Divergence (2005)

Divergence (2005)
Original Title: 三岔口
Translation: Three-Way Intersection

 

Starring: Aaron Kwok Fu-Sing, Daniel Wu Yin-Cho, Ekin Cheng Yee-Kin, Gallen Lo Ka-Leung, Angelica Lee Sin-Je, Ning Jing, Yu Rongguang, Tommy Yuen Man-On, Samuel Pang King-Chi, Jan Lam Hoi-Fung, Eric Tsang Chi-Wai, Lam Suet
Director: Benny Chan
Action Director: Nicky Li Chung-Chi

 

For more than 20 years, I have had something of an obsession with the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Action Choreography. Hollywood has never had anything like that. There has been a move to get the Academy Awards to have a best Stunt Coordination category (or something like that) for a number of years, but the Powers That Be have always dismissed it. Their reasoning is that stunt people already have their own awards, which are the Taurus/World Stunt Awards. Obviously, that excuse makes little sense: if a film can win Best Screenplay or Best Editing or Best Music at multiple awards ceremonies, including the Oscars, then why not Best Stunt Coordination?

In any case, Hong Kong has long prized itself on a quality action and recognizing it: the Best Action Choreography award goes all the way back to the 2^nd Annual Hong Kong Film Awards, for films made in 1982. And although the quality of Hong Kong cinema on the whole has fallen in recent years, I still follow up on that specific award. Back in early 2006, when I was checking out the nominees for Best Action Choreography at the 25^th Annual Hong Kong Film Awards, I was expecting a line-up to be something along the lines of Sha Po Lang; Seven Swords; House of Fury; The Myth; and Dragon Squad. That last one didn’t make the cut, with a film from Divergence by the late Benny Chan being included instead. Divergence hadn’t been covered by the then-active Kung Fu Cinema website, so I wondered what this film’s deal was. From an action standpoint, not much.

The film begins with a girl being chased through the streets of Hong Kong by some guy (Samuel Pang, of My Schoolmate, the Barbarian) that clearly has the intent to rob or rape her. When the girl runs into a lady she knows on the street, the guy hides to collect himself and figure out his next move. Suddenly, an unseen figure with a garotte strangles him to death.

Cut to a plane fight from Canada to Hong Kong, where policeman Suen (Aaron Kwok, of 2000 A.D. and The Storm Riders) is accompanying an enormous (in height and width) man by the name of Hung Chi-Man (Patrick Chow) into police custody. Apparently, Hung was an accountant working for rich businessman Yiu Tin-Chung (Gallen Lo, of A Warrior’s Tragedy and Vampire Controller), who does money laundering for the triads. Hung is to be the prosecutor’s star witness in the case against Yiu, but as with every single Hong Kong film I’ve ever seen, he’s not long for this world. He is taken out by a sniper rifle on the car ride out of the airport. The assassin is Koo (Daniel Wu, of House of Fury and “Into the Badlands”), a freelancer from the Mainland. Koo considers taking Suen out, too, but decides against it.

Lots of stuff starts happening from this point on. Koo takes an interest in Sullen Suen, telling his agent, Ting (Ning Jing, of 1911 and The Missing Gun), that he knew Suen’s girlfriend (Angelica Lee, of Princess D and The Eye). This is significant, because Suen’s girlfriend disappeared without a trace ten years ago. Suen spends his days teetering between “angry cop on the edge” and being all teary-eyed when he thinks about his girlfriend. Koo also starts having an affair with Ting, despite it being against the Hitman’s Handbook. While staking out a public event involving Yiu Tin-Chun’s rapper-dancer-boy band son, Yiu Ha (Tommy Yuen, of One Nite in Mongkok and Dragon Tiger Gate), Suen notices one thing that catches his eye. Elder Yiu’s personal attorney, To Hou-San (Ekin Cheng, of A Man Called Hero and Heroic Duo), is married to a lady that looks exactly like his missing girlfriend (also Angelica Lee). Is it her? Meanwhile, Yiu Ha goes missing.

