Capsule Reviews of 2001 in Film

Sino-Dutch War 1661 (2001) 
aka Hero Zheng Chenggong
Chinese Title: 鄭成功
Translation: Zheng Cheng Gong

Starring: Vincent Zhao Wenzhuo, Jiang Qin-Qin, Du Zhi-Guo, Yoko Shimada, Xu Min, Zhang Shan, Yang Guang
Director: Wu Zi-Niu
Action Director: Lin Luen

Interesting historical melodrama about the historical personage Koxinga, the military leader who more or less established Taiwan as a part of China during the early days of the Qing Dynasty. Despite the film's title, the movie focuses on Koxinga's adult life and military career, with the titular conflict really coming into in the fore only in the last act.

Koxinga, born Zheng Sen, is played by Vincent Zhao Wenzhuo, who was still doing better work on TV than he was doing in film at this point. Zheng Sen returns home from the military academy just as the Manchurians have taken over the Beijing, forcing the Ming Emperor to flee to Southern China--this is 1646. The Emperor has set up shop in the Fujian Province, across the sea from Taiwan. Zheng Sen's father, Zheng Zhilong (Du Zhiguo), is a Ming General and Loyalist. Zheng Sen is promoted to high military rank and given the title Imperial Namekeeper, with his name changed by the Emperor to Zheng Chenggong. He is sent into the mountains to look for turncoats in the Imperial Army stationed there.

What he doesn't know is that the entire batallion stationed there has already switched sides...at the behest of his own father. He makes it out of Shaanxi alive thanks to his adopted sister (Bloody Brothers' Jiang Qin-Qin). After confronting his father about it, his dad heads to Beijing to accept his promised post, only to be betrayed by the Qings and executed. The Qing Army finally invades Fujian and ultimately conquers all of China. Zhen Chenggong remains a Ming Loyalist military commander, although instead of leading uprisings against the new dynasty, he builds up a navy in order to kick the Dutch out of Taiwan.

The most interesting part of this film, historically speaking, is how the Qing Emperor ultimately decides to leave Chenggong alone. He hasn't professed loyalty to the Qing Dynasty. He hasn't shaved his head and started wearing the queue. But the Emperor is content to leave him alone. Why? Because he's Chinese and it's better to leave your enemy alone if they can defeat a greater enemy--the non-Chinese Dutch (naturally)--for the benefit of all of China. In the end, we learn that by the third generation of the Zheng family in Taiwan, they professed loyalty to the Qings and Taiwan was absorbed into the empire without any unnecessary shedding of blood. Very savvy on the Emperor's part.

There are a handful of action sequences, namely the Siege of Fuzhou and the initial attack on the Dutch stronghold in Taiwan (the rest of the war is glossed over in intertitles at the end). The action was staged by C (or D)-level action director Lin Luen, whose filmography includes such obscure films as Big Job (with Chin Siu-Ho) and Watch Out (with Chin Kar-Lok). The battle scenes are okay, although sometimes the editing is too choppy. Vincent Zhao does get to perform some wushu swordplay in these sequences, with him looking good during the Siege sequence and the finale battle, which pits him against the Dutch general. I like Vincent Zhao a lot and would put this in the center of the Vincent Zhao bell curve.

Manhattan Midnight (2001)
Chinese Title: 午夜曼哈頓

Translation: Midnight Manhattan

Starring: Richard Grieco, Michael Wong Man-Tak, Maggie Q, Stacia Crawford, Joe Rejeski, Wong Kam-Kong
Director: Alfred Cheung
Action Director: Bruce Law

Interesting shot-on-digital-cam film (apparently the first) from long-time HK actor-writer-director Alfred Cheung, which was shot with a mixed cast and crew on location in New York (no mention of Vancouver in the closing credits). Richard Grieco (whom I know the most for the 007 send-up If Looks Could Kill) plays "M", a former SEAL-turned-hitman who's operating out of NYC. He's hired to off a pretty young business analyst named Susan (Maggie Q, credited as Maggie Quigley on the Brazilian DVD cover), but he accidentally kills her twin-sister-that-nobody-knew-about, Hope, instead. Feeling that he owes his victim, he decides to protect his quarry instead.

The first half plays like a pretty standard hitman-goes-good thriller, not too unlike The Replacement Killers by way of Maximum Risk. The latter comes about in the form of scenes of "M" visiting Hope's mother and learning about the twin sister that was given up for adoption at birth. The second half grows muddled, which has some supernatural overtones, an unconvincing love story (Susan figures out M's reasons for protecting her, but isn't repulsed by him for a moment), a subplot about the FBI trying track down M, and his attempts to kill his boss (with the help of his colleague and fellow SEAL, played by Michael Fitzgerald Wong). There is something of a Vertigo-esque angle within the romantic subplot about Grieco's character trying to convince himself that Susan is Hope by having her use her sister's clothes, but it's not really shown (just sort of talked about in retrospect).

Grieco gives a one-note performance, speaking all his dialog with the same smooth whisper. The only time he shows a bit of life is when he's talking to Danny, Michael Wong's estranged son. Maggie Q is fine in a dual role as a cynical (and worldly) mistress and an upbeat, naïve college girl. Maggie Q fans will be happy to learn that she does have some brief nudity during a sex scene with Grieco--making it the second film of hers where I've seen that, alongside Naked Weapon. Michael Wong is Michael Wong: you love him or hate him...or simply love to hate him.

There are a handful of gunfights staged by Bruce Law, which aren't bad. I have to give the film points for not going soft of the violence: there are lots of squibs and bloody gunshot wounds in this film, so kudos there. In the final gunfight, one character takes several bullets to the arm, causing the entire thing to detach from the shoulder(!). The two-fisted gunplay isn't always convincing as it is in most HK bullet ballets, but I thought the carnage itself made up for it.

I wish the final shot was explained a bit better. I think I know what's going on, but it's mainly a succession of images with Hope's poetry being recited in the background, so I'm not sure.

