Beyond Redemption (2015)

Beyond Redemption (2015)

Starring: Brian Ho, Don Lew, Paul Wu, Johnson Phan, Anthony Towe, Linna Huynh, Vicky Huang, Osric Chau, Paul Lazenby, Eddie Ko Hung
Director: Bruce Fontaine
Action Director: Andrew Chin, Darryl Quon

Beyond Redemption is a Canadian martial arts film that comes very close to being a surrogate Hong Kong movie. The vast majority of the cast is Asian, mainly Chinese players with a few Vietnamese ones (judging from the surnames). The characters often start speaking Cantonese for now reason, especially the Triad leader Yuan (Don Lew). The director, Bruce Fontaine, is a veteran of a lot of Golden Age Hong Kong action films, like The Outlaw Brothers; Armour of God 2: Operation Condor; and the Angel Terminators films. And the action directors, while veterans of Hollywood (and Canada, I presume), are also of Chinese descent.

The film is set on the mean streets of Vancouver, British Columbia. Our protagonist is Billy Tong (Veteran stuntman Brian Ho, whose credits include Skyscraper; Power Rangers; and Wu Jing's stunt double in Wolf Warrior 2), an undercover cop who has just gotten his chance to enter the big leagues. He's chilling in his apartment when his Triad contact, Jimmy (Johnson Phan, whose stuntman credits include Godzilla and Birth of the Dragon), calls him with some work. Work in the illegal fighter circuit, that is. Billy faces off with a hulking gwailo (Paul Lazenby) and bests him, which catches the attention of Jimmy's boss, Yuan (Don Lew, whose stuntman credits include the "Kung Fu" reboot series and Snake Eyes).

Billy joins Yuan's gang as an enforcer, which work includes going to the warehouse of associate Wen Lo (Davin Tong, of iZombie and "Wu Assassins") in order to execute him and his men for diluting drugs...y'know, skimming a little off the top. Billy does well enough during that job--which ends in a gun n' fu melee--to win Yuan's trust. Who doesn't trust Billy, however, is second-in-command Bosco Yang (Paul Wu, whose stunt credits include X2: X-Men United and The Bulletproof Monk). But that will have to wait a little.

The second act is a little slow, as we start getting into the thick of the real plot. We learn a little about Billy, including how he got into the undercover business: he almost beat suspect to death and was given the choice: undercover or the streets. We also learn that he has an ex-wife, Melinda (Filipino actress Josette Jorge, whose credits include extensive voice work on the "Bakugan" anime), who is now pregnant after a post-marital fling. Billy would like to get out of this gig, but his boss on the force (Darren E. Scott), won't let him.

The main story involves a businessman named Xi Long (Anthony Towe, of The Hunted and Live Feed). His computer company is a front for his Triad activities, which he runs alongside Uncle Bao (Eddie Ko Hung, of Lethal Weapon 4 and Hitman in the Hand of Buddha). Xi Long has actually found a way to mix the two businesses, with some sort of software McGuffin that does...something. I don't think the film ever explains what. We just know that he is about to sell it to a Persian arms dealer, Amir (Patrick Sabongui, of Godzilla and 300). But Yuan wants the software, and has decided to kidnap Xi Long's daughter, Tiffany (Linna Huynh), to that end. Unbeknownst to Xi Long, his young trophy wife, Lucinda (Vicky Huang, of Shadow of the Lotus and 88 Minutes), is mole placed in his household by Yuan himself. The kidnapping goes as planned and Billy is left in charge of supervising Tiffany while Yuan negotiates with Xi Long. But his reluctance to do things like manhandle the hostage will cause his cohorts to doubt his identity...

Beyond Redemption feels like a pastiche of things we've seen before. Undercover cops who are in danger of getting their cover blown are a dime a dozen. Undercover Chinese cops are just as much so, whether it be well beloved films like Hard Boiled and Infernal Affairs, or cheaper fare like a lot of Yukari Oshima's 90s films. The detail of the pregnant wife feels cribbed from The Raid 2, which came out the year before. Kidnapping a businessman's daughter, only to find out that the businessman has ties to organized crime made me think of Kirk Wong's The Big Hit. The second-in-command who is a better judge of character than the boss is like Mark Cheng and John Lone in War. Even the undercover cop's gang contact being the goofier (or more cowardly) member of the bad guys is pretty common, reminding me to some extent of Blackie Ko in My Father is a Hero. Most viewers watching this will have an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu  while watching this.

Action fans should find something to enjoy here, even though they will take umbrage at the film slowing down to a crawl during the second act. The first fight with veteran stuntman (aren't they all?) Paul Lazenby was a little misleading: the choreography felt like something you'd see in a 1990s DTV martial arts film, with a little extra ground fighting thrown in. In that regard, it reminded me of Gary Daniels's Rumble, which had a similar approach. Things pick up in the last 20 minutes, both in the film's pacing and the fight pacing. The fight choreographer was (you guessed it...) veteran stuntman Andrew Chin, whose credits as a stunt coordinator include the "Kung Fu" reboot series and the "Van Helsing" series.

