Invisible Target (2007) December 1, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, Thriller, 2000s films , 6 commentsDirector: Benny Chan Cast: Nicholas Tse; Shawn Yu; Jaycee Chan; Wu Jing Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Sil Metropole Organisation Ltd
Chan Chun (Nicholas Tse) is a cop who lost his fiancée when a jewellery shop gets blown up as a result of a hit on an armoured car. Carson Fong (Shawn Yu) is another cop who is beaten and humiliated by a criminal gang. Wai King-Ho is yet another cop, this time one who has lost his brother. All three join up to bring down the Tien gang headed by Tien Yeng-Seng (Wu Jing), the gang responsible for all three officers’ circumstances.
Invisible Target starts out with a bang not unlike a Hollywood blockbuster. It serves as a plot point in that Chan Chun’s fiancée gets killed (no great loss – she doesn’t have her own voice. I don’t think I could ever love a woman who was badly dubbed) and sends him on a path of revenge. It easily brings to mind films like Die Hard and you start to worry that this is going to be yet another Hong Kong film aping Hollywood and failing miserably. While this is true to a small degree regarding the CGI, let me put your fears at rest and tell you categorically that Invisible Target is a darn good romp.
Nicholas Tse gets a lot of stick for his film work (I admit I’ve never heard a note of his music and am quite happy to keep it that way) but fair’s fair, he puts on a good show as the haunted young cop out for revenge. I must admit that Shawn Yu has previously slipped under my radar, but he also impresses as Tse’s partner by circumstance. Jaycee Chan (son of Jackie) is so earnest and serious as Wai King-Ho that his character seems to verge on parody at times, and is the least believable of the trio. In one early scene, we see him giving CPR to a foul-smelling vagrant without showing any signs of discomfort while those around him are blowing their lunch. He then modestly goes home to his grandma. He strikes you as the kind of person who wouldn’t think twice about risking his life to save a bunch of young children on a bomb-laden bus, an opinion that is reinforced later in the film where he risks his life to save a bunch of young children on a bomb-laden bus, oddly enough. Nevertheless, Wai King-Ho is the glue for the partnership of the three disparate cops. He is searching for his brother, who may or may not have gone undercover in the Tien gang. Seeing Jaycee Chan in action is an uncomfortable sensation – seeing someone who is clearly the son of Jackie Chan doing fight scenes brings a weird feeling of deja vu and brings up the inevitability of the passage of time. It sure made me feel old, anyway.
Wu Jing will be familiar to all who have seen the somewhat over-rated SPL, and many will agree he was the best thing about that movie. One great compliment to this film is that Wu Jing is still great, but he’s no longer the best (or at least the only good) thing about the project. Whereas most Hong Kong action films fail these days to entertain (for me at least) due to a number of reasons, Invisible Target succeeds, and a lot of that goes down to a more back-to-basics approach to the stuntwork and action choreography. It still goes over the top occasionally, and some of the wirework doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but the good far outweighs the bad. In fact, after a couple of action scenes I could have sworn they were accompanied by the same tinny, lo-fi synth music that went with all those great 80’s action scenes. Upon rewinding, I found this was not the case, but it’s an interesting association.
The film – at ten minutes over two hours – is slightly too long, but paradoxically doesn’t feel bloated with extraneous material. There are some nice plot turns and interesting characters to root for and hiss at, and a couple of really standout moments. The scene where the gangster explains to Wai King-Ho, without malice or bravado, what happened to his brother and how he felt about it is one such outstanding moment.
So despite being too long and having a corny character or two, Invisible Target is still very much worth a watch, and I’m looking forward to a second viewing already.
If you’ve been reading my stuff on the more contemporary Hong Kong films both here and elsewhere, you have probably noticed that I’ve been mentioning a certain guy quite a lot. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Lam Suet:
The reason I’ve been mentioning him is because I’m starting to feel like the man is stalking me via DVD. He’s appeared in absolutely everything I’ve watched in the past couple of months that has been made in or after 2002. Has this guy got some kind of global domination thing going or has he got a really good (or bad) agent that blags him a role in every Hong Kong film made? Sure enough, I stick Invisible Target on and bang!, less than ten minutes pass and he’s there on screen. He seems to favour playing villains, although is at home playing both henchmen and criminal masterminds. Other than appearing in all these films, I know next to nothing about him, and neither does anyone else I ask. Is there anyone who can shed some light on this extraordinarily prolific actor?