The Blacksheep Affair (1998)

The Black Sheep Affair (1998)
AKA: Another Meltdown
Chinese Title: 碧血藍天
Translation: Blue Sky

Starring: Zhao Wen-Zhuo, Andrew Lin, Shu Qi, Ken Wong, Kenneth Tsang, Xiong Xin Xin
Director: Allan Lam 
Action Directors: Ching Siu-Tung, Xiong Xin Xin 

If there's someone I feel sorry for, it's Zhao Wen-Zhuo (Chiu Man-Cheuk in Cantonese). This guy has never fully gotten the break he deserves. For those of you who never heard of him, he's a martial artist from the Beijing Wushu Academy (the same one that gave us Jet Li) who tried to get into Hong Kong films during the 1990s wire-fu craze. Unfortunately, his level of popularity among the mainstream of moviegoers has never matched his physical talents. In addition to that, to this day, he hasn't made "classic" of his career. Now I'm not talking about a critically-acclaimed movie or one that fans of the genre like. 

I'm referring to that one special movie that's the ultimate showcase for the main actor, all his co-stars, the choreographer, etc. It's the type of the film that has a lot of great fighting, great choreography, and makes you feel that you just got done watching the best in the business by the end. For example, Jackie Chan has Drunken Master 2 (among others) that showcases his awesome skills, Ken Low's great kicking, some great stuntwork, and great choreographer by Lau Kar-Leung and Jackie Chan. Jet Li has Fist of Legend, which is a great showcase for Li, kickboxer Billy Chow, Chin Siu-Ho, old school great Yusuaki Kurata, and is one of Yuen Woo-Ping's best films in years. Donnie Yen has a lot of these types of films (in my opinion), with In the Line of Duty IV being my favorite (it's a tour-de-force for the Yuen Clan, Donnie Yen, Michael Woods, Cynthia Khan, and a bunch of others). There are many others: most of Sammo Hung's films from the late 70s and 80s fit the bill, Shaolin Challenges Ninja does as well. The point is that a lot of the greats have those certain fight-filled 'fests that enter in the "classic" status almost without question. Unfortunately, Zhao Wen-Zhuo has yet to be cast in such a film. 

This isn't to say that our man Zhao hasn't been in any good movies. One of his first roles was opposite Jet Li in Fong Sai Yuk, where he played the villainous Or Yee-Tor. In spite of Corey Yuen's creative fight direction, the movie wasn't necessarily a tour-de-force for these two wushu stylists (which it should've been, seeing that it was essentially Wong Fei Hung vs. Wong Fei Hung). He then took over Jet Li's role as Wong Fei Hung in the fourth and fifth installments of the Once Upon a Time in China series. The fourth one was derivative, but had some nice wire-fu fighting. The fifth one sucked as far as I'm concerned, as it utterly wasted our man Zhao. Zhao then went on to star in the Tsui Hark's bleak masterpiece, The Blade which has won a strong following by fans of the genre. 

Zhao went on to work with Corey Yuen again in Mahjong Dragon which featured, if nothing else, a nice finale between Zhao and the super-kicking Ken Low. He also was in Fist Power, Body Weapon, and The Sino-Dutch War 1661. While each of these movies have (or probably have) their own redeeming qualities, Zhao hasn't been cast in that one great martial arts flick yet. Nonetheless, Blacksheep Affair is Zhao's best film yet, as far as this website is concerned. 

The movie begins with a group of terrorists being led by a renegade military officer (Xiong Xin Xin in a cameo) taking over airliner. The military sends in an anti-terrorist squad who, not showing much tact, decide to storm the plane screaming "Freeze!" to the terrorists. Unfortunately, the terrorists (who, displaying more intelligence than the good guys, are sitting in the seats and blending in like regular passengers) shoot down the good guys. The hijackers demand that the plane be refueled so it can take off and the military sends in Yim Dong (Zhao Wen-Zhuo) and Ho pose as the drivers of the fuel truck in order to get into the plane. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned and Ho is killed and Dong is ordered to abort. Dong disobeys orders and manages to sneak aboard the plane, disable it, and beat the head terrorist to death in the cargo hold. All in the first 10 minutes of the film! 

Dong is demoted for his heroism, since he had disobeyed orders to do it. As punishment, he's sent to the Eastern European country of Lavernia to work at the embassy there. Lavernia is a small English-speaking country that used to be part of the U.S.S.R. (presumably on the coast of the Black Sea) but now is suffering from a bunch of problems including terrorist attacks, a corrupt government, angry mobs, and Chinese refugees filling the harbor. Now admittedly, I can't see why the Chinese would flee to such a place, since the route to get to the Black Sea would take them through the Mediterranean Sea and thus past dozens of countries far more appealing than that. 

Anyways, soon after arriving in the train station, Dong witnesses the murder of several Interpol agents at the hands of some shady characters. Dong and his friend, Kwok, beat the guys up and Dong chases the ringleader through the streets into the subway. There they get into a really nice fight and start throwing and kicking each other through walls and benches before Dong finally bests him. 

The guy turns out to be Keizo Mishima, the leader of a fanatical Japanese cult called the Red Sun. Unfortunately, the corrupt leaders of Lavernia give the credit to their own policeman, prompting Dong and Kwok to go into a Chinese-owned bar and sing a song of Chinese nationalism (and no, I'm not making this up). 

That night, Dong meets up with Chan Pun (Shu Qi), his ex-girlfriend who fled from China after the Tianamen Square incident. It seems that Dong hasn't forgiven for leaving, and feels that she betrayed both him and his country. 

We learn from a conversation between Mishima and the Lavernian minister of defense that the latter is "crookeder than a barrel of snakes" (Samuel L. Jackson, my hat goes off to you) and has been doing some no-no's . Mishima threatens to squeal if he himself is brought to trial. The minister tries to remedy the problem by sending some burly (hehehe..."burly") men to [do mean things] to Mishima in the prison shower in order to shut him, but Mishima kills them all. Meanwhile, Mishima's supporters ambush and kill the Japanese officers sent to extradite him. 

At Mishima's request, Dong visits him at the prison where Mishima asks him to join his cause. Dong turns it down quite nicely, even thanking him for the offer as if it were a kindly gesture or something. Well, Mishima's supporters afterward starting bombing the city and the Chinese embassy. This causes a lot of rioting, the which Pun gets caught in the middle. At one point she is attacked by a bunch of disgruntled citizens, who think she's Japanese. They say the first victim of war is truth. 

Now this actually doesn't surprise as I once lived in a third-world country for two years and the POV of many of the people there was that all Asian people were Japanese. Whenever I used to try to explain that Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese were not the same thing, the response generally was that they all looked the same. Figures. Now I was away from the U.S. during the time of the 9/11 strikes, but I'm curious to know as to whether any individual lashed out against any people who looked remotely of Middle Eastern descent. 

