physicality of the performers.

By the time Mortal Kombat came out, there were already three MK games in existence (although MK3 had come out in 1995). Paul Anderson and his team wisely kept the story focused around the first game, with only the inclusion of Kitana (and a brief cameo by Shao Khan in the final shot) harking back to the Mortal Kombat 2. That also meant that the villains in general were able to have their own introductions before their fights with the main characters. Compare with Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, which was trying to throw in so many characters from games 2 and 3 that characters would randomly appear for a fight scene and then disappear from the narrative.

Another reason that Mortal Kombat was so successful was that it respected the source material. I mentioned the questionable changes that its predecessors made to the games’ lore. But let’s compare this to Street Fighter, which had come out about six months before. Street Fighter was treated like a send-up of the sort of action movie that Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Chuck Norris made the year before. It did get the characters’ costumes right, but the story had little to do with anything SF-related. And it was scared to do the powers thing: Byron Mann’s Ryu does a hadouken that is just a blink-and-you-miss-it flash of blue light. Damian Chapa’s Ken does a shoryuken against Vega that doesn’t leave the ground. Stupid.

Mortal Kombat more or less embraces the more fantastical aspects of its characters powers. Liu Kang does his fireball and his bicycle kick, which is a wire-assisted Wong Fei-Hung no-shadow kick—a lá Once Upon a Time in China 2—in all its glory. Shang Tsung steals souls and transforms into other people. Sub-Zero has his ice attacks. Although Sonya doesn’t have her sonic blasts, she at least does her leg throw. Goro is Goro: a four-armed giant who is almost impossible for human fighters to defeat. Scorpion reveals his face to be a fire-breathing skull. It’s all there. Viewers in 1995 wanted to see their favorite MK characters looking like their video game counterparts, doing good martial arts and their favorite moves. They got just that.

Heck, the film’s willingness to embrace the powers-approach to fighting was referenced a few years later when The Storm Riders came out. A lot of my Asian friends told me about the film, describing the film as a Chinese version of Mortal Kombat. I saw a number of internet reviews at thet time comparing The Storm Riders to Mortal Kombat because of the costumes, set design and use of martial arts “powers.” They never compared anything to Van Damme’s Street Fighter now, did they?

Red Skies (2002)

Red Skies (2002)
aka: Skies Red

 

Starring: Vivian Wu, Shawn Christian, Kadeem Hardison, Rachael Crawford, Sidney Liufau, Pauley Perette, Caroline Lagerfelt, Roger Yuan, Clancy Brown
Director: Larry Carroll, Robert Lieberman
Action Director: Philip Tan, Jeff Pruitt, Clay Fontanot

 

Red Skies is an interesting relic from the early 2000s, when the success of The Matrix; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; and Jackie Chan movies were still on producers’ minds. The film feels like an attempt to replicate the success of “Martial Law” starring Sammo Hung. However, now that CTHD had proved to mainstream American audiences that Asian women could kick major ass, too, this one does a sort of gender inversion of the premise of the “Asian cop comes to America, teams up with the local boys, and kung fu’s the living daylights out of everyone.” I’m guessing that this pilot wasn’t successful enough to warrant a first season, so all we got is this movie.

The movie opens up with a hostage situation foiled by a crack team of FBI agents known as “The Enforcers.” Basically, The Enforcers have leeway to play fast and loose with “the rules,” especially in situations where time is of the essence. At this moment, the Enforcers are made up of Agents Cross (Shawn Christian, of the “Birds of Prey” series) and Riley (Kadeem Hardison, of Drive and Instinct to Kill). Although they diffuse the hostage situation without any casualties, the Deputy Director of the FBI is pretty pissed that he’s been shown up, so their boss (Clancy Brown), has them do some grunt work for the time being.

Said job involves helping the Coast Guard rescue illegal Chinese immigrants from being smuggled into Hong Kong as slave labor. Cross and Riley get two more field agents—Kay (Sidney Liufau, who did stuntwork on Mortal Kombat and Blade) and Nicole (TV actress Rachael Crawford)—to assist them on the job. Now, this particular immigrant ship is special. For one, one member of the crew is a Chinese criminal named Zhao Lo (Shanghai Noon’s Roger Yuan), who’s fleeing China to set up legitimate businesses in the States—where corporation heads never get prosecuted. Following him are Chinese policemen Po and Wen Li (Vivian Wu, of TMNT 3 and The Pillow Book), determined to bring him in before he can “go straight.” There ends up being some fighting on the ship and Po is killed, while Wen Li is taken into FBI custody.