The fights at the end have a definite Hong Kong feel to them, as we see all the main characters participate in a series of one-on-one and one-on-many encounters with complex choreography and some nice kicks and falls. For example, Don Lew (as Yuan) faces off with Xi Long's and Persian Guy's henchmen. Brian Ho impresses the most, as he gets to fight all of his colleagues, plus a number of henchman. The fighting is good enough that I'm surprised that nobody involved has become more prominent in the Hollywood fight direction arena, even though they all seem to keep themselves pretty busy as it is.

The film's DVD cover--in both English and Portuguese--touts the addition of Osric Chau in the cast. I wonder just how big Chau is: I know him from the late David Carradine's Kung Fu Killer, but that's all. Is that enough to win marquee preference above the other characters who have actual roles in the film? Anyway, Chau plays one of Xi Long's main enforcers. He gets to beat up some gangsters in a bar, but is disappointingly absent from the climax, as he's hanging around offscreen with the Lucinda character...who never actually gets her comeuppance for being a plant from a rival gang. Uh...okay.

The entire film is standard, unoriginal fare until those last 20 minutes, when it manages to remind us (in a good way) of the Golden Age of Hong Kong martial arts action. It's just too bad there wasn't more if it.

Empire of Lust (2015)

Empire of Lust (2015) Korean Title: 순수의 시대 Translation: Age of Innocence

Starring: Shin Ha-kyun, Jang Hyuk, Kang Han-na, Kang Ha-neul, Son Byong-ho, Lee Jae-yong, Choi Moo-sung, Kyung Heon Kang, Kim Da-ye

Director: Ahn Sang-hoon

Action Director: n/a

Despite my being into Asian movies since I watched my first Godzilla movie in 1989 and Asian history since I started getting into kung fu movies in the second half of the 90s, I know relatively little about Korean history. The peninsula borders on the land known as Manchuria, which currently belongs to the People’s Republic of China. For centuries, if not millenia, Manchuria was a separate entity from China; the tribes that hailed from there invaded both China and Korea on certain occasions. Most notably, the Manchus, a unification of all the tribes in the region, successfully conquered China and set up the Qing Dynasty. Back to Korea, the peninsula enjoyed a (relatively) stable history, unlike China, which saw a frequent cycle of dynastic ascensions, periods of peace, descent into decadence, followed by a fracturing of the empire, and subsequent reunification by the next dynasty. 

At about the time China was in its Han Dynasty, having reached empire status about 150 years earlier, the Korean peninsula had divided itself into three kingdoms: the Silla, the Goguryeo, and the Baekje. Although they were always trying to conquer each other—and sometimes did, temporarily—they managed a (sorta) stalemate for about 700 years until the Silla ultimately unified the peninsula. It did not last forever, however, and eventually fell and was divided into three kingdoms (again). The peninsula was eventually reunified under the Goryeo Dynasty in A.D. 918, which lasted almost 500 years. It was ultimately overthrown by the Joseon dynasty in A.D. 1392, which ruled until the end of the 19th century. At that point, Korea ultimately became a Japanese colony until the end of World War 2.

Empire of Lust is set in A.D. 1398 during the early years of the Joseon Dynasty. The reigning monarch is King Daejo (Son Byung-ho, of R-Point and Spider Forest), who has his hands full at the moment. For one, the Jurchen tribes from neighboring Manchuria have been trying to take advantage of the transition of power to invade. Second, Daejo wants to make certain reforms to the Court, of which many of his ministers are not fans. More specifically, Daejo wants to do away with the practice of high officials having their own private armies—a practice that was common during the previous dynasty—and consolidate them into a single army. On a more personal front, Daejo has two sons: Prince Jeong Ahn (Jang Hyuk, of The Swordsman and Volcano High) and a younger son from a recent marriage (or new concubine). The latter is in his early teens, but Daejo has named him the crown-prince. Jeong Ahn is not particularly happy with the arrangement, considering his status as a war hero in the overthrow of Goryeo, but he hides it well.

The Jurchen invasions are deterred in the very first scene, thanks to the valor of Generals Kim Min-jae (Shin Ha-kyun, of The Villainess and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance) and Jo Yeong-gyoo (Choi Mu-seong, I Saw the Devil and The Berlin File). Kim Min-jae is married Lady Jeong (Kang Kyung-hun, of Spider Forest), who is the daughter of Lord Jeong (Lee Jae-yong, Steel Rain 2 and Save the Green Planet). Lord Jeong is not only one of the king’s most trusted ministers, but he is also something of an adopted father to Kim Min-jae. Kim was the orphaned son of a barbarian woman who was raped and slain—well, she committed suicide in shame—by the Jurchens and was brought up and given opportunities by Lord Jeong. That also means that for all of his military valor, General Kim is seen as little more than a lapdog to both his father-in-law and the king. But being a lapdog has its benefits, and when King Daejo decides to integrate the ministers’ private armies into the main military, Kim is chosen to be the Supreme Commander. This pisses off General Jo, who sees the gesture as little more than nepotism.