This is where things get complicated. You see, Yiu Tin-Chun’s assets were frozen during the criminal case against him. Although the judicial order to release his assets has been given, his Triad buddies, led by Mr. Tsim (Lau Siu-Ming), have been pressuring him to give them their money. Yiu Tin-Chun thinks that Mr. Tsim has kidnapped his son in order to pressure him into transferring the money even faster. The kidnapping reaches the Hong Kong tabloids within days, which piques the curiosity of both Suen and Koo and puts them on a crash course with each other. And when Mao (Lam Suet, of The Mission and Exiled), To’s personal P.I. who’s investigating the disappearance of young Yiu, turns up dead, then Suen will find himself to be a suspect in the case, too.

Divergence is not an action film, but a multi-layered crime drama with some thriller elements. Lots of stuff happens, most of it relevant to story, some of it not. Seemingly random scenes that pop up in the story, including the opening scene, end up figuring into the narrative as the film progresses. There are number of things that don’t get explained as much as they should, like what happens to Koo and Ting at the end. I sorta think that the title should have been Convergence, since it is about how three separate characters end up on a collision course with each other.  The Brazilian title of the film is O Justiceiro[1], which translates into “The Vigilante,” which ultimately hints to the big twist at the end.

The film is defeated by a lack of forward momentum. Too much time is spent focusing on Aaron Kwok as he gets all teary eyed whenever he thinks about his missing girlfriend, or him stalking To’s wife…or both. Aaron Kwok’s overacting in many of these scenes is typical of Benny Chan, but takes away from the film as a whole. This repetitive melodrama takes away from the growing tension between Yiu and Tsim, which eventually erupts into violence at the end. I also wish that Koo had figured more into the main conflict of the story. Despite a good performance from Daniel Wu, Koo is just there after his big action sequence with Aaron Kwok.

There are two main action sequences in Divergence, staged by Benny Chan favorite Nicky Li Chung-Chi. The first one is a prolonged foot chase between Kwok and Wu, which starts on a busy highway and ends at a fish market where the two engage in a martial arts exchange while simultaneously trying to suffocate each other with plastic bags. The finale is set in the rain and is a violent firefight between two groups of Triads, ending with a final hand-to-hand exchange between Aaron Kwok and another character. The former sequence is actually filmed very well. The latter is a little lackluster.

Is Divergence good? Eh…sorta…I guess. The production values are solid. The cinematography is fine. A couple of the performances are good. The limited action sequences aren’t bad, but they certainly weren’t collectively deserving of an award…or even a nomination. I certainly would have chosen Dragon Squad over this one. The complex plot of the movie had potential, but needed fewer scenes of Aaron Kwok looking morose and wussy and more tension building…and more for Daniel Wu to do. It’s just okay in the end.

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[1] - “Justiceiro” in Portuguese means “Vigilante.” It the Portuguese name given to the Marvel character The Punisher (and all his films). It is also the alternate Brazilian title for Jet Li’s The Enforcer, aka My Father is a Hero.

Angel of Destruction (1994)

Angel of Destruction (1994)
Aka: Furious Angel

 

Starring: Maria Ford, Charlie Spradling, Jessica Mark, Antonio Bacci, Chanda, Jimmy Broome, Bob McFarland, Chuck Moore, Timothy D. Baker, James Gregory Paolleli, Jim Moss
Director: Charles Philip Moore
Action Director: Ronald Asinas

 

It’s not uncommon to see some directors remake their own films. Eugène Lourie remade his seminal film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms not once, but twice: first as The Giant Behemoth, and then (to a lesser extent) as Gorgo. Spanish sleaze peddler Jesus Franco was notorious for this sort of thing. For example, his version of Jack the Ripper was little more than a scuzzier version of his own Awful Dr. Orloff. Shin Sang-ok, the South Korean director who was shanghaied to North Korea, where the made the kaiju film Pulgasari, remade it as The Adventures of Galgameth after he defected to the States.

