The Princess (2022)

The Princess (2022)

Starring: Joey King, Veronica Ngo, Dominic Cooper, Olga Kurylenko, Ed Stoppard, Alex Reid, Katelyn Rose Downey, Kristofer Komiyasu

Director: Le-Van Kiet

Action Director: Kefi Abrikh, Younes Boutinane, Jean-Adrian Espiasse, Radoslav Parvanov

Glib summary: Pixar’s Brave by way of The Raid.

Things aren’t going well for the “Kingdom.” The King (Ed Stoppard, of “Knightfall” and “Europe’s Last Warrior Kings”) has not had a male heir. His oldest daughter, known only as “The Princess” (Joey King, of The Conjuring and Bullet Train), was betrothed to Julius (Dominic Cooper, of Warcraft and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), a nobleman of good birth. The Princess did not like the idea of her destiny being chosen for her—see Brave—and rejected the marriage in the middle of the ceremony. 

You see, she spent her life being trained in the fighting arts by Linh (Veronica Ngo, of Clash and Furies), the niece of the King’s most trusted advisor, Khai (Kristofer Komiyasu, looking like the non-union Mexican equivalent of Hiroyuki Sanada). So, the princess wants to become a knight instead of a Queen Consort with no say in her destiny. Her dad is obviously against this idea, but there isn’t a whole lot he can do about his headstrong daughter.

As it turns out, the ambitious Julius will not take that insult lying down. Moreover, he is a bit of a brute and is not above using force to take the throne. So, he hires a mercenary army, storms the castle during the dead of night, and quickly takes the king hostage. The Princess is locked in a room at the top of the tower and will soon be forced into a marriage with Julius, who plans on murdering her family after he is crowned king. So, the Princess must fight her way down the tower against an entire army of knights and mercenaries in order to save her family and establish her path against the patriarchy…yadda yadda yadda.

That is the entirety of the plot. The backstory is told via flashbacks, as the film starts off with an action scene of the Princess waking up at the top of the tower and fighting off some goons while her hands are shackled—it seems she is skilled enough to temporarily dislocate her wrists in order to slip free from them. From there on out, the film is a succession of fights against common enemies and mini-bosses (eg. a trio of acrobatic thieves, golden-armored knight, hulking guy wearing a horned helmet like Death Adder from “Golden Axe”, and Julius’ whip-wielding lover, Moira [Olga Kurylenko, of Hitman and The November Man]). 

The Princess is very much a medieval action flick tailored to what the Critical Drinker refers to as “The Modern Audience.” The general idea behind that is that producers and writers—presumably indoctrinated toward Progressive ideals through college and living in Hollywood—think that audiences “expect” movies, even those set in period, to adopt 21st-century values regarding feminism, sexual orientation, and even gender ideology. As a result, women are often portrayed as physically on the same level as men and quite frequently as always being in the moral right. On the other hand, men are either portrayed as weak and ineffectual (if they are protagonists) or stupid brutes—i.e. “toxic masculinity”—if they are antagonists. These sorts of movies often portray the fantasy world as being ethnically diverse, with no internal logic as to explain the why’s and how’s of these different groups are interacting.

You can check off almost all of these boxes (and more!) for The Princess. The King is a physically weak man and a pushover, while the villain is all for rule by force and fear. Giving the film a bit of a “Brexit” feel, Julius is also an overt racist and literal colonizer: he accuses the King of being unworthy of his post for dealing fairly with other races instead of conquering them. Since “colonizer” has become an insult for people identifying with the Left (or at least the more Progressive wing), the characterizations feel like some Marxist writer vomiting his ideologies on paper instead of writing something that feels period authentic. And then I see that writers Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton are both working on an upcoming Final Fantasy series, so expect more of this in the future.

Much like Brave (and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and probably lots of other films and series), this film is very much against the idea of arranged marriages, despite the fact that the success rates (i.e. divorce rates) are more favorable than that of love marriages. The film does have the Princess question her actions—would her accepting her lot in life saved her a lot of death and drama—only for Linh to assure her “no.” That is funny coming from a character whose name and actress are both Vietnamese. I know that arranged marriages in Vietnam were still being practiced as recent as the late 1970s. So there’s an anachronism for you. But the film ends with everybody being enlightened with 20th/21st century ideals: no more arranged marriages, women can have the career they wish, etc.

Now, history and legend are full of powerful women, warrior queens, and females who pull the strings (even if they must create strings with their own pubic hairs). In the earliest annals of British history and legend, you have Queen Gwendolen, who ruled Cornwall and Loegria after killing her ex-husband in battle. You have Messalina, the Roman empress, who exercised all sorts of power thanks to (according to historians) wanton use of her sexuality. Queen Boudica famously led her tribe in a historic revolt against the Roman Empire. And don’t forget Artemisia, who was an excellent military strategist during the Persian invasion of Greece. So, having the Princess be a powerful woman is not unheard of, but I can’t believe that one powerful woman could ever completely overthrow an entire cultural paradigm overnight, as this film would have us believe.