Once her identity is confirmed by the Chinese consulate, Wen Li is allowed to stick around in sunny Southern Cal while The Enforcers investigate Zhao Lo. Although he has his papers in order, an assassination attempt on Wen Li leads her and the Enforcers to investigate how he got his immigration papers in order. This will lead our team of good guys to the INS and later to the Pierson girls, who run one of Zhao Lo’s “legitimate” businesses, actually a front for child labor, drugs and prostitution.

The film ends with (SPOILER) Wen Li sticking around California to assist The Enforcers as a “Pan Pacific-Asian Consultant,” which means that the ensuing series would have been about our five heroes (SPOILER) working their way through Zhao Lo’s gang until he himself is finally apprehended or killed. That itself means that although one external conflict—the kidnapping of the immigrant children by the Piersons—is resolved, the overarching story of Wen Li trying to bring Zhao to justice is not.

The characterizations are pretty standard for this sort of film/show. Vivian Wu plays Wen Li as an impatient hothead who is willing to beat up anybody (and everybody) in her search for vengeance. I do think that that sort of role is a bit out of her league and she comes across as a bit wooden in this. She does get a pseudo-sexy moment where she dances seductively with co-star Shawn Christian at a nightclub. That’s enough to make me want to check out The Pillow Book. Shawn Christian is also depicted as being an expert martial artist—there’s a running bit about him being an FBI agent who doesn’t use a gun—and a former serial killer profiler. He has an easygoing charisma and his interactions with Kadeem Hardison are what really carry the film when the punches aren’t being thrown. The character of Kay barely reaches one dimension, while Nicole is the stereotypical “Rookie who has to prove herself.” I’m guessing that the former would have had some more moments to shine had the series gone foreward. Roger Yuan as the villain is playing basically the same role he did in Shanghai Noon, so if you liked him there, you’ll like him here.

The action is provided by some Hollywood veterans. Philip Tan has worked in Hollywood since the 1980s—he was a gymnastics and tae kwon do champion before that--and choreographed films like Martial Law and the Bloodsport sequels. Jeff Pruitt is also a long-time Hollywood stunt veteran whose credits include Jeff Wincott vehicles like Martial Law II; Mission of Justice; and Martial Outlaw. Clay Fontanot doesn’t have quite so much experience as the other two—he joined the game in the late 90s—but his résumé is no less impressive: the Blade films (including doubling for Wesley Snipes); Logan; the Equalizer films.

The fight sequences are more or less what you expect from an American production in the early 2000s. The specter of the Hong Kong/wire-fu influence is present, although thankfully the wire-fu moves are kept to a minimum—notably in the beginning when Vivian Wu (or her stunt double) perform a quadruple bicycle kick on a stuntman on the immigrant ship. The pacing of the fights is something out of a 1990s Hollywood martial arts film, but with a lot of quick cuts to hide the actors’ stunt doubles. The finale is a bit of a disappointment—it pits Vivian Wu against Pauley Perette atop a narrow rafter in a warehouse. There is some wire-assistance, but the fight feels slow and uncoordinated. Although Shawn Christian does some fighting early on (including a brief tussle with Wen Li), he doesn’t do as much at the end, which disappointed me. Meanwhile, Kadeem Hardison goes the two-fisted pistol route in his action sequences because…y’know…Hong Kong influence and all.

I’m not sure how many more of these martial arts-infused American TV movies from the turn of the Millenium there are, but this one is sort of in the middle. It’s better than The Lost Kingdom, but not as good as Invincible.

Safe (2012)

Safe (2012)

 

Starring: Jason Statham, Catherine Chan, Chris Sarandon, James Hong, Robert John Burke,  Anson Mount, Reggie Lee, Sándor Técsy, Joseph Sikora
Director: Boaz Yakin
Action Director: Chad Stahelski, J. J. Perry

There’s a part of me that considers Safe to be a better Transporter film than Transporter Refueled, even if to do so would require one to put themselves in a mindset that a too-cool-for-school character like Frank Martin could ever hit rock bottom and end up a broken man. I’ve complained about that trope on social media before, so it is sort of weird of me to project it onto a film like Safe. But whatever, we all have exceptions to our rules.