I’m sure the reasons for doing so are money and creative bankruptcy, although in some cases, a director may feel that his vision was obstructed by studio interference and try to do it again in another project where he has more creative control. Gorgo in some respects was Lourie making it up to his daughter for killing the monster in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. I’m pretty sure that Shin Sang-ok thought that nobody in the States would ever see Pulgasari, so he made Galgameth as a way to tell the same story to a different audience.

Angel of Destruction comes very close to being a scene-for-scene remake of Don “the Dragon” Wilson’s Blackbelt, which was made two years earlier. It was also written and directed by Charles Philip Moore, who had directed the previous film. I’m guessing that New Concorde wanted to keep costs down—as Roger Corman was wont to do—and decided to keep things simple by making female-centric remakes of other films in their catalog. Thus, Bloodfist became Angelfist, and Blackbelt became Angel of Destruction.

The film is set in Hawaii (played by the Philippines). We open with a towering blond man (Jimmy Broome, in the Matthias Hues role), taking an Asian hooker to a hotel, where she strips for him. He tells her to hold on a sec, and excuses himself from the room. He goes to the other room and beats several men inside to death before throwing an old man out the window. Something about the guy having left him and his friends to die in Angola some years before. He returns to the room and has escort put on a wedding veil for some kinky “post-marriage” sex.

That evening, singer Delilah (Jessica Mark) is doing a concert, whose routine involves her and her girlfriend, Reena (Chanda, of Lap Dancing and Dark Secrets), singing while topless. Delilah apparently was a big star at one point, but her last two albums have bombed. She’s hoping that by taking the Sharon Stone (this was two years after Basic Instinct) approach to singing, concerts and music videos, she might be able to get back in the limelight. Well, several years later, Lil Kim would be doing this sort of thing at her concerts, so maybe she was just before her time. Anyway, she arrives in her dressing room after her performance to discover a severed finger left for her as a gift, courtesy of the creepy blond man.

Delilah and Reena go to see private investigator Britt Altwood (Charlie Spradling, of Erotic Dreams 3 and Caged Fear), whom we met in an earlier scene where she beat up some sleazy types in order to rescue a young girl from prostitution. Delilah requests that Britt be her bodyguard. Although, Britt is initially reluctant, but when her ex-beau Detective Aaron Sayles (Antonio Bacci) informs her from the hotel crime scene that Delilah’s plight might be related to the hotel murders, Britt agrees. Before she can do anything, the creepy blond man pays her a visit. Exit Britt, stage left[1].

Enter her sister, Jo Altwood (Maria Ford, of The Wasp Woman remake and Necronomicon), an undercover cop. We never see her go undercover, although she does spend the film reporting to duty in a sports bra or a midriff, so there’s that. Jo takes up the bodyguard gig for Delilah, while Detective Sayles, who she’s been boinging, investigates the hotel murders. At this point, the film breaks off into two separate conflicts…three if you count Delilah’s asshole boyfriend/manager Danny Marcus (James Gregory Paolleli, of Raiders of the Sun and Beyond the Call of Duty).  The main conflict is the creepy blond psychopath, whom Sayles and his partner, Sgt. Roony (Jim Moss, of Robo Warriors and Terminal Virus), discover to be Robert Kell, a former Green Beret who snapped after his Vietnamese wife was brutally murdered.

The other conflict is with Delilah’s record producer, Sonny Luso (Bob McFarland, of The Showgirl Murders and Carnosaur 3). Luso has invested a few million dollars into Delilah’s career and despite her initial success, two failed albums are a bit much for him. He’s convinced that her “Stripper Rock” routine is passé—if only he knew about “W.A.P.”, Sexyy Red, and Sukihana—and that it will cost him his entire investment. Since she refuses to budge on her creative instincts, he decides to hire a bunch of hitmen to take her out and collect on her life insurance policy to recoup on some of his losses. Lots of action, nudity and sex ensue.