That night, Dong finds Pun, exhausted and tired because of the events of that day. I guess he finally manages to forgive her in his heart and put the past behind them as it's implied that they bury the hatchet in her room that night. 

The next day, Dong, Kwok, and the Chinese embassador go to see the minister about him taking care of the Chinese refugees in Lavernia's harbor. After making some cruel and racist remarks, the minister makes them a deal to send supplies to the refugees if the Chinese will transport Mishima to the airport. They accept, not realizing that it's a part of a trap set for them. From there on, we get a lot of gunfights, explosions, and car chases, all leading up to Dong's final showdown with Mishima at the Chinese Embassy. 

So that's our terrorist movie for the evening. The American release title for this film is Another Meltdown. The name implies that this is a sequel in to Jet Li's High Risk, which was released by American distributors as Meltdown. This is pure and unadulterated idiocy, as the two films are not related in the slightest. Well, actually, they both deal with terrorists and the main actors in the two films both studied at the Beijing Wushu Academy. But the similarities stop there. Heck, the two films don't even have the same action director (Corey Yuen choreographed the martial arts in High Risk). 

Now a lot of people criticize this film for it's blatant nationalism and Chinese propaganda attitude. My response is that it isn't the first time that a movie has done something like that. Sure there are a lot of comments about how superior Chinese are and even the aforementioned song-and-dance number, but are there not other classic martial arts films that have done the same thing? Did Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury not start the "Chinese are good, Japanese are evil" subgenre of film? Were the first two Shaolin Temple films, which are considered classics, also propagandistic? Was Zhang Yimou's much-praised Hero also of the same nature? Why criticize this gun-fu movie then? 

From what I've seen of our man Zhao, this is his best film. Anyone who has seen his movies knows that he plays most of his roles as a stoic. We actually get to see him show a lot of emotion this time around. I thought it was a nice stretch for him, him playing the role of a patriot who has allowed his nationalistic sense to get in the way of his personal life. The rest of the cast does pretty good. Andrew Lin manages to be a cult leader without overacting and looking silly. The rest of cast does pretty good. The English speakers aren't as bad as say, the ones in The Master. 

Ching Siu-Tung helms the choreography in this one, as frankly, this is one of the (if not THE) best movies he's worked on. It's probably because for the first time, a movie choreographed by him is actually the best showcase for the actor's physical talents. I mean, usually his use of wires and imagination ultimately overshadows the performers' talents. This is all well in good in movies where the actors aren't necessarily martial artists, but sometimes you just want to see what the people are truly capable of doing. In this film, Ching's choreography is reminiscent of his work in Steven Seagal's Belly of the Beast (or at least the fight scenes that I've seen from it). There are some wire stunts and undercranking, but that doesn't get in the way of the wushu on display here. 

So as I said, Zhao furnishes his best martial arts work ever in this. In several of the fights, especially in the subway fight and in the finale, Zhao shows us that he can boot with the best of'em and unleashes some awesome jump kicks on his opponents. The finale, which begins with hand-to-hand fighting and ends with a sword fight, is nothing short of amazing. It's interesting to compare this film's finale with that of Mahjong Dragon. While the two movies had different choreographers, they both made good use of environment and kept the fighting on the ground while using wires as occasional enhancement rather than as replacements for true skill. And while the latter's choreography is more crisp and polished, Zhao gets upstaged by Ken Low's legendary kicking prowess. In this film, however, the fight scenes truly belong to our man Zhao. 

I'd like to recommend this movie to anyone who can watch it. However, there is a bit of brutal violence in it so all those who are easily offended should beware and either wait for it to come on television or seek an edited version of it. While other films may have mor fighting, better lead villains, or more artistic mertis, this movie does contain Zhao Wen-Zhuo's best performance to date. And that is enough for me.

Fist Power (2000)

Fist Power (2000)
Chinese Title: 生死拳速
Translation: Life and Death Punch Speed

 

Starring: Zhao Wen-Zhuo, Anthony Wong, Gigi Lai, Sam Lee, Jewel Li, with cameos by Lau Kar-Wing, Cheng Pei-Pei, and Kara Hui Ying-Hung 
Director: Aman Chang 
Action Director: Ma Yuk-Sing 

I remember that quite a few years back, there was a TV movie that came on television that as far as I know, was based on a true story. It was a movie about a couple who took a school hostage. The man, who had a few screws loose, had a vision of a "brave, new world" and in order to "realize" this vision, got some guns and made a bomb out of household materials and sequestered a bunch of students in a classroom and...you know the drill. The movie starred Robert Urich as the hero, the school principal who's heroic act was mainly snooping around the school ineffectually. 

Well, Fist Power probably can be considered a movie in the same vein, except that the drama and tension are replaced with high-octane martial arts fighting. Actually, among the terrorist/Die Hard-clone movies, this one is actually fairly unique in the way it portrays the hostage situation. It's rather interesting. The hostage situation is more of a maguffin rather than anything else. It spurs our hero (Zhao Wen-Zhuo) into action but almost none of the set-pieces that follow are directly related to the hostage situation. That's most likely due to the fact that the film's villains are in reality not the men holding the school hostage. But, we'll get to that later. 

Rather than explain the events of the movie as they happen, I'll give you the backstory in one general summmary. A woman got pregnant by a man named Chiu who soon left her. She was then taken in by a (presumably at the time) soldier for the British army named Charles (Anthony Wong) who took care of her and her son as if it was his. After several years, the woman left Charles with her son. Now that Hong Kong belongs to China, Charles works as a truck driver. One day, the child's mother returns with Chiu, the boy's biological father. The two have officially married and they need the boy in order to get an inheritance from Chiu's father. Charles gets in an argument and the two end up taking the kid by force. 

From there, Charles goes to the police and tries to report the occurrence as a kidnapping. However, the police are unwilling to do anything about it since Charles isn't the biological father. Upset that he's being deprived of the boy, Charles decides to take things into his own hands. He gets together some of his old army buddies and they take over a classroom at a school and set up bombs around the perimeter. He demands that he see his son again before a set time and if not, he'll blow up the classroom along with everyone inside. 