Relentless (2007) October 4, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action , add a commentDirector: Vlad Rimburg Cast: Allen Jo, Sam Yu, George Crayton
I’ve seen Vlad Rimburg’s stuff before, but not having a broadband connection meant that I missed out on them for years. Now that things like a 167MB download doesn’t make me turn white with fright I can finally catch up.
His latest, Relentless, is unsurprisingly more accomplished than anything I watched back in the early 00’s from his team. It is basically a five minute revenge movie with a great fight scene. I really like the refreshing fact that there’s no blue-screen or CGI stuff in this. It reminds me why I fell in love with Hong Kong action movies – it’s all flesh and blood and meaty sound effects!
With some great choreography, some good editing and a nice soundtrack, Relentless is the best action short I’ve seen for ages. Have a look for yourself – you can download the film for free here.
The Lady is the Boss (1983) September 12, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Comedy, Action, Kung Fu, 1980s films , 2 commentsDirector: Lau Kar-Leung Cast: Kara Hui Ying-Hung, Lau Kar-Leung, Lau Kar-Fai (Gordon Liu), Hsiao Ho, Wong Yu Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Shaw Brothers
The human mind is a strange thing. Long ago, I’d got it into my head that I’d seen, on some kind of compilation tape, a scene from a movie where the monk San Te (made famous by the legendary 36th Chamber movies) battles alongside Hsiao Ho’s Mad Monkey persona in an early 80’s action flick in a gymnasium. Impossible stuff, to be sure, but I thought I’d seen it. After scouring my tapes, I realised it must have been some kind of demented fantasy, or at best I was horribly mistaken. But more on that later.
The Lady is the Boss seems like the final part of a trilogy of films by Lau Kar-Leung exploring tradition, the change in social attitudes over time and female liberation – themes that were hardly staples of the Shaw Brothers’ (or indeed, any Hong Kong company’s) output at that time. It’s probably entirely unintentional, but this feels like a relative of 1978’s sublime Heroes of the East (a film so good, I even stole the name of it for this blog!) and the worthy 1981 production My Young Auntie. All three have the same underlying theme and share an unusual trait for films of this genre – no one is killed and there’s very little ‘violence’ on screen.
That said, this is definitely a bit more barbed than either of the other two films. The main plot focuses on Mei-Ling (Kara Hui) coming to Hong Kong to run the martial arts school currently being taught by Wang (Lau Kar-Leung). Upon her arrival from the USA (Hui is seen chewing gum throughout and slanging English and Cantonese with a wantonness that leaves the poor Chinese traditionalists reeling), she despairs of the old-fashioned methods of teaching and Wang’s insistence on quality over quantity. You see, the school has just five pupils, and training in stances alone takes one full year! Mei-Ling comes in and revamps the school, getting lots of new students in the process. Among the new recruits are a bunch of nightclub workers, whose boss is not too happy that his ladies are being taught ways of fending off the advances of their clients. As the boss is played by veteran bad-boy Johnny Wong, we’ve got a pretty good idea where things are going to end up.
The Lady is the Boss must have looked dazzlingly modern back in 1983; which is to say it looks horribly dated now. We’ve got neon pink outfits, effeminate men wearing lipstick, terribly tinny disco music and even a few BMX bicycles – all the hallmarks of a true 80’s production! It all serves to make viewing the film all the more enjoyable, and no fan of the decade will be disappointed. Besides, it makes a change from all the period pieces being churned out at the time by the studio.
Comedy plays a strong part in the film, and while the attempts at humour aren’t as bad as other Shaw productions, it still occasionally grates. Like its predecessors, most of the humour is derived from the situations and the views of the traditionally minded versus the radical. In places, the film plays a little too much like My Young Auntie for its own good in this regard, and occasionally you can’t help but feel that you’ve seen it before.