All of the major plot contours of Blackbelt are here, from the ritualistic killings performed by the main villain to the conflict between the singer character and her boyfriend-manager and record producer. The opening scene of Angel of Destruction is a carbon copies of Blackbelt and the premise of the climax—the hero(ine) rescuing the kidnapped singer and fighting the villain’s mercenary buddies before confronting him a final time—are also the same. As I recall, both movies feature a fight with the record producer’s cronies at the singer’s mansion, with the villain sneaking in to kill the men, too.

There are few changed details. The suggestion that another high-kicking female was going to take up the case before getting murdered by not-Matthias is new twist. In Blackbelt, the conflict between the singer and the record company was more about trying to force her to renew her contract instead of becoming a free agent. In this film, it’s basically the opposite: they want to drop her because her Erotica-Pop is costing them money. In Blackbelt, Matthias Hues is deranged because he was sexually abused by his own mother. Here, Jimmy Broome kills as a sort of deranged mourning for the premature death of his wife—which sorta explains why his victims are all Asian prostitutes (although the fact the film was made in the Philippines might explain that).

Although Blackbelt had a few explicit scenes, this film cranks up the sleaze past Angelfist levels. We have two naked prostitutes, two musical numbers sung while topless, a sex scene with Maria Ford, Maria Ford performing an entire stripper routine, and a topless fight scene with Maria Ford. My understanding is that Maria Ford was one of those DTV actresses from the 1990s who was always sort of bitter about the fact that she was typecast into roles where she had to show off her breasts. On the other hand, her contemporaries, like Julie Strain, the two Shannons, Brinke Stevens, and Linnea Quigley, seemed to take it in stride.

As the film doesn’t skimp in one type of action, it also doesn’t skimp on the other. The action sequences were staged by Ronald Asinas, who had worked on Angelfist the year before. The fights are a lot more convincing than those in Angelfist, probably because (according to A.I.), Maria Ford actually held in a black belt in some style. Her punches hit harder than Cat Sassoon’s, and although she doesn’t do as much kicking in her fights, the ones she performs are a lot less “wobbly” than Cat’s were. Like Angelfist and TNT Jackson, this film features a topless martial arts fight—apparently Jo Altwood prefers to sleep wearing only a g-string.

My biggest qualm about Don “the Dragon” Wilson’s Blackbelt was that it boasted of having a bunch of champion kickboxers in the cast, and then wastes them in a lackluster climax. This film corrects that mistake by not promising us anything at all. The climax is a big gunfight between Jo Altwood, Detective Sayles, and a small army of Robert Kell’s mercenary pals. There are a few moments of hand-to-hand here and there, but with no previous expectations to deliver on, it ends up being more entertaining. The question of how a skinny policewoman can take down an ersatz Terminator-cum-Green Beret is resolved by allowing her to get in some good hits, but making it clear that she needs help from her friends. It’s not quite as good as Don Wilson vs. Matthias Hues, but it works. Not quite an exploitation classic, but it comes close.

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[1] - The IMDB suggests that there was another actress slated to leave, but was fired from the production for being an unholy terror to the cast and crew. I wonder if it was Spradling. I mean, why go through the trouble of giving her character an introductory action sequence if you’re going to kill her off in the next scene?

Angelfist (1993)

Angelfist (1993)
Aka: Angel Fist; Fatal Angel

 

Starring: Catya “Cat” Sassoon, Melissa Moore, Michael Shaner, Roland Dantes, Joseph Zucchero, Henry Strzalkowski, Christina Portugal, Ken Metcalfe, Sibel Birzag, Sheila Lintan, Jim Moss, John Crank, Bob Larson
Director: Cirio H. Santiago
Action Director: Ronald Asinas

 

Cirio H. Santiago occupies a special place in the hearts of true B-Movie lovers. The Filipino director is known for working on more than a hundred films in his lifetime, many of which he did for the late, great Roger Corman (who passed away only a few weeks ago as I write this). He dabbled in all sorts of genres, from Blaxploitation (like TNT Jackson) to martial arts (like this and Don “the Dragon” Wilson’s Bloodfist, which he produced) to sci-fi/action (Future Hunters) to Women-in-Prison (like Caged Heat II: Stripped of Freedom). His movies almost always featured a heap of action and a healthy dose of T&A, although his actors never dismissed him as a sleaze. In fact, Playboy Playmate Jean Bell, reflecting on her experience with him after his death, said that he “was a very professional man, and lotta personality, patient, and a family man.”