Speaking of “overthrowing,” as this is an action movie, let’s talk about the action. I mentioned the Critical Drinker in a preceding paragraph. Both him and many of his Open Bar guests—and subscribers—are very gung ho in their criticism of Hollywood making “girlboss” movies that place women on equal physical footing with males. This isn’t to say that women shouldn’t fight men in action movies, but a traditional mano-y-mano throwdown is something they cannot suspend their disbelief on. In their view, if a woman must fight a man (especially one who is ostensibly physically superior to her), then she should best him using her agility, strategy and trickery, as opposed to pure brute force.

The thing is, I have been weaned on martial arts films from a young age. The internal logic on those films is that a sufficiently-trained woman can throw down with men. Moreover, China/Hong Kong has been making movies about wuxia heroines from almost the earliest days of filmmaking in East Asia. And even when martial arts cinema entered the “modern age” in, one of the first “modern” martial arts films was Come Drink with Me, which starred a female: Cheng Pei-Pei. The 1970s was filled with high-kicking heroines, like Angela Mao, Polly Shang-Kuan Ling-Feng, Kara Hui, Chia Ling, Doris Lung, and more! And then you have the Girls n’ Guns era, starring the likes of Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Khan, Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima, Sharon Yeung, etc. And all those films were full of women who threw down with men who were physically their superior. So, I have long been able to suspend my disbelief on that front, even if my contemporaries cannot.

So, the fight scenes were staged by Kefi Abrikh, best known for working with Veronica Ngo on both Furie and Furies. Joining him on the choreography front is Bulgarian fight choreographer and stuntman Radoslav Parvanov, who has an extensive résumé in Hollywood (especially those that film in Eastern Europe for budget and tax reasons). The action is a bit odd. The fact that the Princess learns the fighting arts under Linh’s tutelage assumes that she will be trained in Asian martial arts. But the fight sequences themselves are more of your typical medieval swordplay variety, with a few sweeps and jump kicks thrown in for good measure. So it’s like making a movie where the hero is given a Shaolin manual, only to find out that it was written by Johannes Liechtenauer. The exception is Veronica Ngo, who gets to fight with a katana and a pair of curved knives that she can join into a Cicada’s wing broadsword. The film needed more action from her.

Going back to the debate on how fights between men and women should play out in order to be realistic, the film sort of jumps back and forth between what I would call the “Girlboss” approach and something that the Critical Drinker would approve of. In the first half, the Princess’s first encounters are very much the sort of battle where she is at a definite physical advantage and can only win through a mixture of agility and improvisation. This goes especially goes for fight with faux-Death Adder. The fight with the Golden Knight also plays her agility, cleverness and willingness to use trickery to her advantage also demonstrates that. The fights in the second half step over the line and place her on equal physical footing with her opponents, even when they outnumber her. So, that may anger those who prefer “realism” when it comes to fight sequences. That said, I like how the fights are often filmed from the side, giving the action a video game feel. As someone who grew up on hack ‘n slash games, the framing of the fight sequences in that way made the little kid in me happy.

Personally, I think they should have dropped all the 21st century feminist bunk and kept it a simple action film, which happened to be set in medieval times. Make the limited character development about the Princess surviving an impossible situation by fighting her way out of it, sans the nonsense about overthrowing a long-held cultural paradigm just to get out of a marriage. Y’know, make a movie about a 13th century woman with a 13th century values trying to get out of a 13th century conflict using 13th century fighting skills, even of those fighting skills originated in 13th century China. 

This review is part of Fighting Female February 2025

Furies (2022)

Furies (2022)
Vietnamese Title: Thanh Sói
Translation: Thanh the Wolf (proper name)

 

Starring: Dong Anh Quynh, Toc Tien, Thuan Nguyen, Veronica Ngo, Rima Thanh, Song Luan, Gi A Nguyen, Thanh Nhien Phan
Director: Veronica Ngo Thanh Van
Action Director: Kefi Abrikh, Yannick Ben

 

The first Furie was a resounding success in its native Vietnam, becoming the most successful domestic film of all time. And considering its warm welcome in other countries, it went without saying that a sequel would be in the works soon. This time, singer-actress Veronica Ngo, who had produced and starred in the first film, would take on the directing duties. The project was announced as a prequel to the first film. Interestingly enough (for me), that is the last I really followed the film until it came out on Netflix. I knew it was a prequel and naturally assumed it would be about Veronica Ngo’s Hai Phuong character. Instead, it is an origin story to the tough-as-nails villain Phạm Thị Châu Thanh. I honestly thought that was a twist, but while prepping for this review, I saw that this detail was in plain sight on the IMDB. I guess I should feel silly for thinking it was a twist in the first place.