Surprisingly, the kung fu is downplayed for much of the movie in favour of comedy skits and other action scenes (including, as has been mentioned above, a short sequence involving BMX bikes). When it does kick off, though, it’s pretty impressive. With the likes of Wong Yu (Dirty Ho), Lau Kar-Fai, Hsiao Ho et al (not to mention Lau Kar-Leung himself), you know you’re going to get something special. You have to wait a while, but you do get it eventually. And there it is – Lau Kar-Fai playing a man playing San Te, and Hsiao Ho doing his Mad Monkey routine. You’d be wrong to think there’s a good reason, plot-wise, for them doing it, but then there’s not a lot of reason involved in most of this film!
In the final analysis, there’s a feeling that subconsciously Lau Kar-Leung was still siding with tradition in this film, despite the “old guard” being shown as outdated and a trifle ridiculous. The five young men who trained under the old master still have far superior skills than anyone trained under Mei-Ling, and the “fast-track” training employed by her could be seen to be portraying “modern” martial arts training techniques in a derogatory light. But I could be looking into it a bit too deeply, there. It is, after all, an action comedy, and as they go, you could do worse than this 84-minute mini-celebration of 80’s kitsch.
Giù la Testa (1971) September 1, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, Drama, War, 1970s films , add a commentDirector: Sergio Leone Cast: Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Romolo Valli Territory: Italy
A Bandit family headed by Juan Miranda (Steiger) runs into explosives expert John (or Sean) Mallory (Coburn) who is also a terrorist fugitive on the run from the British. Seeing an opportunity to use the Irishman’s skills to get into and rob the Mesa Verde bank, Juan badgers Mallory into working with him. Upon arrival in Mesa Verde, though, they witness the horrors of the Mexican Revolution first hand, and Juan’s priorities change.
The film starts with a quote from Mao Zedong saying that revolutions are not civilized things – and then opens with a shot of Juan pissing on a colony of ants. It’s not terribly subtle, but it does set out Leone’s political viewpoint right from the beginning. As if that wasn’t enough, though, Juan (who is, or at least starts out as, an ignorant Mexican peasant) then hitches a lift on a stagecoach filled with American high society – who condescendingly goad and insult Juan before feasting. The camera gets right up to their open mouths while they eat – really nasty stuff and definitely not for the squeamish. Juan calmly watches this, clearly thinking that the rich and powerful are no better than the peasantry. Like I said, it’s not subtle, but the point comes across very clearly and in true Leone style.
The character of John Mallory is a member of the IRA, and his back-story is told in slow-motion dialogue-free flashbacks (which feature David Warbeck, who would later go on to star in Lucio Fulci’s horror classic The Beyond). He is superficially in Mexico to mine for silver, but on seeing the carnage going on in Mesa Verde, joins the revolution.
The first hour and a half of this film is quite light and humorous in a lot of places, while the last hour (yes, this is another Leone epic, it runs at just a shade under two and a half hours on DVD) is altogether darker. A standout comic scene sees Juan tricked into releasing a whole army of political prisoners on behalf of Mallory. Seeing as how it was Juan who was supposed to be using John makes it all the more funny.
The juxtaposition of comic scenes such as this with scenes of mass executions didn’t strike me as jarring as it did with some viewers, who found the film’s shifting tone too disconcerting. The real stroke of genius is in the filming of the executions largely in the background as if they were routine, banal and not really worthy of great comment. The result is much more shocking and makes one hell of an impact.
James Coburn may be the headlining star, but this is Steiger’s film without a doubt. Although his character initially seems little more than another Tuco from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (in fact, you can almost see Eli Wallach in the role at the start), the character progresses much further and has much more scope than anything Leone had done previously. What’s more, we can buy Steiger’s depiction of the peasant as he turns from a bandit to an accidental hero of the revolution. The only fault is I sometimes had difficulty understanding his dialogue, and had to rewatch a key scene with the subtitles on!
Although this was not initially intended to be a Leone directed film, he did stamp it with his own distinctive style all the way through and is as much part of his oeuvre as anything else, even though it will always be regarded as the “black sheep” of his filmography. Although production values are quite high, this is not as sumptuously produced as Once Upon a Time in the West. The film doesn’t suffer too much as a result except for a slightly wonky special effects shot at the end involving a miniature.
Ennio Morricone once again provides the score, and for a while I thought he’d dropped the ball for once. The themes just did not jump out at me in the same way as in earlier films. However, with repetition, towards the end of the film it all gels together and becomes something quite, quite beautiful. The man’s a genius.