Enter Brian Cheuk, a security specialist working out of Shenzhen on the Mainland. I didn't know this, but it seems that the job description of a security specialist is "go into high security buildings and test the guards' kung fu." Only in the Orient could a job be so fun to watch. Anyways, Brian in Hong Kong celebrating his birthday with his family. He discovers that the classroom that has been taken over is his nephew's classroom. Having met Charles coincidentally before, Brian tells the police this, who detain him as a suspect. 

Brian escapes with the help of a snooty reporter (Gigi Lai) and Sinma (Sam Lee), Charles' ex brother-in-law. Soon the three are in a race against time to find the boy before Charles blows up the school. 

As I was saying earlier, this whole terrorist situation is simply a macguffin. You see, this summary covers about only thirty minutes of the movie. The next hour throws all of this out the window (and any credibility that the movie may have had) in favor of non-stop action. What happens is that no sooner than Brian finds the boy, Chiu starts sending legions and legions of goons to get the boy back. I don't know if this is bad writing or what, but I find it something else when you can make a non-stop action movie about a hostage situation and still have almost no action scene regarding the terrorists themselves. 

So Chiu is the main "villain" of the movie, whereas Charles is played off as a guy not unlike Ed Harris from The Rock: an honorable man and soldier who's unable to cope with the unfair things that happen in this world and take extreme measures to find "justice." In this movie, I think we sympathize with Charles almost from the get-go and he's never established to be a bad man in any way. That's most likely why few action scenes involve Charles, because if Brian fought against him, it would make Brian look unsympathetic and Charles less of a "good guy." If you look at the The Rock, Ed Harris was sympathetic but most of the other terrorists weren't, thus justifying the many action scenes in the movie. I find it an interesting contrast. 

Unfortunately, one of the film's flaws is the direction. Director Aman Chang seems to not have a lot of style as a director. This especially shows in the scenes at the school. They're all filmed without any style whatsoever. Actually, the terrorist scenes seem almost like an afterthought, which they are, considering their importance in the movie on the whole. However, scenes that should be full of drama and suspense (i.e. Charles' initial assault on the school and his final reunion with his son) are filmed in a rather bland manner. 

Any believability that this movie has is instantly discarded after Brian goes off in search of the boy. This is evidenced in not only the over-the-top nature of the fight scenes and encounters with Chiu's goons, but in the inclusion of seemingly out-of-place slapstick humor. However, that can be easily understood when I say that Wong Jing is the film's producer. Wong Jing has produced some of the weirdest and most bizarre concoctions of slapstick comedy, strong violence, and high drama ever seen. The humor here is out of place, although it's infrequent enough to not distract too much. Thankfully, I've seen enough Hong Kong movies (and worse ones at that) that the few brief moments of slapstick didn't distract me in the least. It's not like My Father is a Hero, which took a touching and serious action film and almost spoiled it with a scene where Jet Li uses his son as a human yo-yo. 

After I watched Mahjong Dragon, I declared Zhao Wen-Zhuo to be the "King of Onscreen Stoicism." The guy was capable of being stoic under any situation in any film. He seems a lot more relaxed in this movie. He comes across as being a bit more closer to being a normal person than his previous efforts. Anthony Wong, who plays Charles, is one Hong Kong's most respected veteran actors and has been around since the late 80s/early 90s. I think the guy is most famous for a being a psychopath, although I imagine that was something akin to early career type-casting. Now he does it all: drama, comedy, action, etc. He doesn't do a bad job this time; he's just kind of there. I don't think the direction really helped all that much. 

I wanted to comment on Gigi Lai. I've seen her in two other movies: the borderline insane Kung Fu Cult Master and the stupid and pointless Legend of the Flying Swordsman. She plays a snobby reporter in this movie, much like Chingmy Yau in High Risk, another over-the-top terrorist film featuring Wong Jing's involvement. Actually, she looks like a young Chingmy Yau. However, she doesn't have the charisma that her colleague had. Nor does she share any chemistry the way Chingmy shared chemistry with Jet Li in their movies together. Actually, to draw the comparison further (and to be a lot more unfair), Chingmy beat her up early on in Kung Fu Cult Master, which pretty much sums up what I think about her. I talk so much about Chingmy because she was my favorite actress for quite a while. 

One of the characters I found really interesting was the boy's mother. She was actually quite unlikeable, but not because she was a straight-up prick. Actually, she was hypocritical money-grubbing slimeball, but she tried hard to hide it from her son. She almost always talked in soft tones and tried to put on the appearance of a caring mother, but we know all along that she's just after the money. The difference between her and Chiu is that Chiu doesn't hide it, she does. Chiu is a jerk and a crook, but he never tries to hide it. She's just false. Oh, Gigi does give her what's coming to her. 


Choreography chores were given to Ma Yuk-Sing. Ma is best known for being one of Ching Siu-Tung's protégés. If you watch Korean films like Bichunmoo (2000) and The Shadowless Sword (2005), which Ma choreographed, you can definitely see the 90s HK wuxia influence on the action. Prior to Fist Power, Ma had received critical acclaim for his work on the action-packed cop film Big Bullet, which earned him a nomination for Best Action Choreography at the Hong Kong Film Awards. His work here isn't quite as polished as Corey Yuen's Mahjong Dragon or Ching Siu-Tung's choreography in Blacksheep Affair but it gets the job done quite well. It's fast and furious and at times, quite creative. The fighting occasionally gets repetitive, but bearing in mind how much I want to see Zhao Wen-Zhuo in action and get a fair showing, I can't say that I was really disappointed. 

Zhao Wen-Zhuo is looking in fine form this time around. He had a suffered a serious injury in 1995 while making Once Upon a Time in China 5 and oftentimes injuries can limit a person's physical abilities. However, in this movie he's releasing flurries of punches, aerial kicks, and doing the splits like some Van Damme on speed. Ooh, I love it. The photography doesn't always do him justice; there are too many quick cuts at inopportune times. However, his balletic agility and high-quality booting skills are enough to give me a big smile on the face. The movie has more hand-to-hand action than Mahjong Dragon and Blacksheep Affair, although it's not quite up to the same standard. 