The film revolves a girl named Bi (Dong Ahn Quynh), the daughter of a prostitute. Her mother turns tricks in order to get her daughter into school with the hopes of Bi getting a good job and the two out of poverty. Those hopes are dashed to pieces when one of her mother’s clients shows up drunk and rapes Bi—yes, this film depicts child rape. The resulting scuffle between Bi, the John and Bi’s mother leaves the latter two dead and Bi left to her own devices.

She takes the first bus to Saigon and (unsurprisingly) ends up on the streets. She supports herself through pickpocketing and hawking food, which quickly earns her the ire of the local extortion gang running that particular street. They try to rape her (oh dear, I need an adult), but she is rescued by a mysterious woman named Jaqueline (Veronica Ngo, of Clash and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny). Jaqueline takes Bi under her wing and gives her food and shelter at an apartment located above a small ramen shop. Also living with Bi are two other young women: Hong (Rima Thanh Vy, of Muoi: The Curse Returns) and Thanh (Toc Tien). Hong was once raped by a train of ten men, while Thanh is a former prostitute. Jaqueline trains them in the martial arts so that they may rise up against the gangs in Saigon that specialize in trafficking women.

The gang that Jaqueline has in mind is led by a nutcase named Hai Cho Dien (Thuan Nguyen). He has three Lieutenants in his organization: Son (Gi A Nguyen), his bodyguard; Long (Song Luan), the drug distributor; and Teo (Thanh Nien Phan), who handles the human trafficking. Before Bi can join the effort to take these men down, she must complete her training alongside her new “sisters.” Hong, who is more chipper and fashion-minded than Thanh, warms to Bi quite quickly. Thanh is a tougher nut to crack, although her own personal darkness mirrors Bi’s own demons, which eventually forges a real bond of sisterhood to them.

Their initial mission—take out Teo and rescue a shipment of adolescent girls—is a success. It is at that point that we learn that Jaqueline has a member of Hai’s gang on her side. However, the next mission—kill Hai himself—is not so successful. And in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, Bi begins to question the purity of Jaqueline’s motives.

Similar to the first Furie, the plot of Furies revolves around women in the dregs of society rising against the underworld that profits the exploitation of women and children. In the first film, it was child kidnapping and organ harvesting. In this film, the focus is on prostitution and trafficking women (especially adolescent girls). This makes the villains far more loathsome than if they were your average drug dealers and extortionists. That said, it is interesting that someone as awful as Phạm Thị Châu Thanh would be given such a tragic backstory. There is a touching scene after she murders her first gang member that she’s desperately trying to wash the blood off her hands. She explains to her surrogate sister Thanh that she enjoyed killing the S.O.B., but fears becoming consumed by the feeling. By the end, she has become so hardened by killing, loss, and betrayal that she ultimately allows herself to be consumed “by the darkness” that was inside of her. And thus is born one of the most horrific villainesses of recent action cinema.

The acting for the most part is good around the board. Dong Anh Quynh makes a good impression as the brooding Bi. She is a young woman who was dealt a losing hand, lost, started to hoist herself up from the bottom of the well, and then had that snatched from her. Complimenting her is the more optimistic Hong and Thanh. Thanh, as played by Toc Tien, is initially suspicious (and outright dismissive) of Bi, but warms to her as she sees much of herself in the newbie. Their relationship becomes the crux upon which the more emotional moments of the climax are set. Veronica Ngo pushes herself to the sidelines as the mentor character for the leads, but still gets to show the full range of emotions from vulnerable (she has been wronged by Hai in the past) to completely ruthless.

Speaking of ruthlessness, there is a fair amount of violent action here, choreographed once again by Kefi Abrikh and Yannick Ben. The training of Hai Phuong’s character in the first Furie was glossed over in flashbacks, but takes center stage in the second act. The girls spar, practice with punching bags, and even train in close quarters knife fighting. The first big set piece has the three girls storming a hideout for kidnapped girls and fighting a bunch of gang members there. That is trumped by the next one, which has the girls fighting a bunch of blade-wielding goons in a narrow hallway at a nightclub. There’s some nice choreography here and all three actresses make a strong showing for themselves. Unfortunately, that is followed by a motorcycle chase involving guys on motorcycles wielding machetes, a la John Wick Chapter 3. That scene is ruined by an excess of dodgy CGI, including what appears to be some “CGI people performing techniques of questionable physics” that we saw in films like Spider-Man (2002).