The first shot of the film is of a young Chinese girl (Catherine Chan) wandering about the streets of New York City, catching the eye (from a distance) of a seemingly homeless man (Jason Statham) who’s waiting for the subway. Flashback to a few years prior. The girl is Mei, a student prodigy living in China who has a perfect photographic memory, especially for numbers. Mei lives with her (unseen) mother—her father ran out on her—and once words of her talent reach the school principal, she is picked up by the Triads, led by Uncle Han Jiao (James Hong, of Big Trouble in Little China and Bloodsport 2). Uncle Han blackmails Mei into joining their cause—using her mother as bait—so that she can become a human ledger for their activities (no paper trail, less trouble from the authorities) in America. She is taken to NYC where the local head honcho, Quan Chang (Reggie Lee, of Frankenfish and Pirates of the Caribbean: At Land’s End), becomes her “legal” and de-facto dad.

Statham’s story is equally, if not more, tragic. He plays Luke Wright, a Special Forces-turned-cop-turned-MMA fighter who has just made the biggest mistake of his life. A lot of rich types have blackmailed him into becoming the “guy who loses” in order to cash in on the betting scene. That would include the Russian mafia. Unfortunately, Wright lets his anger slip and punches one of his opponents...so hard that the man goes into a coma. As his “backers” have now lost considerable sums of money, they get back at him by murdering his pregnant wife. They also tell him that anybody he associates with will also get killed, effectively reducing him to a sub-human homeless bum status.

One day changes everything.

Han Jiao flies out to NYC to meet with Quan Chang and Mei, mainly to give a special mission to the latter: she has to memorize two sets of very long numbers. After memorizing the first, she is transported by Quan Chang to an unknown location where she will be presented with the second number. Quan’s car is cut off by the Russian mob, who open fire on the occupants and make off with Mei. Mei is taken to the Russian Big Buy, Emile Dochesky (Sándor Técsy, who died before the movie came out in theaters), who demands to know what the code is and what it’s fore. Mei is able to escape and flees to the subway, where she captures Luke’s eye. Seeing that she’s not only in danger, but is being pursued by the same creeps who have made his life a living hell for the past few years, he finally finds purpose in his life. And soon Mei will not only have the Russians and Chinese on her tail, but a bunch of corrupt cops (led by Robocop 3’s Robert John Burke) whose colleagues Luke had tattled on years before.

Safe is a tough and gritty action film with a nice human touch, with Statham finding in Mei a purpose to keep on trucking after he’s gone a day too long without any. It never really gets maudlin, but Statham gets to show a vulnerable side that one never sees in films like The Expendables and The Transporter. He is street smart and can fight with the best of them, obviously, but here he willingly and instinctively takes on the protector role (unlike The Transporter films, where he’s usually coerced into it). I think it’s this sincere human element that raises this film above many other Statham tough guy flicks.

The big McGuffin is the pair of (long) numbers that Mei is forced to memorize, although it’s never specified how the second number was supposed to work. We do learn what the numbers refer to and the objects they represent do come into play with the story as Luke Wright forges alliances and other temporary alliances in order to keep Mei safe and the bargaining chips in his hands. I would say that the main shortcoming of the story is the revelation of a (new) final villain in the last act and the lack of an appropriate final throwdown with him at the end. I wonder if the filmmakers ran out of money and shooting time, or if it was scripted to end the way it did.

The fights were staged by Chad Stahelski of the 87eleven stunt team, which is best known for its work on the John Wick series and films like Atomic Blonde. Team member J.J. Perry of Mortal Kombat Annihilation and Undisputed II: Last Man Standing is credited as the stunt coordinator. The action is a healthy mix of fighting and gunplay, with one car chase worthy of the “Transporter” films (but less over the top). The first big fight occurs on the subway, where Luke has to dispatch a group of Russian mobsters who are pursuing Mei. There’s some nice choreography here. The showstopper is the assault on the Chinese casino, which is a great mixture of gunplay and fisticuffs as Luke and his former police “buddies” take on a small army of Chinese Triads. Fans of the John Wick franchise will definitely appreciate this particular sequence. As I said earlier, the film flounders on the lack of a defined climatic showdown, especially as it introduces a character who would be Luke’s equal, and then does nothing with him.

Nonetheless, the strong story, good acting and brutal action up to those last 10 minutes or so are more than enough to recommend the film.

The Transporter (2002)

The Transporter (2002)

 

Starring: Jason Statham, Shu Qi, Matt Schulze, François Berléand, Ric Young, Doug Rand, Didier Saint Melin
Director: Corey Yuen, Louis Leterrier
Action Director: Corey Yuen

 

The Transporter was definitely a product of its time. It came out within two years of both Gone in 60 Seconds and The Fast and the Furious (before that became a parody of Hollywood’s action excesses in general), cashing in on the whole “awesome car-centric action” sub-genre, complemented by Corey Yuen’s fight choreography at a time that Hong Kong-style fight direction was still big in Hollywood. It does right by both elements for the most part, buoyed by Jason Statham’s laconic charisma and physical skills.