Nepotism, you say? Why yes. General Kim has an adult son, Jin (Kim Ha-neul, The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure), who is married to Princess Gyeongsun (Kim Da-ye, of Warriors of the Dawn). That would be Prince Jeong Ahn’s sister (unless she was born of another concubine) and thus Jin is the son-in-law to the king. But this is where things really start to look like one big soap opera. Jin has always been a little momma’s boy. Much of that has to do with the fact that Jin is not even Kim’s son: he’s an affair child. Only Kim, Lady Jeong and her father, know that, though. Because of mom’s constant overbearing on him (this is implied, not shown), the little bastard has grown up to be a complete wastrel. He is less interested in giving the king a grandson and more interested in seeing how many peasant women he can rape without getting caught.

So yes, there is a whole lot of dysfunction going on beneath the surface between the combined families of the King, the Jeongs and the Kims. But what will bring it to the surface? If you guessed “a beautiful woman,” you’d be correct. While Generals Kim and Jo are partying with Prince Jeong following their latest military victory against the Jurchens, a courtesan named Ka-hee (Kang Ha-na, of “Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo”) comes onstage to perform a dance. A drunk General Jo tries to sexually assault her on the spot, but she is saved by General Kim. Her dance reminds him of his late mother and he is attracted to her apparent morality as well. After a stare-down between the two Generals, Prince Ahn lets the girl choose which man she will be with. Score one for General Kim. Initially, he has no intention of deflowering her. But as time passes, he feels himself being more and more drawn to the mysterious beauty…

To talk anymore about the plot would be to give away the juicy developments and twists that occur as everything starts to unravel. Needless to say, things get very steamy…and then very bloody. There is some action in the film, but it is far from the focus. The sword fights and battle sequences look more like what you would see in a film like Gladiator than in a Chinese period piece. The film ends with a one-on-one sword fight against a fellow armed with a spiked club, followed by a one-on-many skirmish with a platoon of soldiers. But the treat is the interplay between the characters, especially the unspoken chess game between Kim and Prince Jeong. This reaches a memorable, if extremely disturbing, apex when General Kim arrives at the Prince’s quarters to collect his horses for the army.

The “lust” in the world-wide English title is not an exaggeration. There is some very explicit sex going on in the movie—I wonder if it would garner an NC-17 rating in the States (it got a 16 Anos rating here in Brazil). That said, it is filmed in a way that is erotic and sensuous, but not too raunchy. There is always a fine line between the two approaches to cinematic intimacy, but you see the camera lingering on the actresses’ breasts and lady-parts the way it would in a 90s-era film starring the likes of the two Shannons. There are lots of sexual positions on display (a lá Lust, Caution), but director Ahn Sang-hoon is not trying to beat us over the head with “Hey! Look! Tits!” And Ahn shows the dark side of sex, both in the form of rape and its use as a display of power and manipulation. It’s not all boner material.

The film can be a little slow at times and at almost two hours, the project on the whole feels a little overlong—although thankfully shorter than most other Korean movies on Netflix. But the story is interesting, mixing soap opera, court intrigue, history and spicy sex. I wonder if it is enough to call this the Korean movie equivalent to The Tudors or something like that.

The Transporter Refueled (2015)

The Transporter Refueled (2015)

Starring: Ed Skrein, Ray Stevenson, Loan Chabanol, Gabriella Wright, Tatiana Pajkovic, Yu Wenxia, Radivoje Bukvic, Noémie Lenoir, Lenn Kudrjawizki

Director: Camille Dellamarre

Action Director: Alain Figlarz, Laurent Demianoff

I’m pretty sure everybody was let down when it was announced that this film was no longer going to star Jason Statham. After all, like Sylvester Stallone as Rocky and Rambo, or Arnold Schwarzeneggar as Conan and the Terminator, Jason Statham is The Transporter. Thanks to his natural low-key charisma and action chops (backed up by Corey Yuen’s expert choreography), he made the role his own. Statham kept these movies afloat amidst their questionable (even by Hollywood standards) physics and ludicrous premises. Sadly, producers wanted to milk the franchise for even more money (even after the disappointing third film), making Statham an offer for apparently less money (to do an entire trilogy) than he was making per individual film. So he was out and the role went to British actor/rapper Ed Skrein.

The film is sort of like Casino Royale, in which it reboots the series, acts as a prequel, but moves the action to contemporary times. The movie opens with a scene ripping off the second Transporter film, with Frank Martin (Skrein) beating up some would-be carjackers (sans the cutie in the schoolgirl outfit) before picking up his dad from the British Embassy. Daddy (the late Ray Stevenson, of Punisher: War Zone) is a former spy who has now retired from the game (with a miserable pension, too). 