No review of this film would be complete without some comment on the title. This film is commonly called Duck, You Sucker, which is the film’s official English language title, but in the UK is known by the exploitative title of A Fistful of Dynamite. I absolutely loathe both. The first sounds like some screwball Terence Hill/Bud Spencer comedy; not that I have anything against these films (and will probably write a review or two on some of best in the near future), but it’s just wrong for a Leone movie dealing with such dark themes. Legend has it that Leone thought the phrase was in popular usage in the States (how, and in what context, I wouldn’t like to even guess!) and would not listen to his American stars’ insistence that it was not. The Fistful of Dynamite title obviously trades on past glories, which is also misleading as it is nothing like a “Spaghetti” Western, and has no gunfights or laconic anti-heroes who may or may not have a name. By far the best title is the French Once Upon a Time…the Revolution (his previous film was a massive hit there), which even keeps in with the loose idea that this is the second film in Leone’s second American trilogy. Unfortunately, though, this title seems the least well known of all, so I’ve opted to call it by its original Italian title, which I believe translates literally to “down the head”.
Whatever you call it, there’s no escaping the fact that this is by far the least seen of all Leone films since A Fistful of Dollars, with many still unaware of its presence. It did not do great box-office business, probably due to whatever misleading title the film was given in your territory. I’m sure had people known that Leone was only going to direct one more film it would have gotten more love. I’m just starting to realise that Giù la Testa has a lot more going for it than I previously thought, and, like its predecessor, needs to be viewed as a completely separate entity from the world-renowned and ever-popular Dollars films.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) August 27, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, Non-Asian, 1960s films , 3 commentsDirector: Sergio Leone Cast: Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards Territory: Italy
Original title: C’era una volta il West
Newlywed Jill (Cardinale) arrives in the town of Flagstone to find that her husband and his children from a previous marriage have been slain. The executions were carried out by Frank (Fonda), who is working for Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti), a rail baron crippled by a bone disease who is largely confined to his specially adapted train carriage. Frank plants evidence to implicate the bandit Cheyenne (Robards) and his gang, but upon befriending him, Jill finds he is not the man responsible. Cheyenne joins up with a harmonica-playing stranger (Bronson) to find out the truth. Harmonica, though, has his own agenda.
Upon watching this for the first time a few years ago, I was quite disappointed with certain aspects of this film. In retrospect, much of my criticism was simply down to the fact that I had watched The Good, the Bad and the Ugly the previous week and I couldn’t help comparing the two films all the way down the line. Now, I can judge the film on its own merits a lot more now, and Once Upon a Time in the West certainly does have a lot going for it.
It’s crystal clear right from the start that this is a big production. Paramount had given Leone a generous budget to work with and it shows (it has been stated that the Flagstone set alone cost more than A Fistful of Dollars). The cast list is even more impressive than before (with Henry Fonda gleefully playing against type), and the production moved to the United States to shoot some genuine western scenery. The direction from Leone is also excellent throughout, with more of his trademark wide shots mixed with extreme close-ups. In fact, Once Upon a Time in the West is probably his best looking western, even without the standout crane shot introducing the town of Flagstone.
One of the few things that doesn’t work so well as far as I’m concerned is the decision to make one of the leading characters female. Don’t get me wrong, Claudia Cardinale is very capable (and utterly, utterly beautiful) but I don’t think Leone really knew what to do with female characters; a little like Chang Cheh (I’ve got to make some kind of reference to the genre or seriously consider renaming this blog Heroes of the West!) in his films – who are usually either virtuous family members, untouchable goddesses or whores. The character of Jill McBain is a bit of a mixture of those. It seems to me an arbitrary decision to make a female lead, simply to do something different from the Dollars films. The result is her character seems the least well drawn of them all, although being a non-combatant it is sometimes refreshing to see things from her perspective and not from a gun-toting cowboy for once.