The action does right itself, fortunately, at the big climax. It starts with an awesome gun-fu sequence that does remind one of the better moments of John Wick, with the women fighting with their fists, feet, joint locks, throws and gunplay. That leads to a fight with different goons as they make their way closer to the main villain. At one point, Bi finds herself in a fight with a drug-addled junkie armed with a syringe in a fight that recalls the Donnie Yen/Wu Jing knife fight in SPL. There is some neat choreography as Bi uses all sorts of blocks, defenses and joint locks to keep her opponent from jabbing her with God-Knows-what.

Veronica Ngo stays out of the action spotlight until the finale, where she steps up. Her opponent fights with a more brutal and intense fighting style. Ngo, the “master” of this film, has a more laid back style that shows a greater economy of movement. She doesn’t throw her entire body into the fight initially because it’s not necessary: she can either step aside or defend herself with simple techniques. It’s only as the fight becomes more pitched that her movements become more vigorous. It also features a one-on-one martial arts/gunplay exchange that is cleverly choreographed and great to watch.

As a director, Ngo shows a lot of promise. However, she needed to tighten the film up a bit more. A lot of the dramatic moments that occur during the fights are too drawn out, affecting the pace of the both the action sequence and the film as a whole. She also loses points for the ambitious, but unconvincing, motorcycle sequence. But she does wring good performances out of the cast around a theme that is unsavory and uncomfortable, but needs to be addressed in one way or another. But if she were to direct another action film, I would certainly be interested in watching it.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)

 

Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, Harry Shum Jr., Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Jason Scott Lee, Veronica Ngo, Eugenia Yuan, Roger Yuan, JuJu Chan Szeto, Chris Pang
Director: Yuen Woo-Ping
Action Director: Yuen Shun-Yee, Chan Siu-Wah, Ni Haifeng

 

Making a sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon some fifteen years after the original was sort of a strange idea. It obviously had precedent in films like Drunken Master and Tron, and being the fourth book in a quintet of novels, there was still at least one sequel (and three possible prequels) that could be mined out of the source material. The Hong Kong wire-fu bug that had started with The Matrix and continued with the first CTHD and continued up through the The Forbidden Kingdom (among others) had calmed down in Hollywood by that point. By 2010, most wire-assisted martial arts were saved for Marvel movies, which integrated that sort of action with CGI-generated superpower attacks.

Nonetheless, as CTHD had told a compelling story, we martial arts fan initially embraced the idea to see more of it. But then we learned that it was being produced by Netflix…and directed by Yuen Woo-Ping…in English. Although Netflix has done its share of popular series and original films, they haven’t really gotten a hang of adapting Asian IPs into products for Western consumption. In fact, it’s become a meme that the worst thing that can happen to a Japanese manga is for it to get a Netflix live-action adaptation. They did a good job with Marco Polo (or so I’m told), but that seems to be a bit of an outlier. So, strike one!

Then there was the announcement of Yuen Woo-Ping as the director. As we already know, Sifu Yuen had been the first film’s action director, which had gotten him all sorts of award and accolades around the world. However, his work as a director is a bit more uneven than his work as an action director and fight choreographer. Oh sure, he’s directed more than his fair share of genre classics back in the late 70s and early 80s, but his work from the mid-80s onward is a bit less consistent. Iron Monkey and Tai Chi Master are both wire-fu classics; Heroes Among Heroes is less so (at least from my perspective). Tai Chi II had some good fights, but suffered from a generic plot and a few moments of terrible wirework. His last directorial effort before being hired onto CTHD: SOD was True Legend, which I liked a lot, but a lot of people hate it for good reason: the third act has very little to do with the first two, introducing new (Caucasian) villains just because films like Fearless did that. So, guarded optimism with that particular choice.

But then you get the bit about the movie being filmed in English. Y’know, by 2016, you’d think that people would be warier about “white-i-fying” an Intellectual Property whose first entry was filmed in Mandarin. Moreover, if Yuen Woo-Ping’s dramatic abilities have generally lacked consistency, why in the hell would you hire him to make a movie in a language that he doesn’t speak? Especially when that movie is the sequel to one of the most important martial arts films not only of the past two decades or so, but of all time, too? Yeah, this was starting to look like a disaster with each new detail.

The film is set some 18 years or so following the events of the first movie. The Green Destiny sword has remained in the stewardship of Sir Te[1] while Yu Shu-Lien (a returning Michelle Yeoh) has spent her years in quiet solitude. While all that has been going on, the White Lotus Clan, led by Hades Dai (Jason Scott Lee, of Dragon: the Bruce Lee Story), has been threatening the other clans in the jiang hu (or Martial World), vying for supremacy over all. At the urging of a mysterious blind woman (Eugenia Yuan, The Man with the Iron Fists 2 and Revenge of the Green Dragons), Hades Dai places his sights on the Green Destiny, the only sword which might be capable of defeating him.