Cirio got his start in the 1950s working for his father’s studio, Premiere Productions. He cut his teeth in the industry editing and cutting trailer and quickly moved onto producing and writing. It wasn’t long before Cirio was directing as well, although he mainly focused on Tagalog films for local consumption. Among other things, he produced Tokyo 1960, a localized version of Gojira which was to the Philippines what Godzilla, King of the Monsters was to the U.S. He produced a few attempts to market Filipino films for international audiences, like Cavalry Command with John Agar and The Kidnappers with Burgess Meredith.

The notion that Filipino films could be made for worldwide audiences really came to fruition in the 1970s, when Santiago started making films for Roger Corman’s New World Studios. Their partnership continued up past the fall of New World and into era of VHS, with Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons, which eventually became New Concorde. His final projects included Mark Dacascos’s Hunt for Eagle One films (as producer) and the behind-the-scenes documentary of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, which he directed (Tarantino was a huge fan of his work).

Angelfist was made for Concorde-New Horizons in 1993, a period in which most of Santiago’s output was in the martial arts genre (although he still dabbled in sci-fi and war films). Santiago directed and/or produced a lot of Don “the Dragon” Wilson’s earliest films, plus much of The Master Jerry Trimble’s solo movies, like Live by the Fist. A couple of these movies for CNH were female-led martial arts movies, including this and Angel of Destruction. This was meant to be a star-making vehicle for the tragically-fated model-turned-actress Catya Sassoon, the daughter of world-famous hair stylist Vidal Sassoon.

The movie opens in Manila, where public protests over some treaty to allow the U.S. to open more bases in the Philippines are rocking the streets. Amidst the chaos, a car belonging to American serviceman Col. Rapaport (John Crank, of American Kickboxer II and Drug Connection) is attacked by a group of terrorists known as the Black Brigade. His bodyguards, the most worthless serviceman in existence, are quickly stabbed to death. Rapaport manages to shoot a few of his attackers before suffering the same fate. All of this is photographed from afar by Christy Leng (Sibel Birzag), an American woman participating in a local martial arts tournament.

After fighting in the tournament later that day, Leng is heading back to her hotel when she realizes she’s being followed. She gives the film to the taxi driver and tells her to leave it at a strip club with a dancer named Sulu (Blowback 2’s Sheila Lintan). She makes it back to her hotel, where she is ambushed by the Black Brigade. She makes a better showing for herself than those incompetent army drivers, but still ends up getting hacked and slashed to death. Following her death, FBI agent Victor Winslow (Joseph Zucchero, of Bloodfist 2050 and One Man Army) and local police chief Quirino (Henry Strzalkowski, of Raiders of the Sun and Firehawk) are looking over the murder scene when the latter points out that she has a sister in Los Angeles.

Cut to L.A., where a quartet of Mexican drug dealers are having a stand-off with the LAPD, including the SWAT team. A firefight breaks out, but the bad guys are having more luck than the boys in blue. Enter: Officer Katara Leng (Cat Sassoon, sporting enough silicone and lip filler to be the true proto-Kardashian) and her standard issue Uzi submachine gun. Leng jumps through the window into the house and mows down three of the four gunmen—the fourth is quickly arrested. She comes home later that evening to a message on her answering machine (remember those?) from Agent Winslow, cryptically informing her of something happening to her sister. Hard cut to Karata Leng flying into Manila.

Leng is quickly met by Winslow, who tells her the little that the FBI—do those guys even have jurisdiction in the Philippines—knows and then tells her to take a hike. Obviously, for an ass-kicking girlboss like Katara, that simply won’t do. One of the guys at the hotel tells him that her sister had a close friend who worked a strip club. Katara heads over and finds Sulu bearing her tits to everybody present, including an American expatriate nicknamed “Alcatraz” (Michael Shaner, of Lethal Weapon and The Expert). When some locals try to sexually assault Katara, Alcatraz tries to help her, only for her to have to step in and save him. He offers her his place to stay while she’s in Manila. Oh, and Sulu quickly leaves the establishment and disappears until later in the film.