Meanwhile, some prostitutes in the employ of a Russian mobster named Karasov (Radivoje Bukvic, Taken and A Good Day to Die Hard) are getting back at their boss. First, they murder his accountant in a hotel room, leaving his corpse to burn along with the body of an unknown woman. One of them, Anna  (Loan Chabanol, of “Tales of the Walking Dead), hires Martin for a job. When arriving at the pick-up point—a bank where the dead accountant kept his safe deposit box--Frank learns that the two “packages” he was supposed to carry in addition to Anna are actually two of her fellow prostitutes: Gina (Gabriella Wright, of Everly and The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard) and Qiao (Yu Wenxia). Martin considers this a breach of his original agreement—apparently people do not count as packages (and I assume he charges for each person)—and initially refuses to do anything. But then Anna reveals that they have kidnapped Frank Sr., and Martin begrudgingly takes them across the city.

But they’re not done with them yet. Anna tells Frank that they’ve poisoned his father. Unless Martin sticks with him for the rest of their “mission,” they’ll withold the antidote from him. Next stop is a hospital, where Frank and Anna steal a cannister of knockout gas. They then go to a nightclub ran by one of Karasov’s associates, Imasova (Lenn Kudrjawizki, of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit). Frank switches one of the cannisters used in the fog machine for the knockout gas, rendering everybody on the dance floor (and in Imasova’s office) unconscious. There, Anna and her friends hack into his computer and transfer all of his money into a private account.

Next on the list is Yuri, another of Karasov’s colleagues, who spends most of his time on his own private jet—the movie never clarifies what his racket is. In this case, it’s Frank Sr. and Maria (Tatiana Pajkovic), another prostitute, who sneak aboard dressed as pilot and flight attendant, respectively. Maria slips Yuri a mickey and does the same thing the other girls did: hack into his computer and transfer all of the money out of his account. Those two barely escape with their lives. Now that two of Karasov’s buddies have been ripped off by his prostitutes, they begin to suspect him of betraying them. Karasov won’t have a lot of time to find Frank and the girls before his colleagues finally deal with him the way any self-respecting Russian mobster deals with traitors.

The Transporter series (is four films and TV series enough for a franchise?) is an interesting exercise in allowing French directors to work their action muscles. The first film was directed primarily by Corey Yuen, but Louis Leterrier assisted him with the more dialog-heavy segments. Leterrier assumed the director’s chair for the second film, just a year after he’d directed Jet Li in the superior Unleashed (or Danny the Dog). The third film went to Olivier Megaton, who later went on to direct Colombiana. This time, the reins went to Camille Dellamarre, who had directed the Hollywood remake of Banlieue 13: Brick Mansions, the year before. The Transporter films are naturally ridiculous, from the initial premise to the over-the-top action (both car and hand-to-hand), and this one is no more or less than the other films.

The action itself is less OTT than the other films, but the story is pretty silly. It’s a Rube Goldbergian plot to stick it to the Russian mob that is planned out to the last detail. It assumes that the four prostitutes have an innate knowledge of human psychology in order to make so many assumptions about how Karasov will act. It also places a lot of trust in Frank Martin’s abilities and his general ability to be on time at any given moment. I’m assuming that in the time they hatched the plan, they would have had to spend an absurd amount of time around Karasov and his associates in order to overhear enough to plan the details. And then there those lapses in logic, like Frank Sr. having a threesome with a pair of prostitutes, one of whom who has just (and I mean just) survived an emergency, non-professional surgery for bullet extraction(!).

Much like so many franchises today, the film veers wildly close into what internet reviewer The Critical Drinker defines as The Strong Female Character. This is a recent invention and is common in rebooted Intellectual Properties where the film is said to revolve around the male, but it’s the female who does most of the heavy lifting and occupies the higher moral ground. See Mad Max: Fury Road; the Star Wars prequel trilogy; and (according to some) the “Picard” series. In this case, it’s Anna—the other girls barely have any personality traits—who has done all the planning, while Frank Martin is around to simply drive and beat people up. Although you can argue that’s what he does in all the movies, there is a sense that he exercises his agency in how he deals with the bad guys. In this film, he feels like the hired muscle, allowing everybody else to think for him.

The action itself was taken out of Corey Yuen’s capable hands—he did better work in the Transporter movies than he was doing in Hong Kong at the time—and given to European stunt veterans Alain Figlarz and Laurent Demianoff. Both men have extensive experience in stuntwork and fight choreography. Figlarz’s credits as a fight choreographer include Taken 3 and Anna, while Demianoff worked on John Wick 4 and Gunpowder Milkshake. The action isn’t bad, although it suffers from too many quick cuts. Ed Skrein clearly isn’t in the same physical league as Jason Statham, although he tries his hardest. According to the IMDB, Skrein trained in krav maga for this film and he looks okay. The biggest fight happens close to halfway through when Skrein faces off with some burly gangsters at the nightclub. That fight features some Filipino escrima, too. The final showdown with main villain Bukvic is over a bit too quickly. But then again, that’s almost par for the course for the Transporter films: great fights, underwhelming climaxes.