Meanwhile, Yu Shu-Lien has come out of seclusion to pay her respects to Sir Te, who has recently passed on. On her way to Beijing, she is ambushed by a group of bandits belonging to Hades Dai’s clan, led by Wei Fang (Harry Shum Jr., of Crazy Rich Asians and Revenge of the Green Dragons). Shu-Lien is able to repel them with the help of a mysterious stranger, who flees her presence before she can thank him. Once at Sir Te’s estate, Shu-Lien meets a mysterious woman named Snow Vase (Natasha Liu Bordizzo, of Detective Chinatown 2 and The Day Shift). Snow Vase successfully stops Wei Fang from stealing the Green Destiny and becomes Shu-Lien’s student afterward.

Knowing that Hades Dai and his forces will come back for both the sword and for Wei Fang, Shu-Lien sends out the Bat Signal for backup from the jiang hu underworld. Help comes in the form a bunch of fighters led by Silent Wolf (Donnie Yen). Silent Wolf was not only Shu-Lien’s benefactor in the previous scuffle with Wei Fang and his men, but he’s actually Shu-Lien’s long-thought-dead fiancée! Yup, the same guy for respect of whom Shu-Lien never returned her love for Li Mu-Bai. Apparently, he was defeated in personal combat with Hades Dai many years before, but survived and went into seclusion without telling anyone. Now, Shu-Lien has to figure out her feelings for her former betrothed while figuring out what the deal is with Snow Vase and protecting the Green Destiny from Hades Dai’s assassins, led by extremely deadly Mantis (Veronica Ngo, of Furie and Clash).

When Wang Hui-Lung, Tsai Kuo-Jung and James Schamus adapted Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for film back in 2000, they knew that they were making a movie that would appeal not only to local audiences, but to audiences around the world. As such, they smartly pushed the Martial World elements of the story into the background, hinting that these characters lived in a more violent and turbulent place, but not dwelling on it. Instead, they focused on the love stories and the theme of a woman being able to choose her own destiny, which kept the movie more focused and allowed director Ang Lee to focus on five main characters.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, under of the pen of The Forbidden Kingdom’s John Fusco, does quite the opposite, relegating the love story to a footnote status and focusing on the Jiang Hu aspects of the story. Now you have different martial clans (supposedly) vying for supremacy through mythical weapons and martial arts skills that border on witchcraft. That means that you have a lot more characters (and their backstories) to follow, which makes the narrative a little muddled. Much like the wuxia movies on the 1990s, this movie tries to fit in as many characters from the source material as possible and fill it with fight scenes, meaning that some characters are going to get the short shrift and some subplots are going to be resolved almost magically. The former flaw applies specifically to Hades Dai, who is supposed to be this evil clan leader, but we don’t see very much of him here, especially when it comes to doing Martial World stuff. The latter can be seen in the treatment of Shu Lien/Silent Wolf relationship quandary, which resolves itself with but a couple of soulful looks.

Yuen Woo-Ping seems to have left the action duties to his brother, Yuen Shun-Yee, along with Chan Siu-Wah and Ni Haifeng. Yuen Shun-Yee has been choreographing fight scenes by his brothers’ side since the late 1970, and recently had the same position in the YWP-directed Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy. Chan Siu-Wah has been on Yuen Woo-Ping’s stunt team since the 1990s, assisting Sifu Yuen in films like The Banquet and the last two Ip Man films. Ni Haifeng went on to choreograph Blade of Flower, so there’s one more YWP protégé running around out there.

Their action is heavy on the wires, as one might expect. I think there was an expectation for the fights to be heavily wired, because even Donnie Yen is being swung around on cords to do the sort of kicks he never needed assistance to do before. Then again, he was 53 when he made this, so maybe he’s just slowing down. The first showdown between Shu Lien, Silent Wolf, and the bandits is probably the best fight in the film. The following fight at Sir Te’s estate is essentially a rip-off of CTHD’s first showdown between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi. The movie gives us a hoped-for “Ip Man vs. Bruce Lee” fight, although it’s a bit shorter than I would have liked. And that really sums the action for me: there is some good choreography at times, but the fights are generally too short. There are more of them than the first film, but there are no classics. In the end, Vietnamese actress Veronica Ngo steals the show as the ass-kicking female assassin, Mantis. She’s almost unstoppable in this film; I would have liked to have seen a climax between her and Michelle Yeoh.