With the male leads we are on much more familiar ground. “Harmonica” is cut from the same cloth as the Man with No Name (it is rumoured the part was originally offered to Eastwood, who refused in order to make his name in Hollywood), a mysterious, laconic stranger who plays a haunting dirge on his mouth organ whenever he appears. His presence and purpose is unexplained throughout the film, but hinted at by his reference to men Frank has killed in the past. Leone films tend to give rise to all kinds of theories, but the strangest one I’ve heard concerns Harmonica. Some believe he was killed in the shootout that occurs at the start of the film, and spends the rest of the film as some kind of avenging spirit. It’s a nice thought but I’m pretty sure it’s not what Leone was thinking and doesn’t seem wholly feasible; but judge for yourself.
Ironically, seeing as how he had such a tough time on a Leone film, it was Eli Wallach who persuaded Henry Fonda to appear in this film. Leone had been trying for years to obtain him, but the quality of the scripts (or rather, the translations of the scripts) always put him off. Fonda does indeed have some presence as the ruthless, self-centred Frank, and from testimony obviously enjoyed playing the bad guy for once! His scene where Morton confronts him on the hillside, away from his specially adapted carriage, has particular bite when Fonda spits at him: “when you’re not on that train, you look like a turtle out of its shell”.
Robards rounds off the main cast with the mainly good-natured bandit Cheyenne, who has some nice chemistry with Bronson’s character.
Ennio Morricone provides the soundtrack once again, but this time his contribution is more conventional. All of the main characters have their own theme (one of which is actually a plot point in itself), and there’s also a surprisingly bouncy, melancholic tune that serves as the film’s main theme. There seems to be different motifs or cinematic themes throughout the film (such as water), but one seems to be rhythm; from the persistence of the windmill at the start to the rhythmic click-clack of the railroad. This is also captured in Morricone’s main theme.
While I still think Once Upon a Time in the West could have been paced a little better, I’m definitely coming to appreciate it a little more now. In particular, I’m growing fond of the screenplay, which includes plenty of sharp and snappy dialogue. It seems the film is a grower – it under performed at the box-office and but obtained its classic status in later years. Which leaves me hopeful of enjoying this one even more in future.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) August 22, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, War, Non-Asian, 1960s films , 7 commentsDirector: Sergio Leone Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef Territory: Italy
Original title: il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo
A drifter known only as Blondie (Eastwood) and a Mexican bandit Tuco (Wallach) have a nice scam going where the latter, wanted for heinous crimes, allows himself to get captured by the former, who collects the reward money and saves the bandit’s life at the last moment. They then split the reward money and head on to the next town to repeat the process. The partnership has many ups and downs (the couple distrust each other and try to kill each other with casual indifference) but the two are forced into working together again when they both come into separate pieces of information regarding the location of a cache of stolen Confederate gold worth $200,000. Unfortunately, Angel Eyes (Van Cleef) also knows about the gold, and his ruthlessness and viciousness outweighs even that of Tuco’s and Blondie’s. Paths cross and uneasy alliances are made and broken on the way to the gold, and all this occurring at a time when the country is being ripped apart by a bloody and horrific civil war.
More than a western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is more like an epic adventure. Finally, Leone had the budget to really go to town on this film, and the quantum leap between this and its predecessor is even more pronounced than between A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.
The first line of dialogue is delivered more than ten minutes after the beginning of the film. There are title cards for the three main characters that flash up on the screen upon conclusion of their introductory scene, and the last one appears when nearly a half hour has passed in film time. With those kind of statistics, you could be forgiven for thinking The Good, the Bad and the Ugly would be a little slow. Instead, it fits so many ideas into its running time that Leone could easily have made the film an hour longer and got away with it.
This time, Clint Eastwood is not as prominent, and there is a good argument to be made that Eli Wallach is the real star of the film. He certainly provides much of the humour and has more than his fair share of memorable scenes. Van Cleef provides a worthy adversary as the thoroughly evil Angel Eyes. His return is a thousand times removed from his role as the mostly benign Col Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More.
The simple story of three men in search of stolen gold is complicated only by the inconvenient interference of the war happening all around them. Oddly, it is rarely, if ever, directly commented on by the central characters until Blondie, witnessing a particularly futile attack, comments:
Never seen so many men wasted so badly…
Which pretty much sums up the folly of war in just a few words. Throughout the series, the Man with No Name has hit the nail on the head a few times, but never more so than here.