In a movie full of fighting, there are a couple of specific scenes that really stand out. One is a fight between Zhao and about a dozen goons armed with metal baseball bats in a mock police station. He takes them all on without breaking a sweat, using his surroundings to his advantage, and then takes on a superkicking Jewel Li. Good stuff. The finale has Zhao busting out some great kicking skills against some white guy. Also good stuff. The "second finale" is a gratuitous fight, but it's really fun. Zhao's family (played by Kung Fu legends Lau Kar-Wing, Cheng Pei-Pei, and Kara Hui Ying-Hung) shows up at the school to fight Chiu's most powerful men. Zhao bows out of this fight to let the older generation remind us why they had been so loved: Lau uses some good ol' fashioned hung gar, Cheng Pei-Pei uses some internal styles, and Kara uses some nice bootwork. It's out of place, unnecessary, but it's quite fun. 

There is one glaring flaw in the movie, especially in the fight scenes. It's the soundtrack. For a movie as fast-paced and furious as this movie is, there's no good music to compliment the action and enhance the "high-octane" feel of it all. Most of the action in the movie is accompanied by some generic jazz/saxophone music which kind of bogs down the pace rather than add to it. 

Fist Power comes across as an odd duck; it's neither as over the top as many typical Hong Kong action films nor as suspenseful and overblown as many American terrorist films. It's a rather bland film, which leaves it totally dependent on its action scenes. Let me remind that the reason I bought this movie was to be able to watch Zhao Wen-Zhuo plow through legions of bad guys like a reaper through a corn field. With that reason in mind, I was for the most part satisfied and I can say that Fist Power delivers in spades. It isn't quite the movie that I've been waiting for Zhao to make, but it's still pretty fun. 

True Legend (2010)

True Legend (2010)
Chinese Title: 蘇乞兒
Translation: Su Qi’er

Starring: Zhao Wen-Zhuo, Zhou Xun, Andy On, David Carradine, Jay Chou, Michelle Yeoh, Gordon Liu, Jiang Lixia, Leung Kar-Yan
Director: Yuen Woo-Ping
Action Director: Yuen Cheung-Yan, Yuen Shun-Yee, Tony Ling Chi-Wah

 

The announcement of True Legend made practically every single genre fan happy. First of all, it was to be Yuen Woo-Ping’s first directorial feature since Wu Jing’s Tai Chi II in 1996. Second, it would be Zhao Wen-Zhuo’s return to the big screen (his last film was the epic The Sino-Dutch War 1661 in 2001). The movie was to be about Su Qi’er aka So Hat Yee aka Beggar So aka Sam Seed (if you’re only exposure to Chinese cinema is the original English dub of The Drunken Master), an important figure in Chinese martial arts.

Obviously, Yuen Woo-Ping and his family had had ample experience in putting this character on the big screen. Perhaps best known of these was Yuen Siu-Tin’s (father of the Yuen Clan) iconic portrayal of Beggar So in Jackie Chan’s landmark hit The Drunken Master, and its sequel, Dance of the Drunk Mantis. The 1990s saw the character show up twice more. First, Stephen Chow played him in the action-comedy King of Beggars, which featured the action directing skills of Yuen Cheung-Yan, Woo-Ping’s brother. The other adaptation was Heroes Among Heroes, a spin-off of sorts of the popular Once Upon a Time in China series and a pseudo-biography of Beggar So, starring Donnie Yen and directed by Yuen Woo-Ping. I was never a huge fan of that movie, although I enjoyed most of Donnie’s fight scenes.

I had always wanted Zhao Wen-Zhuo, one of my favorite martial arts actors, to be in a Yuen Woo-Ping film at one point in his career. So when I found out that he would be doing a biographical film about the original drunken master, I was quite excited. Yuen Woo-Ping has, for most of his career, been a dependable guy in terms of bringing out the best in his players, especially if they’re already trained martial artists. Sammo Hung is arguably better, but Yuen Woo-Ping comes in a close second most of the time (The Banquet and Kill Bill vol 2 being two recent exceptions). So I was hoping that True Legend would be to Zhao Wen-Zhuo what Fearless or Fist of Legend was to Jet Li. And I was not disappointed.

The movie begins the way every movie begins, a large-scale set piece between some government soldiers, led by Su (Zhao, Mahjong Dragon and Body Weapon) and his foster brother, Yuan (Andy On, New Police Story and Star Runner), and some vicious bandits, led by Cung Le (Bodyguards and Assassins). There’s a lot of fighting here, and Su gets to show us that he’s no slouch when it comes to wielding the dao, or saber.

The purpose of the mission was to rescue a kidnapped prince, which he does. After the mission, Su turns down a promotion to general in order to spend time with wife. A few years later, we find Su spending his days training while his wife, Ying (Zhou Xun, Bodyguards and Assassins and Painted Skin), raises their son. Ying happens to be Yuan’s brother, which will play into the events that come. You see, Su allowed Yuan to take the promotion instead and when Yuan comes to visit Su’s father (Leung Kar-Yan, The Victim and Last Hero in China), he’s changed quite a bit. For one thing, his skin is deathly pale. He’s also a bit angry at his foster father having killed his real dad in a duel some years ago and has now mastered the Five Venoms Palm in order to get his revenge against the entire family.

Su’s father is murdered and beheaded and Su himself escapes an attempt on his life at the hands of Yuan’s bodyguards (one of whom is up and coming martial arts startlet Jiang Lixia). Finding that his wife and son have been taken by Yuan, Su confronts his adopted brother and the two duke it out. Unfortunately, Yuan not only knows the Five Venoms Palm, but in a neat twist to the old “iron vest” technique cliché that was so common back in the 1970s and 1980s, Yuan has had his armor sewn onto his skin, making him almost invincible.

Su and Ying are able to escape, but not before Su takes a near-fatal Venom Palm hit to his body. They are found by a master herbalist (Michelle Yeoh in a small cameo) who nurses Su back to health. Since Yuan still has their son, Su decides to train himself for the inevitable rematch with his brother. He starts having visions of a pair of Chinese deities, including the God of Wushu (Jay Chou, The Green Hornet and Kung Fu Dunk), who train him through a series of duels using different styles and weapons (including…*sheds a single tear*…the MELON HAMMER!). Of course, since only Su can see them, both Ying and the herbalist think he’s sliding down the greased chute into insanity. Finally, Ying gets so worried about her husband’s emotional state that she goes alone to get her son back. That, unfortunately, is not going to end well for everyone involved…

The first two acts of the movie play like your standard old school kung fu film, with the super-powerful villain defeating the hero, the hero going back into training (albeit in a more unorthodox way this time), and then the hero coming back to fight the villain a final time. I’ve said before that the old “Seasonal Formula” worked on two basic levels: either the hero knew no martial arts and learned them to defeat the bad guy; or he knew how to fight, still got beat, and had to learn a new style to win. This film follows the latter to a “T,” at least until the last act.