The film revolves around Frank Martin (Statham), a former Special Ops type who now lives in Nice, France, making a living as a “transporter.” In other words, he’s a glorified getaway driver, smuggler, and errand runner for (generally, but not necessarily) shady types who need an especially talented man behind the wheel. The movie opens with him helping a team of bank robbers leave a bank with millions of Francs (this was before the Euro came into being) in bearer bonds. In darkly comic moment, we learn that his first rule is there can be no renegotiation on the initial agreement, from cost to cargo. In this case, the robbers show up with a extra man, which Martin’s car was not outfitted for. After insisting that he will not drive with the extra weight, the lead robber shoots the (heh) dead weight and kicks him out of the car, thus opening the film with its first crazy car chase.

The whole incident calls the attention of Inspector Tarconi (François Berléand), who suspects Frank is involved but can’t prove anything thanks to his car being registered under several different license plates. At this time, Frank is contacted by another group of shady types who want him to transport a package from Nice to another part of the country. What is supposed to be a routine and simple job is complicated when he gets a flat tire along the way. While retrieving the spare, he learns that the contents of the bag—Rule #3 is that he never asks about the contents of his cargo—are indeed a living person. Curiosity (or compassion) ultimately cloud his judgement and he opens the bag at one point, discovering that it contains an attractive Chinese girl, Lai (Shu Qi, of Gorgeous and Shanghai Fortress). She tries to escape at one point, but he recaptures her, although the local highway patrol (or whatever they’re called in France) has already started snooping around.

Upon deliving the cargo to a fellow whose nome de guerre is Wall Street (Matt Schulze, of Out of Reach and The Fast and the Furious), Martin is given another job to transport a briefcase to a third address. While at a refreshment stop, his souped-up BMW explodes, almost killing him in the process—the highway patrolmen in the trunk were not so lucky. So, Martin stomps back to Wall Street’s mansion and kicks the living snot out of all of the henchmen there…and steals a car for good measure. Unbeknownst to him, Lai was able to escape and hide herself in the same car he stole—a big coinicidence if you ask me—which ultimately convinces Frank to let her tag along. What we learn from her is that Wall Street is involved in human trafficking of Chinese slave labor—shades of Shaft in Africa (which was also set in France)—although the reason for her being treated like a package is never elaborated upon. And once Wall Street’s goons attack his posh manor with machines guns and RPGs, Martin is going to ultimately take a stand for The Right Thing, his rules be damned.

I had seen most of this movie on TV back in 2004 or so, and enjoyed both the fight scenes and the glimpse of Shu Qi’s panty-clad buttocks that we were treated to. I hadn’t watched it again since—I tried to check it out from my English school’s library back around 2008, but someone took it and never brought it back. So, watching it again was almost like watching it for the first time from start to finish. With that in mind, I have to say that this is a very silly movie. We never learn the reason for treating Shu Qi’s Lai as much as a traffick victim as the other Chinese people, or why her dad (Ric Young, Seven Years in Tibet and Kiss of the Dragon) needed her smuggled into France anyway. Nor do we ever learn how the bad guys found out that Frank had broken his own Rule #3.

The silliness extends beyond the plot holes and into the physics, which surprisingly has nothing to do with wire-fu (there are probably a couple of wire-assisted moves, but the action is mainly grounded). The biggest example is during the assault on Frank Martin’s house, when hundreds of rounds are being pumped into the structure, with little CGI sparks representing the bullets. How none of them hit neither Frank nor Lai cannot be explained by the laws of physics or probability. Nor can the movie defend itself for Frank being engulfed in flames following the explosion of a rocket-propelled grenade before jumping into the water, but emerging completely unscathed. There’s also a Bodyguard from Beijing moment with an RPG entering the kitchen where are heroes are, and how they have time to move across the room and dive for cover before the grenade, still in the same room, detonates! And what’s with a normal bazooka round generating a dadgum Praxus Wave[1] when it explodes?