But that’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly all over. Practically every scene is outstanding, and it is by turns comic, poignant, witty, exciting, brutally violent, melancholic and dramatic without any of the disparate elements working against each other. The character of Tuco is especially entertaining, and rather than routing for Clint Eastwood all the time, the viewer can be strangely drawn to the rat-like bandit. He’s not simply there for comic relief, though. The scene where he confronts his brother, who has become a monk, is surprisingly weighty and well acted by Wallach.
Blondie, meanwhile, seems to have hardened somewhat from previous incarnations (if they are previous incarnations – see below) while paradoxically seemingly more compassionate and lyrical. His introductory scene sees him leaving Tuco to die in the desert – hardly the actions of a man with a strong code of justice. His sense of humour is wry and often dark to the point of absolute black (“sorry, Shorty”) and he dispenses put-downs and trades one-liners with Tuco to great effect.
Angel Eyes is, unsurprisingly, an altogether less sympathetic character. He’s also the least well drawn of the characters, but this may have been intentional; our lack of any background on him only goes to make him more mysterious and deadly. His introduction sets the tone when he refuses to renege on a job when offered more money to spare a man’s life and instead kill his employer: he takes the money and kills both parties, which has a kind of perverse sense of honour to it. Where he goes, extreme brutality usually follows, and the scenes of torture and cold-blooded murder are still quite shocking in the 21st Century – I can only speculate how nasty they looked back in 1966. He often disappears from the film for great lengths of time only to reappear out of nowhere and cause mayhem and destruction.
I’ve tried to avoid pointing out scenes in this review as I just got totally bogged down with “if I mention this, I have to mention that” and you realise the film is just so rich you’d spend all day saying stuff like “well, Tuco’s in the bath, and…” or “Tuco goes to a gun shop” or describing the bridge scene in great detail or any number of other occurrences.
There are a lot of clues that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a prequel to the other “Dollar” films. Blondie starts the film in an entirely different outfit from the other films and acquires his hat and sheepskin jacket from Angel Eyes at the Betterville prison camp, while he takes his trademark poncho from a dead soldier. This backs up other “evidence” from A Fistful of Dollars, where a grave is seen to carry the year 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War. Or it could all be accidental!
The score is once again provided by Ennio Morricone and it’s a great testament to him that there are probably only a handful of films in existence in the entire world that have a more instantly recognisable theme. But it doesn’t stop there – his ideas permeate the film and add to the atmosphere throughout. Of particular note is the “Ecstasy of Gold” score, which excellently compliments the stunning visuals.
It’s a shame that relationships began to be strained between Eastwood (and others) and Leone and they never worked together again. I’ve yet to see Once Upon a Time in America, but The Good, the Bad and the Ugly seems pretty unbeatable as Leone’s greatest work – certainly Once Upon a Time in the West didn’t feel as well-paced and accessible as this.
The version on review here is the somewhat controversial MGM Special Edition, with the addition of around 18 minutes’ worth of rare footage that was never dubbed into English before. One of the problems is that Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood both came in to do their lines more than thirty years after the film was shot, while Van Cleef, having died in 1989, is voiced by a professional voice actor. The somewhat predictable result is a jarring transition at times between the old and restored footage, particularly where the now very elderly Wallach is concerned. Eastwood commented that dubbing his old self was like “looping my son”, while you can hardly tell the difference in Van Cleef’s dialogue. It’s one of those impossible situations where people would have screamed blue murder if Wallach and Eastwood hadn’t come back to do their lines and professional “impersonators” had done the job for them. The restored footage does help resolve a few continuity problems that occur in the regular release, and we get another good bit of Blondie and Tuco banter in the desert, so I say it was worth it. Maybe I’m biased, though, as it’s the only version I’ve seen! A lot of people were annoyed, though, that the audio was overhauled completely, which I understand resulted in the replacement of all of the original gunshot sounds with new ones amongst other changes.