It is during the first hour that Yuen Woo-Ping revisits some of his favorite themes from the old days, like the bad guy with the impervious armor (Born Invincible and Invincible Armour) and the palm attack that can poison people (The Magnificent Butcher and Iron Monkey). The latter is especially interesting, since in the half-dozen films or so that featured said technique; no explanation was ever given as to how it works. This time the script has the class to explain it, at least in fantasy terms: apparently training in the Five Venoms Palm requires the user to get stung and bitten by spiders, scorpions and snakes, whose venom he absorbs into his body, after which he transmits into the body of the person on the receiving end of the blow. The iron vest technique being “updated” by Andy On sewing pieces of armor onto his body is a neat twist on the old cliché as well.

It is in the last act of the film that the movie, from a story point of view, begins to lose its way. My colleagues at Stomp Tokyo used to joke that there was an unwritten cinematic law that all Chinese films have a mistaken identity subplot to them. I believe that law is no longer enforced, but has been replaced with one that states that all kung fu movies have the main protagonist take on foreign fighters at one point or another just for the purpose of promoting Chinese nationalism and proving that kung fu is superior to everything else. We can especially blame Fearless for this, although subsequent films (Ip Man 2, for example) have taken regressed to the early 1970s in terms of racist depictions of foreigners.

In the case of True Legend, we have Beggar So taking on a contingent of Russian wrestlers, whose manager just happens to be David Carradine (Kill Bill vol. 2 and Lone Wolf McQuade) in his last screen appearance. Beggar So’s son is about to be roughed up by the wrestlers, so So, who’s completely soused, goes buck with the drunken boxing on them, thus protecting his son and his nation’s pride in the process. It’s an unnecessary scene, compounded by the fact that Andy On’s Yuan was a far more fascinating villain who gets dispatched by the end of the second act. It would’ve helped things at least a little if Yuan had survived their second encounter and shown up for a final showdown. Better yet, the writers should’ve taken out this scene altogether and had So and Yuan fight to a draw in their second duel, giving So time to develop drunken boxing and win in the final, climatic showdown. Sadly, the script is a letdown in that department.

Thankfully, the film is saved in part by some good performances and LOTS of fight action, all of which exist to show Zhao Wen-Zhuo doing something different. This is the sort of movie he should’ve done early on in his career (I guess Yuen Bun wasn’t the best man for the job in making Zhao look as good as Jet Li). Zhao gets to do his usual wushu, drunken boxing (which throws in a bit of break-dancing), and show off his weapons skills with the saber (dao), the sword (jian), the pole, the assault blade (pudao), and the aforementioned melon hammer (I get excited because the weapon hadn’t been used meaningfully in a movie since 1993 in Yuen Woo-Ping’s own The Tai Chi Master, so I was welcome to see such a rare weapon get attention again). Interestingly enough, Beggar So was a Southern stylist and Yuen Woo-Ping strives to make Zhao’s style seem more Southern-looking (defined by low poses, animal claws, shorter movements, etc.) than the usual kick-based Northern wushu. It’s better than the flavor that Donnie Yen tried to add to his fighting in Iron Monkey and, as far as I know, Jet Li rarely tried to even mimic any Southern kung fu style in any of his films. From a fighting perspective, this easily beats out Blacksheep Affair as Zhao Wen-Zhuo’s best showcase film.

The supporting cast of fighters helps as well. Andy On, who has done some pretty good fighting in films like New Police Story, does a great job as the villain Yuan. He looks particularly good in his second fight with Zhao, which has been christened by some as one of the best fights of the post-Crouching Tiger era. There are some moments in which that fight looks like its copying Fearless, which exploding wine jars, but then it has them fighting in a well with snakes popping out of random spots in the walls and just enters a new level of awesome. The Russian wrestlers also make for good opponents; some have criticized their using professional wrestling moves instead of MMA techniques. I just shrug and say that the moves give them a bit of a Zangief feel, which I’m all for, personally. Jiang Luxia, who’s garnering praise as the next Michelle Yeoh for films like Co-Web and Bad Blood, gets in a couple of fights against Zhao and holds her own, even if she doesn’t do anything particularly memorable. Fans of David Carradine will be disappointed to find out that he doesn’t fight, although thankfully he doesn’t try to pull off a Russian accent. However, people will be more upset that Gordon Liu and Michelle Yeoh don’t fight, either.

From an acting point of view, most of the Chinese actors do reasonably well, with the stand-out being Zhou Xun as So’s wife. She’s a flawed but likeable character; her dedication to her husband and son surpass her love for her wayward brother. She trusts her husband at first, but when that trust falters (and we can’t blame her too much), she makes a rash decision which she soon regrets, even before the really bad stuff begins to happen to her.

If you’re a Zhao Wen-Zhuo fan or the type of person who couldn’t give a rat’s patootie about the plot and just want to see people wail on each other in increasingly awesome ways, then True Legend is the film for you. Those of you who grow tired of the Chinese nationalism creeping into more and more kung fu movies these days will be weary of the scenes involving the dumb, brutal Russians (although I admittedly don’t get to see them as villains very often in these movies). In any case, I have to put some support into any movie that reminds us that my pal Zhao Wen-Zhuo is just as talented as Jet Li and Donnie Yen when it comes to the wushu skills.

Wu Dang (2012)

Wu Dang (2012)
Chinese Title: 大武當 
Translation: Big Wu Dang

 

Starring: Vincent Zhao Wen-Zhuo, Mini Yang, Fan Siu-Wong, Dennis To, Xu Jiao
Director: Patrick Leung
Action Director: Corey Yuen Kwai

 

The more I think about it, the more I think that China has every right to routinely rip off Indiana Jones in their movies. China has such a vivid history encompassing about 3600 years (more than 4000 if you count the Xia Dynasty) and 20 dynasties, not to mention has been home to Buddhism and Taoism. Taoism, according to movies, is all about the sorcery and crazy methods used to expel demons and evil spirits. It’s obviously much more than that, but it’s those crazier aspects that stick out. Let’s not forget traditional Chinese folk religions, usually grouped into a single group called “Shenism,” which has influenced both Taoism and Chinese Buddhism. Then there’s that whole martial arts part of Chinese culture, which has gotten scads of attention by writers for centuries. There’s just so much material in Chinese culture on which to build a story about the search for some crazy relic with supernatural powers that making their own Indiana Jones-esque movie is pretty much a no-brainer.