The action was handled by Corey Yuen and I find it fascinating that despite a general dip in quality in the man’s work starting in 2001 (with the CGI-overkill Avenging Fist), the man’s work in France (of all places) ranks among his best from 2001 to the present[2]. It helps that Luc Besson—whatever you may think about his body of work on the whole—has a good eye for action and gave Corey free reign, with minimal producer interference from the Hollywood types. According to the DVD commentary, several of the fights were cut down for time and violence, notably a bit with knives in the bus station fight. But for the most part, everybody let Corey work his magic with the CGI being used in the more dangerous car stunts, and not the actual fighting.

Previous to this film, Statham had appeared in “hip” crime films like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. So being a tough guy was something he was good at. Even so, and despite appearing in the Corey Yuen-choreographed The One, nobody knew the man could fight. Well, that all changed with this film. The fights aren’t many, but they have that Hong Kong charm to them without getting bogged down in the wire-fu that so many Hollywood producers wanted to engage in following the success of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. During the first mansion fight, there’s a nifty big involving Frank fending off attacks from multiple men armed with fire axes, which is very Jackie Chan in its presentation.

Near the end, there’s a short fight between Frank and some anonymous henchmen at a port in Marseilles, with them fighting in between a bunch of containers. Corey Yuen had already done something similar in the 1989 Cynthia Rothrock films Blonde Fury, so I’m guessing he was recycling some old ideas for the benefit of Western audiences who largely hadn’t seen something like that before. The showstopper is the fight at the bus station, which has him finding in and around a bus against a dozen henchmen armed with metal poles…that were just lying around the bus for no good reason. And then he takes on a hulking thug, at which point the film takes a page from Heroes of the East and Frank coats his entire body in oil so that nobody can grab him. His bootwork in this sequence is quite good and the entire set piece can probably be placed in a list of the “Best Martial Arts Sequences in a Movie Made Outside of Asia.”

Only the finale really disappoints, partly because it’s vehicle related (I’m not as big as a car chase fan as others are) and partly because the best stunts (which Statham himself performed) were done against a green screen. I guess since there hadn’t been much vehicular mayhem since the opening sequence, there needed to be at least a final car chase of sorts for a film called The Transporter. I just wish the stuntwork had been a tad bit more authentic in the end.

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[1] - named for a scene in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country when an entire planet explodes and you see this ring-shaped wave of energy expanding from the explosion.

[2] - Corey hasn’t had a new credit in the Hong Kong Movie Database since 2017’s Soccer Killer, so I’m wondering if he has already retired.

Kingdom (2019)

Kingdom (2019)
Japanese title: キングダム(Kingudamu)
Translation: Kingdom

 

Starring: Kento Yamazaki, Ryô Yoshizawa, Masami Nagasawa, Kanna Hashimoto, Masahiro Takashima, Tak Sakaguchi, Kanata Hongô, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Shin'nosuke Abe, Motoki Fukami, Naomasa Musaka, Wataru Ichinose
Director: Shinsuke Sato
Action Directors: Yuji Shimomura, Koji Kawamoto

 

Kingdom is a particularly interesting film in that it’s a Japanese movie about Chinese history. Although it’s not unheard of for one country to make movie about the history of another, in a closed-culture nation like Japan—where Japanese citizens born of foreigners like Koreans and Chinese aren’t considered real Japanese by many--it feels a little odd. Japan did celebrate and absorb much Chinese culture back in the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618 – 906) and I wonder if there has always been a place in Japanese imagination for Chinese culture and history.

There have been a handful of Japanese movies about Chinese history and folklore over the decades. The 1950s saw Japanese adaptations of Chinese legends and literature like Madame White Snake (1956) and Son Goku (1959), in addition the Shaw Brothers co-production Princess Yang Kwei-Fei (1955), about one of the “Four Beauties” of Chinese history. The 1980s saw the epic production of The Silk Road (1988), which is set in Western China during the Han Dynasty. The Warring States Era/Qin Dynasty (475-207 B.C.) had already been depicted in the 1962 film Shin no Shikoutei. In 2019, the live-action adaptation of the manga Kingdom represented another attempt for Japan to tell Chinese history.

The film can best be summed up as Shi Huangdi: Year One. It tells the story of the young King of Qin, Ying Zheng (Kamen Rider veteran Ryô Yoshizawa), who was the previous king's elder son, albeit with a concubine (in his case, a dancer). This doesn't sit well with his younger half-brother, Cheng Jiao (Kanata Hongô, of the live-action Full Metal Alchemist films), who's the son of royalty. Yeah, Cheng Jiao is very much the arrogant “peasants don’t have the right to breathe the same air as me” type, and he’ll be damned if he lets a half-caste son of a vulgar dancer rule the Kingdom of Qin.