If this movie had been a stand-alone adaptation of Iron Knight, Silver Vase[2], it would have been a pretty solid wuxia film. As a sequel to Ang Lee’s renowned masterpiece, it pales in comparison. John Fusco’s script needed a bit more fine-tuning and tightening and YWP should have tried to give the film at least one all-time classic fight. You usually can count on him for that, even in his post-Matrix wire-fu days. Maybe the bean-counters at Netflix got in the way with some BS commentary like, “surveys show that 85% of American viewers don’t like long fight scenes in their movies.” I dunno. Even the heavily-flawed True Legend had that wonderful one-on-one fight between Vincent Zhao and Andy On. Whatever. It’s a decent wuxia movie overall, and certainly better than some of the stuff I’ve seen coming out the PRC, but I don’t think it deserves to be attached to the original CTHD.

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[1] - Whom the characters comment is the Emperor’s brother. That detail, along with the confirmation that Li Mu Bai had been an instructor at his household, proves my theory that in the 1967 film Rape of the Sword had done an inversion of the source material and made the Li Mu Bai stand-in to be the villain, while the Jade Fox equivalente was the heroine!

[2] - The final insult to injury that this film made was to release a novelization based on the script! Why not just finance an official translation of Wang Dulu’s novel? Dummies!

The Old Guard (2020)

The Old Guard (2020)

 

Starring: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Harry Melling, Veronica Ngo
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Action Director: Daniel Hernandez, Johnny Gao

 

We’ve been getting a lot of female spy/assassin action-thrillers as of late. The trend (probably) started around 2010 with Angelina Jolie headlining the blockbuster film Salt. In the past few years, however, the production of these films has ramped up, especially from 2020 to the present. I’m guessing it has a lot to do with the success of the John Wick movies, but there may be other factors involved. The Old Guard is sort of an outlier in the lot, being less a female-empowerment action film and being more John Wick by way of Highlander.

The premise of the film is pretty simple: Charlize Theron (Atomic Blonde and Mad Max: Fury Road) plays Andromache, or “Andy” for short, a Scythian warrior woman who is one of a small band of immortals that roam the Earth. A born fighter, Andy had joined forces with a number of other immortals to work as mercenaries to order to improve the world. Her compadres are: Booker (Red Sparrow’s Matthias Schoenaerts), who discovered his immortality while fighting in the Napoleanic Wars; Joe (Marwan Kenzari, of Black Adam and the live-action Aladdin), a Muslim warrior from the Era of the Crusades; and Nicky (Luca Marinelli, of the 2021 Diabolik remake), an Italian knight who fought Joe in those same wars before becoming his lover.

When we meet the team, the four are meeting up in Marrakech (in Morocco) sometime after their last mission. A former CIA agent named Copley (Redbelt’s Chiwetel Ejiofor) has contacted them to conduct a rescue mission in southern Sudan. Some Islamist militants have kidnapped a bunch of schoolgirls because…well…girls shouldn’t study in fundamentalist Islam. Andy reluctantly takes the job—she’s weary of taking jobs in the same region too close together—and it turns out to be a trap. They are gunned down by a bunch of heavily-armed soldiers, although their immortal abilities allow them to get back up and dish out the death to their enemies. Knowing they’ve been set up, Andy sends the other three to their safe house in Paris while she investigates the possibility of a new immortal.

The rookie would be Sergeant Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), a Marine serving in Afghanistan. Her immortality is revealed when she shoots a terrorist, who then slices her throat open as she’s tending to his wounds (the mission was to take him alive). The next day, she’s alive and well, with nary a scratch where a huge cut should be. Obviously, the entire company now looks at her suspiciously and the military has plans to ship her away into isolation. Andy shows up in the nick of time to rescue Nile, although the latter is very reluctant at first.

At the same time, we learn that Copley is in the employ of the evil Big Pharma CEO Merrick (Harry Melling, best known for playing Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films). Merrick wants to experiment on the immortals in order to determine the secret of their longevity and healing factor and change the world…while getting filthy rich in the process. Copley tracks the mercenaries down to their Paris hideout and, in the ensuing melee, capture Joe and Nicky. That leaves Andy, Booker and Nile to rescue their compadres, but there’s a catch: Andy’s wounds are now taking longer to heal, which means that her immortality is now reaching the end of its cycle.

As an action movie, The Old Guard is adequate entertainment. It runs into the snag that many action films do: the best action sequences occur early on and the pacing is interrupted by a slow, exposition-filled second act. The climax, for all it wants to be a John Wick movie, is also weak, even with the added “suspense” of Andy’ failing “health.” A weak middle section is especially bad in this case of this particular credit, since it leans back on the “hero(ine) refuses to accept her destiny” cliché for drama. I have a personal disgust for that story trope, so any movie in this day and age that employs it is likely to get on my bad side.

