Iceman 3D (2014)

Iceman 3D (2014)

Aka: Iceman

Chinese Title: 3D急凍奇俠

Translation: Frozen Wonder Man 3D

Starring: Donnie Yen, Eva Huang Shengyi, Wang Baoqiang, Simon Yam Tat-Wah, Yu Kang, Wang Wenqi, Mark Wu Yiu-Fai, Lam Suet, Gregory Wong Chung-Yiu, Bonnie Wong Man-Wai, Lo Hoi-Pang

Director: Law Wing-Cheong

Action Director: Donnie Yen

Iceman 3D is, as my readers will no doubt know, a remake of the 1989 Clarence Fok film starring Seven Fortunes alumni Yuen Biao and Yuen Wah as mortal enemies from the Ming Dynasty on different sides of the law who are frozen and then wake up 300 years later in modern times. The film is a mix of classic 80s HK action and fish-out-of-water comedy and is considered by some to be one of the best action films of that period. I personally don’t hold it in quite so high esteem, mainly on account of the 110+ minute running time that could have been shortened to the length of the two infamous violence-against-women segments and not have lost anything.

When it came time to remake it almost 25 years later—I guess nostalgia in Hong Kong also runs on a three-decade loop—it was only expected to cast Donnie Yen in the lead role. I suppose Andy On, Philip Ng, or even Vincent Zhao could have taken the role, although given the screenwriters’ approach to the material, I think only Yen could have pulled it off. Unfortunately, the final product isn’t a project that was worth pulling, if you catch my drift.

The film opens with a truck arriving in Hong Kong carrying a special cargo: what appear to be three cryo-chambers containing human beings. Thanks to a Rube Goldbergian incident involving the truck driver throwing his fast food wrapper out of the window, the truck crashes into a shack somewhere. The first person to emerge from the broken cryo-chamber is He Ying (Donnie Yen), who was a general in the Ming Dynasty. After relieving himself via his Super Pissing Skills (Austin Powers take note), he heads into the Hong Kong to look around.

He Ying finds himself at a Halloween party attended by a hostess named May (Eva Huang, of Dragon Squad and Kung Fu Hustle), who takes him into her apartment for some reason (probably because she was so drunk she didn’t know what she was doing). In one of the stranger aspects of the script, her and her friends figure out pretty quickly that he is from the Ming Dynasty and somehow accept it without much argument. Compare with Enchanted, where Patrick Dempsey’s character is convinced that Amy Adams’s Giselle is mentally troubled, but plays along with her story when he needs to.

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the other two cryo tubes—Sao Ao (Wang Baoqiang, of Kung Fu Jungle and Rising Shaolin: The Protector) and Nie Hu (Donnie Yen Stunt Team member Yu Kang, of Dragon Tiger Gate)—also escape and fall in with some Indian lowlife-types. They use their benefactors’ gang connections to set out a city-wide search for He Ying. We do learn through flashbacks that the three men were brothers-in-training for the Jinyingwei (or Ming Dynasty Secret Service) and eventually all became military officers. He Ying had been sent on an expedition to India, where a monk had showed up him a mystical time machine (a gift for the Emperor) and entrusted him with the knowledge of how to make it work. Some time later, He Ying was accused of collaborating with Japanese pirates and orchestrating the slaughter of an important Minister and his household, leading to his arrest on a snowy mountain. A fight broke out, leading to an avalanche, and the subsequent suspended animation of He Ying, Sao Ao, and Nie Hu.

So, on one hand, Sao Ao and Nie Hu are trying to find He Ying and finish the job they started hundreds of years ago of bringing him to “justice.” Meanwhile, He Ying and May are trying to find information about who had him unearthed and brought to Hong Kong, which brings them to a crime boss named Dang Wing-Gan (Lam Suet, of Three and The Mission). Dang Wing-Gan works alongside another criminal, who also happens to be Police Commissioner Cheung Yat-Ming (Simon Yam, of Cypress Tigers and Ip Man). It was Cheung Yat-Ming who has been obsessed with finding both the frozen men and the time machine, although we don’t know why.

Iceman 3D boasted three writers: Mark Wu, Toni Shum, and Lam Fung. Mark Wu has worked on a few Category III films, both as writer and director, like Due West: Our Sex Journey and its sequel. Wu also wrote the awful The Eye 10, which turned a creepy franchise into a goofy HK horror-comedy. Toni Shum had only written the horror film House of the Invisibles before being hired for this. Lam Fung wrote Stephen Chow’s CJ7 and later worked with Mark Wu on Due West. All that said, I’m not sure any of these three guys were qualified to write a time-traveling epic, especially one that departed so much from the source material.

But even if the writers’ talents were suspect, director Law Wing-Cheong should have been able to work better with the material given. You would think that a guy who spend so many years as an “Executive Director”—whatever that is—for Johnnie To would have learned a thing or two about making good movies. But then again, it seems that HK cinephiles aren’t a huge fan of Running Out of Time 2, so maybe not. Maybe he did an okay job with Wrath of Vajra, but I’m sure that such a film is judged more on the merits of its fight choreography than overall direction.

This movie’s problems are myriad. The script asks us to believe that May and her friends never doubt for a second He Ying’s story about being from another era. Coincidentally, the bridge climax has the two antagonists coming across a truck transporting old antique weapons, which they arm themselves with for the final showdown…uh, okay. Then there is the end, which gives us a final reveal about Simon Yam’s character, which most viewers will probably have guessed. The last five minutes, including the mid-credits scene, explain little and leave the audience with even more questions—which will have to wait for the next film to be answered.

The direction itself never gives us time to breathe, even during what should be quiet character-development moments. The background music in those character moments has a fast tempo that suggests important stuff is happening, so even our brains can’t slow down in order to process the scene and get any feel for the characters. The humor is puerile: Donnie Yen drinking from the toilet, Donnie Yen exploding a toilet with his qi skills while being chased by the SWAT team, a running joke with Sao Ao about chicken curry, etc. And even if you accept the film’s internal wire-fu physics, it asks us to believe that a motor scooter can effectively chase down a Lamborghini. 

Donnie Yen handled the action, which is just okay. The running principle here is that Ming Dynasty kung fu masters were basically Marvel superheroes. Donnie Yen is practically Spider-Man, crawling along walls and doing all sorts of wire-assisted flips and jumps, even when just walking about normally. He is also is master of exploiting pressure points and meridians, like how he miraculously cures May’s mother (Bonnie Wong, of God of Gamblers 3 and Sky Dragon Castle) catatonic state by popping all her joints and getting rid of her Yang Energy blockage.

There are not many fights in the film. Early on, Wang Baoqiang gets to fight a bunch of cops with exaggerated, wire-fu kicks. About 70 minutes in, there is a two-on-one fight between He Ying and his two “brothers” at a nightclub, which feature a lot of Dragon Tiger Gate hand posturing. The finale is a 3D blowout on a bridge where Donnie fights off Wang and Yu Kang with a chain, which he wields like a rope dart. Wang is armed with a saber and shield, while Yu Kang brandishes a long-handled battle axe. There is some decent choreography during this sequence, although I can’t help but wonder just how much of Donnie’s chain swinging was actually just CGI. Probably a lot.

Iceman 3D is to Donnie Yen’s filmography what The Medallion was to Jackie’s: a bloated mess with little heart, logic, or plot coherence. It may be fun on some level, but it is far from being anything resembling a good film. And it took four years for the sequel, which apparently was filmed at about the same time, to get a theatrical release. And that film was so bad that Donnie Yen ended up suing the filmmakers for making such an awful film. Picture that on the Tree of Woe.