The film is told from the POV of Li Xin (Kento Yamazaki, of Crazy Samurai Musashi and “Alice in Borderland”), an actual historical figure. Li Xin was one of Ying Zheng’s generals who fought by his side during the Warring States Era up until Ying Zheng unified China under the Qin Dynasty, becoming China’s first Emperor (Shi Huangdi, or Qin Shi Huang). According to the manga, Xin was a slave boy who taught himself swordplay, dreaming of one day becoming a great general. His fellow slave and blood brother, Piao (also played by Ryô Yoshizawa), is taken to the palace to be Ying Zheng's shadow. When Piao is killed during the coup d’état, Xin joins Ying Zheng on a quest to not only avenge his best friend, but to take his place among the great military men of China.

Despite the support that Ying Zheng has from his chancellor Chang Wen Jun (Masahiro Takashima, of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II) and a handful of retainers (not to mention a young lady in an owl costume named He Liao Diao), that isn’t nearly enough to get into the heavily-fortified palace and depose Cheng Jiao. We’re talking a ginormous building with multiple walled-off patios, each of which is filled to the brim with soldiers. Ying Zheng has a second chancellor who’s stationed in a neighboring kingdom with an even bigger army than that of his half-brother, but he’s not sure whose side the man is on at that moment. So, instead of risking it, he does something even more daring: he goes into the mountains and asks the Mountain People for their assistance. The mountain people were former allies of the Qin Kingdom, although at some point in the past two centuries, one of the Qin kings decided that their services were no longer necessary and turned on them. Can Ying Zheng convince the Mountain Queen to join forces with him? Will that be enough to make a stand against the superior forces of Cheng Jiao?

It is interesting to see a Japanese take on Chinese history. Knowing that this was based on a manga and some of the excesses in both that and anime, I was worried that Kingdom would come off looking a lot like Dynasty Warriors, rather than, say, Red Cliff. Thankfully, that doesn’t really come to pass in this movie, at least not to the point of distraction. There is the girl dressed up as an owl and some of the costumes, notably the one worn by General Wang Qi, have that anime feel to it. For example, the Mountain Tribe chieftain wears a suit of armor that looks more at home in a Greek mythology film. And the super-exaggerated action beats only really show up briefly at the very end—you know, the type where one guy will twirl his guan dao (which technically hadn’t even been invented yet) and a dozen guys will fly up into the air.

Speaking of which, much of the swordplay looks more like kenjutsu than wushu, the trade-off for having Japanese people make the film. The action was staged by Yuji Shimomura (Versus) and Koji Kawamoto (John Wick 4). Much of the action involves sword fighting, complemented by wire-assisted jumps (especially from the awesomely-crazy Mountain warriors) and lots of people getting knocked back dozens of feet. I’m disappointed that more wasn’t made of the dagger-axes, a common cavalry weapon during that period of Chinese history. Red Cliff made good use of those weapons in some of its battle sequences, but here they act mainly as set dressing. There is a neat, exaggerated fight between Li Xin and an assassin who fights with axes, a blowgun, and a bunch of leather straps covered with sharp metal coins, set in a bamboo forest.

Japanese martial arts legend Tak Sakaguchi shows up as the general-turned-bodyguard Zuo Ci, who fights with a nigh-invincible "drunken samurai" style (at least that's how it looked). His one-on-one against Li Xin makes up what is essentially the more “personal” fight amidst the climatic siege of the Qin palace. Masami Nagasawa (Shin Ultraman; Shin Kamen Rider) kicks butt as the Mountain Queen Yang Duanhe, wielding two-fisted scimitars with great aplomb. There is one bizarre moment in the action, in the form of the Court Executioner, a gigantic fellow who is built like the Hulk, but those facial scars makes one think of The Thing (of the Fantastic Four). I’m guessing his inclusion was either related to the success of the MCU or the popularity of 300 and some of the quirky characters in that film. But it was an unnecessary inclusion.

My main problem is lead actor Kento Yamazaki, who subscribes too much to the Yelling!!! school of acting. His overacting is a bit too much, especially in the first third. The rest of the actors aquit themselves well to this sort of movie, but Yamazaki just irritated me to no end. A couple of anime screams is fine, but too many and I wish that he’d just get his neck slit early on. In the end, it would be sort of amusing to watch this as part of a trilogy alongside Zhang Yimou’s Hero and Chen Kaige’s The Emperor and the Assassin, to see the evolution of the Shi Huangdi personage from idealistic king to necessary butcher to paranoid mass murderer.