I also think that the movie needed a bit more imagination. There are a few brief flashbacks set in period, especially pertaining to Andromache’s tragic backstory involving another fellow immortal, played by Furie’s Veronica Ngo Thanh Van. I would have liked to have seen more scenes set in period to establish what it had been like to be a Scythian warrior or for two crusaders on opposite sides to fall in love. While the immortals do use swords and axes in some of the action sequences, I would have liked to have seen more creativity in the make-up and costume design. The idea that you’d have a Scythian barbarian woman dressed like Aeon Flux killing people with automatic weapons doesn’t feel like the writers were really milking the premise for all its worth.

Moreover, I felt that the main villain being an evil CAPITALIST was a bit weak sauce. I mean, his motivations are sound given the industry he works in, but he’s not particularly imposing and since his henchmen are all normal humans, there’s not a lot real competition for the heroes to overcome. A sequel is apparently in the works, and the final scene suggests that it will pit immortals against other immortals, so that should be interesting.

The action sequences were staged by Daniel Hernandez and Johnny Gao. Hernandez has been a stuntman in Hollywood for 20 years now, working on all sorts of action and fantasy films. In recent years, he has graduated to fight choreographer, contributing to the action sequences in Thor: Ragnarok; the last two Avengers movies; and most recently The Woman King (which was also directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood). Gao hasn’t been working in Hollywood that long, but recently assisted in the fight scenes for Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Woman King—both he and Hernandez must have really gotten along with Gina Prince-Bythewood. Hernandez trained Charlize Theron for the film, teaching her elements of aikido, judo, karate, and HEMA, or Medieval Martial Arts[1]. Theron looks good in her fights, matching her nicely-played cynical do-gooder with the requisite physicality.

As I said before, the first two set pieces are the best. In the first one, the protagonists take on a room full of soldiers, fighting them off with guns and swords—Charlize Theron’s character fights with an axe. It begins with a Highlander-esque display of our heroes’ indestructability, and then becomes a complexly-choreographed scene, a web of blocks, parries, slashes and gunshots. I have to say it really sets the stage for the rest of the movie. Sadly, the scene only lasts about a minute and the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to it.

The next fight is a one-on-one fight between Andromache and Nile, who still hasn’t accepted her destiny as an immortal. The fight is set on a cargo plane and is a nice, old-school exchange of punches and blocks, Hong Kong style. KiKi Layne tends to stick with more brawling moves, while Charlize Theron focuses on grappling and joint locks. There is a nice move where she runs up the side of the plane to flip around KiKi, bringing her down in a jiu-jitsu lock. It was probably wire assisted—there is a wire operator listed on the IMDB—but it looked neat.

The climax is mainly standard gunplay, with Theron throwing in some judo moves a lá Keanu Reeves in John Wick. As I said, there isn’t much suspense of the immortals getting killed because…well…they’re immortal. Charlize gets to kill people with a fire axe and then throws down with a hulking security guard armed with a dagger in a one-sided fight (in her favor). It’s a competent set piece, but it doesn’t get the adrenaline pumping like the earlier sequences did. And after the slowly-paced middle section, I wanted a bit more than a tamer version of John Wick to conclude this film.

 

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[1] - According to one article, her training included everything from Chinese wushu to Greek pankration to Israeli krava maga - https://castingfrontier.com/charlize-therons-intense-training-for-the-old-guard/.

Furie (2019)

Furie (2019)

 

Starring: Veronica Ngo Thanh Van, Mai Cát Vi, Thanh Nhien Phan, Pham Anh Khoa, Kim Long Thach, Khanh Ngoc Mai, Hoa Thanh
Director: Le-Van Kiet
Action Directors: Kefi Abrikh, Yannick Ben, Marc David, Raimundo Querido

 

Vietnamese action cinema was looking promising in the late 2000s. The Rebel, which featured the strong martial arts cast of Johnny Tri Nguyen, Dustin Nguyen, and tonight’s star Veronica Ngo, was a great martial arts film with a strong plot and great fights. Two years later, Johnny and Veronica teamed up again for Clash, which was also a very good martial arts-action film. Shortly afterward, Dustin and Veronica teamed up for the (relatively) big-budget fantasy-epic Once Upon a Time in Vietnam. Unfortunately, at the same time, Vietnamese censors banned Johnny Tri Nguyen’s very personal project, Chinatown, which meant that it couldn’t get an international release, either. Johnny Tri Nguyen left the film industry in disgust and we were thus robbed of one of the great screen fighters of the 21^st century. We didn’t hear much out of Vietnam afterward—although both Dustin Nguyen and Veronica Ngo continued getting work outside of Vietnam—until 2019, with the release of Furie.