The Transporter Refueled is an unnecessary and forgettable entry in a franchise nobody ever believed would become one. It came about too soon for a reboot, commits many of the same mistakes as its predecessors, and fails to add anything new or interesting to the mix, action or otherwise. I didn’t hate it like many of my colleagues did, but it really highlights the creative bankruptcy that has existed in Hollywood for the past two decades, but has gotten ever so worst in the last several years.

Wolf Warrior (2015)

Wolf Warrior (2015) Chinese Title: 戰狼
Translation: Wolf Warrior

Starring: Jacky Wu Jing, Shi Zhaoqi, Yu Nan, Zhou Xiaoou, Scott Adkins, Deng Ziyi, Kyle Shapiro, Samuel Thivierge, Sona Eyambe, Ni Dahong

Director: Jacky Wu Jing

Action Director: Nicky Li Chung-Chi

Wolf Warrior is the probably the film, even more than Sha Po Lang, where almost twenty years of hard work finally paid off for Wu Jing. He had gotten his start in film in 1996 in Yuen Woo-Ping’s Tai Chi II. While Wu had an excellent showcase for his wushu talents, the film was made a couple of years after period wire-fu films had stopped being popular. He made the transition to TV, like his fellow Beijing Wushu Academy alumni Vincent Zhao Wen-Zhuo, but the movie gods were not done with him yet. He had a couple of false starts, like The Legend of Zu and Drunken Monkey. The former represented the first fruits of the popularity of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, while the latter was the last (failed) attempt to rejuvenate the once-great Shaw Brothers studio.

His big break came with Sha Po Lang (2005), which but Donnie Yen back in the limelight, jump-started the Hong Kong action film, and was Wu Jing’s first real success. Donnie Yen became the Great White Hope of martial arts cinema on the Jade Screen, while Wu Jing found himself getting more film work, although usually in supporting roles. In 2008, Wu Jing got his first taste of directing with The Legendary Assassin, which is fun, if a bit generic in terms of storyline. Wolf Warrior took Wu Jing out of Hong Kong and back to his native People’s Republic of China, where he returned to the director’s chair. The film made about 89 million dollars, or about 543 million Yuan, at the local box office. That would have placed it at about #13 among domestic releases. It was successful enough to justify a sequel, which ended up becoming the most successful non-Hollywood film ever at the time.

The film revolves a military sniper named Leng Feng (Wu Jing), who has been disciplined for disobeying orders during a military action. Said action was a raid of a drug lab run by Wu Ji (Zhou Xiao’ou, of Police Story 2013), the kid brother of one of the biggest crime lords in the Golden Triangle. After a lot of shooting and explosions, the soldiers have cornered Wu Ji, who has taken a hostage. The soldiers are given the order to stand down, but Leng Feng goes rogue and takes Wu Ji out by a daring stunt in which he puts three bullets through a concrete wall where he approximates the guy’s head to be. For his disobedience, he is placed in confinement.

Some time later, Leng Feng is approached by Commander Long Xiaoyan (Angel Warriors’s Yu Nan). Despite his mistakes, Long has chosen him to join the Wolf Warrior squad, the Chinese equivalent to the Army Rangers. Almost as soon as he joins the outfit, the Wolf Warriors are called into participate in war games with the regular army. Although Leng Feng is a bit more opinionated than his commanding officer Li Zhijun (Confucius’s Ma Qiang) would like, Leng’s hunches end up being right. Due to a series of circumstances that I don’t quite understand, Leng and some four of his comrades end up alone in the forest trying to find their way to the extraction point. 

This is where things get hairy. In the second scene, we saw the Chinese police arresting Min Deng (Ni Dahong, of both The Assassin ’93 and The Assassins), the brother of the deceased Wu Ji. But before they can even get him inside the police car, a small gang of mercenaries led by Tom Cat (Scott Adkins, of Boyka: Undisputed and The Debt Collector) show up and kill all the police with enough firepower that Dutch’s team would be impressed. Min Deng and his mercenary team have snuck into China on official business, but the mercenaries have a side mission: kill Leng Feng.

An initial attack on the Wolf Warriors hanging out in the forest results in the one of their deaths. Let’s see: there is random guy #1, random guy #2, random guy #3, and random #4, who is always talking about his baby daughter back home. No points for guessing who gets it. Anyway, they meet up with a group of army soldiers who had been sent after them as part of the war games. But there’s not much they can do with guns loaded with blanks. But when a helicopter shows up and drops off supplies in the form of actual weapons, it’s time for the Chinese to show those evil FOREIGN mercenaries just how good China really is!

The three-act structure of this film is a bit odd. The first act sets up Wu Jing’s entry into the Wolf Warriors squad and who the main villain is and what his motivations are. The second act mainly consists of the war games, ending with a mini-climax of sorts with the first attack by the mercenaries. The third act is the running battle between good guys and bad guys. The problem is that there is no elapsed time from the scene of Wu Jing meeting his superior and the start of the war games. So, we really don’t get to know anybody in the film other than Wu Jing’s Leng Feng. It makes the film extremely one-dimensional in its characterizations. And the evil plot of the drug traffickers, beyond revenge, feels like it was tacked on, with no perceived stakes.