The most famous Indiana Jones knock-offs are Jackie Chan’s Armour of God movies. The first sequel, Operation Condor, is one of my favorite Jackie Chan movies, period. No doubt about it. I liked the first Armour of God okay, but it needed an extra fight scene or two to be really exciting. Strangely enough, those movies eschewed Chinese mythology to focus on more “Western” treasures: the Armour of God and a cache of Nazi Gold. I’m pretty sure that was done to attract foreign markets and make the movies more accessible to international audiences, which Jackie has done for years.

Beyond that, there’s pratically an entire sub-genre in Chinese cinema to films revolving the hidden tomb of the Emperor Qin (aka Shi Huangdi) and the attempts to find it. Most recently, there was the Jackie Chan non-Armour of God film The Myth, which was pretty good until the underwhelming climax. Much better was Ching Siu-Tung’s A Terra Cotta Warrior, which benefitted from being set during China’s Republic Era, not to mention having a better cast and a more adventure feel to it. There’s another movie called The Aces Go Places 5: The Terracotta Hit, which I haven’t seen yet. Heck, even the faux-Western action-comedy The Millionaire’s Express had a subplot involving a map to the tomb of Emperor Qin. If you want to include American movies in the mix, one might consider that crappy third Mummy movie, whose villain was obviously the Emperor Qin, despite China’s request for the filmmakers not to actually use his name.

There are some other odds and ends floating about. There’s another whole sub-genre involving Wisely, a literary character who gets in all sorts of adventures, from fighting a Xenomorph-skeleton monster in The Seventh Curse to fighting a Vietnamese general because of a geomancy-powered tomb in Bury Me High. Moreover, Jet Li made a more obvious Indy rip-off in Dr. Wei and the Scripture with No Words, which only a few people including myself like. I’ve had my eyes on a Taiwanese adventure film called The Unknown Tomb for years, but my local video store sold it off before I could rent it. Bastards. YOU ROBBED ME OF A MARSHA YUEN MOVIE, YOU FOOLS! HOW DO YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELVES? At the bottom of the barrel there’s Michelle Yeoh’s The Touch, which the less said about, the better.

With a name like Wu Dang and Corey Yuen behind the scenes as the action director, I was expecting the Wu Dang equivalent to Benny Chan’s Shaolin: a serious action-drama with overwrought emotions and extremely violent martial arts action. That’s not what I got. Instead, we have a lightweight martial arts adventure that comes across as something of an inversion of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s The Quest. Where that movie was first and foremost a martial arts tournament film with a brief subplot involving an attempted theft of a local treasure during said tourney, this movie focuses on protagonists’ attempts to acquire a treasure while the tournament goes on in the background.

Set in the 1930s, we open with treasure hunter Dr. Tang Yulong (Zhao Wen-Zhuo of Fist Power and Fong Sai Yuk) arriving in Shanghai from the States, with his daughter Ning (Josie Xu Jiao, Mulan and A Legend is Born: Ip Man) in tow. He leaves her in his car and goes to see a client. The client is about to make a deal with a rival of Dr. Tang’s, an antiquities-dealing gangster named Paul Chen (Star Runner’s Shaun Tam), regarding a mythical Wu Dang sword. Dr. Tang is rather sharp, though, and quickly denounces the relic as a fake. However, he does discover a treasure map leading to a secret Wu Dang treasure in the sword during the examination, we leads to a big fight between him and Chen’s men. All this before the title appears onscreen.

So Dr. Tang and Ning are soon on their way to the Wu Dang Temple to participate in an important kung fu tournament. They are joined by a mysterious kung fu beauty named Tianxin, who hails from a tribe not unlike the Min people, who are related to the Hmong people, as far as I understand. Apparently the sword in the preceding paragraph was created by her people and she would like to return it to the tribe. So she beats up a bunch of people on a plane flying out to the Wudanshan and takes their invitation. Oh, and what about Dr. Tang? Why is he interested in the Wu Dang treasure, you ask? Why, to save his daughter Ning from a congenital illness that claimed his wife years before. Duh!

It doesn’t take a genius to see that Dr. Tang and Tianxin are going to meet up at the tournament or, more importantly, at the hiding place of the real sword. Neither of them are able to get it, however. At that moment, Bailong (hey, that’s my Chinese name—oh, he’s played by Dennis To, although I spent the entire film thinking it was Donnie Yen) shows up and gives both Dr. Tang and Tianxin a taste of Wudang kung fu. After their initial defeat, Tang and Tianxin agree to join forces and look for the other parts of the treasure first, after which they’ll get the sword.

Meanwhile, Ning is participating in the tournament, although she’s getting visibly sick after each bout. Her father is a doting man, but his excursions away from her immediate presence in order to go treasure hunting frequently leave her to own devices. She quickly makes friends with a layman Wudang student, Shui (Fan Siu-Wong of The Death Games and Ip Man). Shui is studying Wudang kung fu and seeking a treatment for his ailing mother, who for her part, is more concerned about her son finding a wife and producing an heir. Those two remind me of the son/mother team from A Touch of Zen, although thankfully Ning doesn’t sleep with Shui (considering the Fan Siu-Wong is about 40 now and Josie Xu is 13—I guess I should point out the former is playing a man in his 20s and the latter is playing a girl around the age of 17, so in the context of the story, it isn’t too gross). Shui is also participating in the tournament, utilizing a Sleeping Fist Style that the Wudang master is teaching him.

Tang and Tianxin start finding the treasures (which include the sword, a sutra, a magical pill, an equally-magical root, a statuette, a sacred lightning rod, and a pearl that Tianxin is unknowingly carrying with her) while fighting off contingents of Wudang nuns armed with swords and Paul Chen’s thugs, who eventually show up at the temple. We also learn that Paul Chen is in league with Bailong to get the treasures for themselves. While Paul is in it for the money, Bailong has other ideas: if the treasures are joined in the right place (presumably at the right time, which just happens to be when everybody is treasure hunting), they will allow their owner to reach Nirvana.