I usually shy away from mentioning much about the DVD releases of films and concentrate on the actual film when I’m writing this stuff, but a special mention has to be made to the extras on this 2-Disc set. There are masses of good mini documentaries in here, and Wallach and Eastwood are both present. Wallach, particularly, is insightful into the making of the film, and recounts the few times he was nearly killed on set with good-humour. He also recounts that he didn’t think the “shoot, don’t talk” line was supposed to be funny and played it straight – which probably adds to the effectiveness of the gag. The somewhat relaxed attitude to safety in Italian film is mentioned throughout, with Eastwood telling a nice anecdote about where he intended to be when the bridge blew, having worked on Leone pictures before! There are also featurettes on the real General Sibley, Leone, Ennio Morricone, plus a couple of “lost” and reconstructed scenes, a featurette about the restoration of the film and a few easter eggs. All in all, a grand package for a film that immediately entered my Top Ten films when I first saw it and promises to be a firm favourite for many years to come.
Rush Hour 3 (2007) August 18, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Comedy, Action, Non-Asian , add a commentDirector: Brett Ratner Cast: Chris Tucker, Jackie Chan, Noémie Lenoir, Max von Sydow Territory: USA Production Company: New Line Cinema
I had a choice of film at the cinema today: Rush Hour 3 or The Simpsons Movie. I was pretty much sure I’d hate the former, and pretty sure I’d like the latter. So the yellow family won. It’s strange, then, that the words that left my lips at the box office were: “Rush Hour 3, please”.
D’oh!
Anyway, I figure I’m going to have to see this film at some point so I might as well get it over with. So is it as bad as everyone makes out?
Well, probably not. But that’s not to say it’s a good film, because it’s not that either. For a start, it’s easily the most predictable film I’ve ever seen. I don’t know whether this was a deliberate ploy by Ratner to engender a feeling of cosy familiarity, but probably not. The plot involves the shooting of the Chinese Ambassador by a group of Triads based in France, or something. There’s certainly some excuse for the two to go to Paris and I’m pretty sure that was it. It makes sense: the first Rush Hour was a fish-out-of-water film about a Chinese cop in the US, the second was a fish-out-of-water film about a US cop in Hong Kong, so in this one they’re both fishes-out-of-water. My bet is Rush Hour 4 will take place on Mars.
The film is basically a series of comedy skits with the odd action scene thrown in, and more often than not, the comedy falls completely flat. For example, there’s a scene where a captured henchman who only speaks French is questioned by Tucker and Chan, using a nun as an interpreter. They trade insults via the nun without using language that might offend her. Sounds like a recipe for hilarity, doesn’t it? You can see the comic potential in such a situation but for some reason it never even raised a smile. Similarly, when Tucker runs into a couple of guys called “Yu” and “Mi”…well you can guess what happens. It’s pretty much the same joke that Mike Myers used in one of his Austin Powers movies with the Japanese girls Fook Yu and Fook Mi. And then you’ve got the pacifistic French taxi driver with fierce anti-American views. His diatribe seems so odd and out of place that you twig it almost immediately: he’s eventually going to turn into a gun-toting, gung-ho badass just like Carter, isn’t he?
The action is pretty much what you’d expect: almost non-existent from Chan, who, unless I’m mistaken, is doubled throughout the film. It says something about the state of the series when you realise that Tucker (who has put on a few pounds since the last picture) pulls a few impressive moves. The Parisian locations look pretty good, though, and there’s the occasional bit of sexiness from Lenoir as the damsel-in-distress/bad girl with a secret. But eventually you’ll be looking at your watch wondering just when the bad guy will be revealed (sadly, there are no prizes for guessing who it is) so that you can watch the outtakes go home.
There are a couple of laughs in here, but they’re few and far between. The outtakes are the best part of the whole film, and when Jackie bursts through a doorway, gun raised, yelling “cheese!” instead of “freeze!”, it provided the biggest laugh of them all. It then descends into a “let’s make the foreigner say naughty things” type of thing, with Chan being given various lines in reference to getting a “dirty movie” – a line that a lot of his hardcore fans will hate, incidentally. He spouts things like “I like hairy women”, “I’m into feet” and finally, “I like hoses”, before tuning off-screen to ask, “what does this mean?” Sad, really. And there’s the customary Tucker out-takes where he’s on a plane and can’t get his words out. He does manage to order the gefilte fish, though.
This film won’t be shown in China. Whether it’s because of some negative racial stereotyping, the inclusion of Roman Polanski in a cameo role, that line about Chan wanting to watch a dirty movie, or just because the film isn’t really very good is the subject of some debate. You can’t help but feel that they’re not going to miss out on an awful lot.