Like its sequel, this is a pro-China saber rattler of the likes of an old 40s war film or an 80s “Let’s win Vietnam this time” film. There is lots of talk by the superior officers—who spend most of the film staring into the camera or down at a map with concerned looks on their faces—about the greatness of the Chinese military. There is lots of Michael Bay-esque movie music meant to get the adrenaline pumping and manipulate the emotions. But the scope of the film is surprisingly small for a film meant to be propaganda, since it’s reduced to “a handful of Chinese soldiers, a couple of them being Special Forces” against a handful of dirty, capitalistic foreign mercenaries.

The action was staged by Nicky Li Chung-Chi, whom had worked with Wu Jing on a number of earlier projects—Fatal Move; Invisible Target; The Legendary Assassin, and City Under Siege. There is not a lot of martial arts in this. Actually, there is really only the final fight between Wu Jing and Scott Adkins, which is mainly knife fighting with a few stylish kicks thrown in. What the fight is not, however, is a good showcase for either men, or a suitable follow-up to the knife-fight goodness that was Donnie Yen vs. Wu Jing in Sha Po Lang. It's adequate, but I expected more from two giants in the industry.

The rest of the action is made up of gunplay and explosions (grenades, claymores, and landmines), although once the third act begins, the mercenaries fall a lot easier than I was expected. There is a very tense sequence where the men are kept at bay by a sniper (Kyle Shapiro), which is followed by an almost-equally tense scene where Wu Jing tries to chase him down. But once the stand-off between the parties devolves into men running through the woods firing at each other, the action becomes less interesting. Even my father-in-law, who was watching this with me, was surprised that the mercenaries did not pose that much of a threat to the soldiers, especially given the lethal efficiency of their introduction. Sometimes, filmmakers, pro-nationalist propaganda needs to take a backseat to good storytelling: don’t establish the villains as intimidating and then have your heroes take them out without breaking a sweat.

The movie feels like the climax of First Option (1996) with Michael Wong dragged out to 90 minutes. But that film actually took time to breathe from time to time. This one never stops to develop any of its characters or external conflicts, and still manages to be just average in its action scenes.

Rattlesnake Kung Fu (2015)

Rattlesnake Kung Fu (2015)
Aka: The Apprentice and the Master; Rattling Demon Staff
Chinese Title: 響尾伏魔棒
Translation: Rattle Tail Magic Wand

Starring: Cao Shuai, Xu Xiangdong, Tong Yang, Wang Xin-Hai, Luan Tianyou, Ocean Hou You-Sheng, Guo Chen, Xu Shi-Jing, Wei Jin-Tao, Zhang Yixin, Li Yu
Director: Liu Xinyi
Action Director(s): Zhang Jintao, Zhou Shao-Yan

Song Dynasty. Circa A.D. 1086. Luan Tianyou (Wang Xin-Hai, of The Lethal Weapon and The Raging Angels) is a government official working in Kaifeng, the capital of the empire. Tianyou is a righteous man and has a beef with another official Cai Jing, who is a bully and a tyrant in the making. Tianyou has made a list of all of Cai Jing’s crimes and has prepared an affidavit to deliver up to the Emperor in order to get Cai Jing kicked out of court. He even gets a number of his fellow officials to sign the affidavit. Righteousness prevails, right?

Well, no. Cai Jing (Golden Dart Hero’s Wang Jie) is a crafty little bastard. He quickly makes his way to the Emperor and accuses Luan Tianyou of all sorts of mischief. Although the Emperor knows Cai Jing is lying, he cedes to some extent and has Tianyou demoted and exiled to Nanjing, along with his family. Meanwhile, Cai Jing rises to the post of head minister, while all those officials who signed the affidavit remain silent. One of them, Liu Jin (Xu Shi-Jing) is even promoted. Someone must have informed Cai Jing of the affidavit, but who?

Such is the backstory of Rattlesnake Kung Fu, an adaptation of one of the chapters of The Water Margin novel, which revolves around one of the lesser-known characters. That character is Luan Tingyu (Cao Shuai, of Kung Fu Hip-Hop and Hero of the River), the son of Luan Tianyou. When we meet Tingyu, he is a child who is both a good scholar and the mischievous type who spies on martial arts schools in order to teach himself. By the time he has reached adulthood, he has passed the public exam and is a pretty good fighter, too. As per an agreement with daddy, Tingyu will be allowed to formally study martial arts—and not just skulk around stealing manuals—as a reward for his scholarly successes.

The teacher his father has hired is “Iron Arm” Zhou Tong (Xu Xiangdong, of A Battle of Wits and Holy Robe of Shaolin Temple). Zhou Tong gets that nickname from his mastery of the “Rattling Demon Staff” (the subtitle in the version I saw called it the “Rattling Voodoo Staff”), which he wields like an extension of his own arms. This is where things start to get complicated. You see, Tingyu has taken the opportunity to invite all of his father’s old official friends from Kaifeng to attend the master-apprentice ceremony. Seems like a lot of pomp for something rather intimate, right? Well, Tingyu has an ulterior motive: he wants to use this opportunity to publicly berate and guilt-trip the guests for their complacence and cowardice back when daddy was getting false accused. Tingyu even goes so far as to produce what he claims is the original affidavit with their signatures on it as he’s dragging the old bastards across the coals.