That’s pretty silly, when you think about it. The main religion practiced at the Wu Dang temple tends to be Taoism, although I’ll give it to filmmakers in that the two religions influenced each other over the centuries. Nirvana can be defined as the true peace of mind and the act of becoming one with the universe (or with the Supreme Being). As I understand it, when one attains Nirvana, they leave the life/death cycle and stop reincarnating, because they’re past that (to put it in simple terms). Okay. In this movie, however, attaining Nirvana is little more than becoming a murderous wire-fu super villain. It’s pretty goofy, but at least there’s some decent kung fu at the end.

Like many Chinese movies that don’t really care about international audiences, the movie is something of a multi-headed genre dragon with a little something for everyone. It’s a period piece adventure. It’s a kung fu movie. It’s a tournament film. There’s romance and melodrama. There’s violence and special effects. There’s a happy Hollywood ending. There’s a man performing a Sleeping Fist Style. It’s fun for the whole family!

Well, the last time Patrick Leung and Corey Yuen worked on a movie together, it was the horrid Huadu Chronicles: Blade of the Rose (aka Twins Effect 2 aka Blade of Kings). I detested that movie. Beyond the Donnie Yen/Jackie Chan fight near the end of the second act, the film is almost completely unwatchable. When I tried to watch it all the way through a second time, I turned the film off in disgust by the 20-minute mark and threw the disc in the garbarge. Corey Yuen’s Award-nominated choreography was derivative and largely uninteresting, the actors were grating, the climax was non-existent, and the movie had that awful scene where Donnie Yen makes googly eyes at Tony Leung (I think) that makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.

So once again I’m faced with a Patrick Leung-Corey Yuen collaboration and thankfully the result is far more satisfying than Twins Effect 2. The actors don’t spend the greater part of 90 minutes embarrassing themselves in awkward comic roles and the plot is a lot more accessible to the average Western viewer (or the more jaded Jade Screen fan like myself). There are no underground cannibal mutants who ask people to dance and no pouty Charlene Choi to wade through. The movie actually has a climatic duel which, although FX-heavy, still manages to satisfy more than The Myth and The Touch. There are lots of flaws, to be sure, but it still amounts to a perfectly-decent way to spend 90 minutes, if nothing else.

Most people are going to ask about the action, so I’ll focus my remarks on that. There is quite a bit of fighting, which most viewers will appreciate. Corey Yuen is still out of form compared to his earlier films, but he does a respectable job here. Unlike some of his more recent Hollywood films like The Expendables and Rogue: Assassin, Corey is sure to keep the camera both steady AND at a safe distance from the combatants. Much like nearly everything he’s done since the 1990s, there is A LOT of wire-fu on display. If you don’t like that, than you can banish any thought of acquiring the movie right now. Also, since some of the actors, like Mini Yang, aren’t real martial artists, there’s a lot of slow motion to help their ineffective blows look more powerful than they really are.

The first major set piece occurs at the beginning, when Vincent Zhao takes on a bunch of gangsters. One of them is dressed in more traditional Chinese clothing and performs some nice kicks, which is cool. The next fight is on a plane and involves Mini Yang and the entourage of a would-be participant in the tournament. It’s all wire-fu and slow motion, although it amuses in its own way. The fights involve Mini Yang and Josie Xu at the tournament, which mix generic movie wushu, some internal styles like taiqiquan and what looks like baguazhang, and wire-assistance.

Once the treasure-hunting really begins, then Corey Yuen really starts to get creative. The first fight deals with Zhao Wen-Zhuo taking on a bunch of Taoist nuns armed with swords. Since he’s the good guy, he can’t really beat them up all that much, so he fights more on the defensive here. That’s followed by fight between Mini Yang and a Taoist Nun armed with an iron fan. Said fight leads into a huge showdown between Paul Chen’s men, Zhao Wen-Zhuo, and Mini Yang. The fight goes on for some while and is wall-to-wall movie wushu, with Corey Yuen dusting off the “use a woman as a weapon” bit that he used in Romeo Must Die and Fong Sai Yuk 2. The finale veers off into the supernatural, but Zhao gets to use a little bit of hsing-I in addition to the usual Northern Wushu.

I was rather disappointed with Zhao Wen-Zhuo in this film. Lord knows that I’m one of the few people around who truly lament that he didn’t become the next Jet Li, despite his good looks, solid (if stoic) acting skill, and comparable wushu skills. As such, I’m always in a hurry to defend practically any movie that the man does. Zhao does a pretty decent job here; he has a lot more range as an actor now than he did in the 1990s. However, his fighting leaves a bit to be desired. The slow motion and wire-fu don’t help, but the fact that he’s often fighting on the defensive just waters down his considerable skills quite a bit. Few of his trademarks aerial kicks are displayed and despite the title, we don’t get to see very much tai chi, ba gua, or crazy Wu Dang swordplay from Zhao during the film. Zhao had fought very well under Corey Yuen and Yuen Tak’s direction in Mahjong Dragon; Zhao’s showdown with Ken Low is one of my all-time favorite fight scenes. We never reach that level here, though.

I’m also disappointed that Louis Terry Riki-Oh Fan Siu-Wong is wasted here. Don’t get me wrong, after toiling around in low-budget productions during much of the 1990s, I’m glad that he’s at least getting steady supporting actor work in big productions. However, I wish that he got more fight time, since we only get to see him practice his Sleeping Fist style a little and get some limited kung fu from him during the movie. He’s a wonderfully-talented man and deserved more action scenes here.

Wu Dang is an unsubstantial film, but it is pretty entertaining. It helps come in with low expectations and to be in the mindset required to like those uneven Hong Kong films from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Considering the general dearth of quality kung fu movies coming out of Hong Kong these days, we should be glad that Wu Dang is as entertaining as it is. It’s certainly not Choy Lee Fut, for which we should be grateful. It also doesn’t have evil foreign devil villains raiding the Wu Dang Temple, so we should applaud that as well. It has lots of plot holes and an extremely Disney cartoon happy ending, but I’ll let that last one slide on the grounds that the Chinese make enough of these films with sad endings as it is. A couple of sappy endings certainly won’t hurt now, will they?