Hai Phuong (Veronica Ngo, who had roles in The Old Guard and Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi) is the daughter of well-known master of Vietnamese martial arts. Unfortunately, at the end of her adolescence, Phuong leaves home to be with her boyfriend of questionable morals, getting disowned by daddy in the process. As you can expect, a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks is never a good idea, and Phuong ends up working at a girl’s bar and ultimately gets pregnant out of wedlock.

Ten years later, Hai Phuong and her daughter, Mai (Mai Cát Vi), are now living in some small fishing village a sizeable distance from Saigon. Hai Phuong is eking out a living as a debt collector for the local loan shark, which has earned her an understandably negative reputation among the locals. The womenfolk dismiss Phuong as a whore for not only being a single mother, but for (gasp!) not being married despite being in her late 30s—the hussy! Mai’s schoolmates harass her on a daily basis, and Mai now wants her mom to get into a more respectable profession. A potentially-violent encounter with the relative of one her recent targets convinces Hai Phuong that Mai may have a point.

The next day, Hai Phuong takes some pearl earrings into the village to pawn off in order to buy a fishing boat. Two things happen that will change Hai Phuong’s life forever: first, Mai is accused of stealing a wallet by the busybody women of the local market. The resulting argument ends with Mai telling mommy “I hate you” and running away. Then, a gang of organ traffickers visits the village and absconds with Mai. Despite Hai Phuong’s martial arts skillz, she is unable to rescue her daughter. So, she follows the kidnappers to Saigon and begins a relentless search for her daughter, before it’s too late.

Furie is a strong action-thriller vehicle for actress Veronica Ngo, who also produced the feature. In her earlier movies, she got ample time to demonstrate her fighting talents, but was still second fiddle to her male co-stars. Here she is the center of attention and not only gets to beat the hell out of the Vietnamese underworld, but show off her acting chops, too. To be fair, she had her moments of emotion in both Clash and The Rebel, but this is tour-de-force for Miss Ngo. There is a strong male supporting character in the form of police detective Luong (Thanh Nien Phan), but he doesn’t show up until the second act and doesn’t have anything to do until the climax.

The story is pretty standard child trafficking fare, which we’ve seen in films like Taken; Out of Reach or Skin Trade, with an emphasis on the organ theft aspect of the industry, which had been done recently in movies like SPL 2: A Time for Consequences and Paradox. In this case, we spend enough time with the character of Mai that we can feel for her once she is kidnapped, while the process of transporting and organ-robbing the children is explained in such a way that we know that she only has a few hours to get rescued before she bites it. With stakes this high, the suspense factor is high and every moment that Hai Phuong loses brings her one step closer to absolute tragedy. And since most Asian action movies DO NOT screw around, you just know that they go there if they think they need to.

The action scenes were staged and directed by the quartet of Kefi Abrikh, Yannick Ben, Marc David and Raimundo Querido. All four are French martial artists who have done a lot of stuntwork in diverse European productions, and Abrikh recently choreographed the fights for the female empowerment fairy tale The Princess (from earlier this year). They do a respectable job on the fight scenes, which range from “good” to “great.” There are two showstoppers among the fights. The first pits Veronica Ngo against a former member of the gang, who now runs a motorcycle chopshop, played by The Lady Assassin’s Pham Anh Hoa. It’s a complicated scuffle inside a very small house as the two fight with tools, with the latter’s mother in the background pleading for both parties to stop. It plays like the brutal Indonesian equivalent of a Jackie Chan fight, as they use wrenches, screwdriver and a hammer, and often perform complex movements in order to get a tool away from the other without losing it themselves.

The big showdown pits Veronica against the female leader of the child traffickers, played by Hoa Thanh. Veronica’s Hai Phuong character had already had one scuffle against this lady, who has the structure of a bodybuilder and the fighting skills to boot. Their second and final confrontation takes place on a train that is quickly arriving at the drop-off point for the children: if Hai Phuong doesn’t win here, it’s all over for Mai and other other children. What ensues is the 2019 equivalent to the famous Joyce Mina Godenzi/Agnes Aurelio showdown from She Shoots Straight (with a dash of The Raid 2). Can Hai Phuong’s maternal instincts triumph over Hoa Thanh’s brute strength?

If you have watched movies like Clash and The Rebel, you know that Vietnamese movies take no prisoners in the context of the storyline. Just knowing that there is never a guarantee of the infamous trope of the Hero’s Battle Death Exemption, in which a character is often outmatched by the villain (or monster or killer) will survive just because they’re the hero. So when Hoa Thanh starts beating the heck out of Hai Phuong during the finale, there is a honest chance that the latter will not make it out alive, or will not win in time. And this uncertainty carries on right to the last scene, always keeping the characters’ fates up in the air. Thus, Furie doesn’t do anything new, but it does it with the right doses of righteous ass-kicking and suspense, thus meriting a recommendation.