Once you get past the embarrassment that the episode causes the elder Luan, there is another consequence that the young and inexperienced Tingyu did not anticipate. You see, Luan Tianyou never did figure out who the mole who ratted him out to Cai Jing was. That means that one of the men who was getting berated was most likely present at the party. And he’s going to tell Cai Jing. And now that Cai Jing has an even higher post than before, so he can easily send soldiers out to apprehend the Luan family…which he does. And he starts having the other officials assassinated. So it isn’t long until the Luan family, plus the Li family, including Tingyu’s fiancée, Shiru (Tong Yang, of Lop Nur Mysterious Event), are on the run…

Rattlesnake Kung Fu appears to be a prequel of sorts to the Zhu Family Village arc of the famous Chinese novel The Water Margin, which comprises chapters 47 – 50 of the book. I have not read the novel, nor do I know anything about what happens in that arc, but a visit to the Wikipedia shows that Luan Tingyu is a character that shows up in that arc. And it confirms that he is a master of the staff, which is an important part of the film. I guess Tingyu is a martial brother of Sun Li, one of the 108 Bandits of the Marsh. But the bandits themselves do not figure into this particular film.

That would go some way to explain why the characters are talking about how evil Cai Jing is, but the only appearance he makes in the movie is in flashback. When I watched it, it felt like an incomplete narrative. It was only while writing this that I looked him up, found how that he as both a historical personage and an antagonist in the novel, at which point I learned that the film on the whole was an adaptation of sorts of the novel itself.

The film on the whole tells the story of a talented, but naïve and impulsive young individual who wants to do the right thing. However, his lack of experience in how the world works means that his efforts will bring dire consequences to both him and those around him. In that way, Luan Tingyu reminds me a lot of of Donnie Yen’s portrayal of Hung Hey-Kwun (Hung Shi-Kwan) in the TVB series “The Kung Fu Master” – the impulsive hero who matures through tragedy and training.

The movie has the feel of an early 1990s Hong Kong wire-fu film, especially The Tai Chi Master. I wonder if this was a TV movie, or if the movie was simply filmed at 30 frames per second, giving it that American soap opera look. It also has a very blah and unremarkable soundtrack, which hurts the film because it frequently fails to underscore any of the movie’s more emotional moments. Even worse is the awful CGI, used for flying projectiles—stones, staves, etc—and things like a character kicking one of those wooden prisoner cages and the logs flying off in all directions. It’s bottom-of-the-barrel sub-Asylum level digital effects, and frequently took me out of the film.

Much better was the action, staged by Zhang Jintao and Zhou Shao-Yan. Neither men have a particularly notable filmography, having spent their career in lower-budgeted Mainland films like Inn on Fire; The Solitary Man; and The Lethal Weapon. I haven’t seen any of their other films, so I have no idea how it stacks up to those. But they do a credible job with the fighting. There is a lot of fighting with ample wire assistance, some of which is a bit awkward. Both Luan Tingyu and Zhou Tong use the staff in their fights—the infamous “Rattling Voodoo Staff” is hollow and filled with shifting metal balls, allowing to change the weapon’s center of gravity and strength. The staff fights, much of which are one-on-many skirmishes, are very reminiscent of the group fights in Jet Li’s The Tai Chi Master. So, if you like Jet Li’s work in that, you’ll probably enjoy the fights in a similar fashion. The hand-to-hand is okay, although not always photographed well, and occasionally ruined by bad undercranking.

In the end, Rattlesnake Kung Fu is an interesting film, but not really great. I guess this would be more interesting to fans of the source material and maybe people who liked 1990s wire-fu, although the CGI threatens to derail it at every turn.

Close Range (2015)

Close Range (2015) Aka: Dust Up

Starring: Scott Adkins, Nick Chinlund, Caitlin Keats, Madison Lawlor, Tony Perez, Jake La Botz, Anthony L. Fernandez, Randy Hall, Scott Evans, Jeremy Marinas, Ray Diaz, Jimmy Chhiu, Bryan Cartago

Director: Isaac Florentine

Action Director(s): Jeremy Marinas, David Wald

Close Range was Isaac Florentine’s next film after the well-received Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, which also starred Scott Adkins. I’m pretty sure that the hopes were high for another classic martial arts opus from these two geniuses on either side of the camera. Although Florentine brings his eye for action to this film, giving it a unique “modern Western” feel, people expecting another Ninja or Undisputed sequel will be disappointed. But don’t let that stop from enjoying this short-but-sweet action thriller.