Katara tries to enter the same tournament that her sister was participating in, hoping it will somehow bring her in contact with with her sister’s killers, but it’s a bit too far into the tournament for that. Alcatraz suggests that she talk to Bayani (Roland Dantes, of Arnis: The Sticks of Death), Christy’s trainer, who is on close personal terms with the tournament’s organizer. She visits Bayani out in the sticks and wins his trust via a fight scene where Leng is obviously doubled. He agrees to take her to see Mr. Carreon (Tony Carreon, of Bad Boy II and Stranglehold), the organizer. Carreon ultimately agrees to let her take her sister’s place in the tournament, if she can last a round against against the current champion, Bontoc (Triple Impact’s Christina Portugal). Katara holds her own and is admitted into the tournament, which puts her on a crash course with the Black Brigade.

Other reviews refer to this as a female-centric remake of Bloodfist, which I haven’t watched in more than 30 years, so I can’t say one way or another. But that’s probably about right when you get right down to it. It does have a similar feel to Santiago’s own TNT Jackson, with an American girls played by an actress who a) wasn’t formally trained in martial arts and b) was willing to show her breasts on camera snoops around the Far East looking for the killer of a family member. I’m guessing the tournament angle and the revelation of the main villain’s identity is a bit more in line with what Bloodfist did.

Is the movie any good? No, not really. The acting is sub-par for the most part and you can tell that Sassoon was a bit green in the gills when it came to emoting. Actually, she doesn’t really emote at all. I guess there was too much plastic in her face for that. The plot is what it is, although you have to wonder how a terrorist group that acts mainly with knives and bamboo sticks can kill as many important people as they do—but then again, when your military attaché don’t even carry firearms, Darwin says, “Let you die.” There are some big holes in the plot, like the scene where the FBI—once again, shouldn’t it be the CIA—threatens to have Alcatraz deported unless he convinces Katara to give up her search, and then in the next scene, Alcatraz and Katara are enjoying an explicit sex scene and the whole matter is thrown aside. Much like TNT Jackson, the appeal of a movie like this is the abundance of female nudity, which is includes two group shower sequences (complete with multiple examples of full frontal nudity) and numerous leering shots of Cat Sassoon’s perfectly-spherical, unmoving breasts.

The fighting is well…er…it’s abundant, I’ll give it that. The fights were staged by Filipino stunt coordinator Ronald Asinas, who has racked up almost a hundred credits in his homeland. Although the bulk of his work has been in Tagalog films for local audiences, he did work on a number of the films New Concorde/Concorde-New Horizons produced in the Philippines, like Angel of Destruction and Live by the Fist. The choreography itself is on the level of a typical Don “the Dragon” Wilson production of the era, but the execution of it leaves a lot to be desired, mainly on the grounds of its lead actress.

Despite being billed (in the opening credits, no less) as a World Champion Forms and Weapons Expert, Catya Sassoon had no actual training before doing this film. She studied Taekwondo and the Filipino art of Arnis in preparation for this film, although it’s pretty obvious the woman is a beginner. Her fights are performed sloppily, devoid of any sense of snap, impact or real technique.  When she finally beats her opponent in the final fight of the tournament, the choreography switches into complete “punching bag mode,” with Sassoon side-kicking the other woman in the face multiple times without the latter reacting…at all. I have mentioned TNT Jackson several times in the review and for good reason. They share similar characteristics and the accompanying flaws that come with it…and like that movie, Angelfist has a fight where Cat Sassoon fights off a bunch of henchmen while topless. So, for those fans of Escape from the Brothel and Ninja the Final Duel out there, here’s another film to add to the list. And it’s moments like these that make Angelfist dumb fun for exploitation fans, although serious martial arts fans can give it a pass.