Heroes of the East

Director: Chu Yen-Ping  Main Cast: Brigitte Lin; Jimmy Wang Yu; Suen Yuet; Jackie Chan  Territory: Taiwan/Hong Kong  Production Company: Cheng Ming Film Company

When an international gaggle of generals (sorry, I don’t know the collective noun for generals) is captured by the Japanese during World War II, Captain Duan Hun (Jimmy Wang Yu) heads up a special task force to go and get them back.  The task force is comprised of a woman with a rocket launcher, her Casanova of a lover, two Chinese Scots guards who seem to be in love with each other (one of whom swings a morning star throughout the movie), a vagabond thief with a Mexican moustache and a guy who doesn’t do anything except look cool in sunglasses. 

Fantasy Mission Force plays like a weird experiment: imagine a film where a bunch of scriptwriters, some of them with mental health issues, work on a script in isolation of each other with no knowledge of what the other was writing except for a list of character names and a vague outline of who they are and what they’re doing.  That’s what this film feels like.  Either that or a film scripted by aliens who had seen a bunch of Earth movies (including Raiders of the Lost Ark) but had never actually met any humans.

Either way, it’s completely mad.  It seems to be defeating the object a little to point out exactly why it’s one of the craziest films I’ve ever seen.  Yes, it’s set in World War II but features cars made in the late 70s.  Yes, there is a tribe of Amazon women in a film set in Asia.  Yes, Brigitte Lin blows up her own home in a fit of anger for no apparent reason.  But that doesn’t quite sum up how decidedly odd it is.  Watching it now, I’m not sure if it’s just too clever and we just don’t get it.

When the government is presenting a slide-show of possible leaders of the task force to rescue the hostages we see some familiar faces flash up on screen and the reason they can’t be used for the mission: James Bond (“on assignment in South Africa”), Snake Plissken (“King of Snake is dead”), Baldy from the Aces Go Places series (“he is deflective”) and my personal favourite, Rambo – where they use a promotional shot of Sylvester Stallone dressed as Rocky Balboa.

This is one of those films where you can get bogged down in “this happens” then “that happens” kind of descriptions to try to illustrate what’s going on, but you could be here for weeks.  We have a broad (and yes, I do mean broad) spectrum of styles on offer in this film from comedy to horror to action.  Films that mix genres rarely work, and this is true to a certain extent of this film, but when you take each piece on its own merit, it’s surprising how much is actually pulled off.  For instance, there’s a scene in a haunted house that is both played for laughs and for frights and this scene in particular is pretty damn good.  The humour is funny and there’s also a weird sense of menace to it.  Similarly, the introduction of Suen Yuet’s character with a bonkers but catchy song (with “Ha Ha Ha!  Lai Lai Lai!” refrain) complete with smiling but baffled gwailos is a highlight that no one forgets.  Ever.  Thankfully, it’s been immortalised on YouTube and can be seen here in full.  My only major criticism is the tone seems to shift the moment one of the Amazon women gets killed and her blood flies across someone’s face.  It seems out of place and brutal in a film that up to that point was quite light in tone.  There are also bloody moments later on, but that moment always sticks out in my mind.

Fantasy Mission Force is a film that would almost definitely have been long forgotten by now were it not for one fact: Jackie Chan appears in it.  He weaves in and out of the story in a way meant to disguise the fact that he wasn’t present for most of the shoot.  Everyone probably knows the story by now, but Jackie “owed” Wang Yu a couple of films for a favour Wang did in “negotiating” a release for Jackie from the Lo Wei studio.  It has to be said that Jackie seems to take it all in good fun, and his highlight is his show of one-upmanship before a wrestling bout with a fearsomely big man. 

But if you’ve come solely to see Jackie, it’s very likely you’ll be disappointed – he’s just not in it nearly enough and he clearly wasn’t able to spend as much time as normal getting the most out of his action scenes (the exact same problem that occurred on his other Wang Yu film Island Of Fire).  If you’re a fan of truly out there films, though, it’s quite likely you’ll find nirvana here – nowhere else will you see Nazis, Amazons, singing vagabonds, Chinese Scotsmen who have a very close relationship, ghosts cheating at Mah-Jong and apparent time travel all in one movie.  And that, my friends, is guaranteed.