The film opens in Hermosillo, Mexico—where my paternal grandmother’s mother hailed from—at a building that houses members of the infamous Garcia Cartel. A white guy, later identified as Colton MacReady (Scott Adkins, of Undisputed II and Triple Threat), enters the building and goes through the metal detector without a problem. Once in the elevator, he slips a small knife from behind his belt buckle and stabs the two men in the elevator to death. Once on their floor, the proceeds to slice everybody on that floor to pieces as he searches for a kidnapped girl. That would be Hailey Reynolds (Madison Lawlor, of Rise of the Valkyrie and The Axe Murders of Villisca), MacReady’s niece. He rescues Hailey and kills the cartel bigwig, Victor (Ray Diaz), who had her holed up. He pockets the key to Hailey’s handcuffs, not noticing (or maybe he does) the flash memory stick hanging from the same keychain. The two then make a break for it back to Arizona.

Obviously, the head of the Cartel chief, Fernando Garcia (Latin Dragon’s Tony Perez), is not very happy about this. First of all, Victor was his nephew. Even more important (to Garcia), is that the flash memory has all of the details to his operation on it. Losing it would be bad enough. If it fell into the hands of the DEA, then the results might be outright catastrophic. Garcia calls in a favor to Sheriff Jasper Calloway, who represents the law in the county where Hailey lives with her mother, Angela (Caitlin Keates, who had a small role in Kill Bill Vol. 2), and her asshole stepfather, Walt (Jake La Botz, Rambo and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). 

Long story short: Walt is a mule for the Garcia cartel. On one transport, he decided to keep a kilo for himself. Bad move. Victor and his men kidnaped Hailey and held her hostage. Although Walt returned the coke, Vic had took a liking to the girl and kept her longer—probably hoping that she would succumb to Stockholm Syndrome at some point. A desperate Angela contacted her brother, Colton, now a military fugitive, to help her. And now we got this mess, which is a handful of cadavers and a missing McGuffin. 

Fernando asks the Sheriff and find Colton and keep him around until Fernando and his “soldiers” can come and handle him (and get the McGuffin back). Although Jasper is on the take and thus indebted to Garcia, he knows MacReady from the ol’ days and knows that the man is really the wrong dude to screw with. It doesn’t take long before the film becomes Rio Bravo-with-martial-arts.

Scott Adkins feels like he’s in cruise control in this, with limited dialog and emotional range. His Colton MacReady is an ex-military badass, but the film mainly requires him to be angry or in active ass-kicker mode. Nick Chinlund, who looks like a discount Fred Ward, fares better in the acting department. Madison Lawlor mainly looks scared and afraid. Caitlin Keates gets to jump back and forth between “worried mother” and “mother who will protect her family at all costs.”

The bad guys are Mexican Cartel types. They run around shooting AK-47s and look intimidating. A few of them even know martial arts. Showing more range than them is Jake La Botz (looking like a discount Robert Patrick circa 1999) as the jerk-off stepdad, who is the cause of all this confusion: if he hadn’t tried to steal the flour, none of this would have happened. And man, that dude will throw anyone under the bus if it means saving his own skin.

Casual action fans will probably enjoy this a lot, although fighting afficionados may place this a bit closer to “above average.” A lot of the action is gunplay, some of it standard and some of it stylish. We do get some nice bloody bullet wounds and squibs, including a nasty head wound from one of the main characters. The gunplay is very much standard “stand-off” shooting until it’s time for someone to die.

The fight scenes were staged by Jeremy Marinas, who plays Cruz, the cousin of Victor (the cartel lieutenant who gets offed in the first scene). Marinas actually has a strong résumé as a fight choreographer, which includes The Beekeeper; John Wick 4; Silent Night; and xXx: The Return of Xander Cage. He honestly does a good job and should get more recognition among fight choreographers than just the aging Hong Kong guard, Kenji Tanigaki, and Tim Man.  The fights are a nice mix of complex knife fighting, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and Adkins’s trademark kicking skills.

The showstopper fight—Scott Adkins versus Marinas himself—represents the film’s greatest strength and weakness. The fight occurs at about the halfway point of the film and is a nice exchange of punches, kicks, arm locks, throws, ground fighting…the whole she-bang-a-bang. The choreography and rhythm are perfect and stands up to anything made in Hong Kong at the time. As expected from an expert like Florentine, the camera work and editing complement the fighting and never detract from it.

The problem is that this is the best fight in the film. There is a brief two-on-one at the end between Adkins and two cartel enforcers: Zavala (Jimmy Chhiu, who choreographed the Shazam! sequel and the Rebel Moon films) and Montez (Bryan Cartago, who has been a stuntman on lots of Hollywood films). The fight looks good, and ends on a particularly brutal note, but it is very short and never feels like Adkins will lose. It would have been better for the fight with Marinas to have been the last one, as it is the best fight, the hardest fight, and the most emotionally-significant fight, given that the Cruz character is fighting for revenge. Both Cruz and Victor were apparently high up on the cartel hierarchy, so it would have made more sense for him to be the final boss, fight-wise. Zavala and Montez looking intimidating, but Cruz as the main baddie would have carried more weight. This misjudgment of fight placement makes this “good,” maybe “very good,” but not “excellent,” much less “a classic.”