For a Few Dollars More (1965) August 15, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, Non-Asian, 1960s films , add a commentDirector: Sergio Leone Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volantè Territory: Italy
The success of A Fistful of Dollars is stamped all over this sequel. Instead of the whole film taking place in one small location, we get several (apparently, one of the town sets built for the film still stands to this day!). There are more extras, there’s more colour to the script, and most tellingly of all, Leone was now able to hire two American actors.
For a Few Dollars More tells the story of two bounty hunters (Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef) who travel the country blagging criminals. When a jailbreak frees a particularly dangerous criminal, El Indio (Volantè), the two team up to take him and his gang down. El Indio wastes no time upon his early release and immediately plans a daring bank raid, with the two bounty hunters in tow.
The extended scope of this sequel really does help the film, and the tale of bank raids, jailbreaks and bounty hunters is pretty compelling, especially when tempered with the same wry humour from the original. Some of the cast from A Fistful of Dollars return but in different roles, which can be a little confusing. Heading the cast of baddies is again Gian Maria Volantè as El Indio – a man apparently suffering from a severe dependence on marijuana, but who is a deadly shot and a crazed loon thanks to a painful past. His particular fetish is to challenge unfortunate souls to a duel using the last chime of his pocket-watch as a signal to begin.
The Man With No Name (although some call him “Monco”) has developed a little from A Fistful of Dollars and is now a slightly more moral character, in that he has a more pronounced sense of justice. He’s also less laconic and more prone to deliver the odd wisecrack.
Lee Van Cleef’s addition to the cast as the chilled, pipe-smoking veteran Col Mortimer gives Eastwood someone to play off, and the pair trade one-liners effectively. He’s given some nice scenes by himself; most notably his introduction right at the start of the film involving his train making an impromptu stop. Also, there’s an early appearance by a twitchy Klaus Kinski as one of Indio’s gang.
Again, the direction and cinematography is strong. One standout scene takes place at night and involves a battle of wills and a game of one-upmanship between Van Cleef and Eastwood, involving the shooting of a stationery hat across a dirt floor. The way the hat always lands in thin bands of light cast by neighbouring buildings is quite inventive and stylish.
As in the previous film, Morricone provides the score. While not as memorable as the previous instalment (and certainly nowhere near as identifiable as the next instalment) it serves the piece well.
Overall, definitely a worthy sequel, but one that seems overshadowed by both the originality of A Fistful of Dollars and the epic adventure of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) August 10, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, Non-Asian, 1960s films , 4 commentsDirector: Sergio Leone Cast: Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volantè, Wolfgang Lukschy, Marianne Koch Territory: Italy Production Company: Constantin Film Produktion
I used to be badgered by people who knew I was into Hong Kong movies that I would “love” Spaghetti Westerns. I didn’t see what the attraction would be as I had never been into westerns, even as a kid. But on seeing Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy a few years ago, I’ll admit I know where they were coming from, and have become quite fond of the sub-genre.
This is a tale of a drifter (Clint Eastwood) strolling into town and playing one group of criminals against another for his own monetary gain. The story itself isn’t original – Kurosawa successfully sued for similarities to his film Yojimbo, despite the latter film itself bearing more than a passing resemblance to an 18th century stage play. What made it original was the dark, oppressive tone of the film (which became a staple of the genre and was occasionally taken to ridiculous extremes), the introduction of a laconic yet charismatic anti-hero and some dramatic and stylish directing. Not to mention the addition of one of the finest film score composers who ever lived.
The first five minutes sets the tone pretty well – this film, and all the characters in it, seem to have a morbid fascination with death. We even start with a hanging, and the only happy man in town is the local undertaker. However, the plot of the Baxters (bad) against the Rojos (very bad) is not overly compelling, and the story loses momentum during the latter’s burning of the former’s mansion. In a parallel to the Bruce Lee films, the screen seems to go dead when Eastwood isn’t on screen – although it’s more evident here than on subsequent films. Thankfully, the tempo does pick up again for the inevitable climactic showdown, though.
Although Leone insisted that the three films were unrelated, it seems pretty likely that the infamous Man With No Name is the same character in all three films. Furthermore, I’ve just realised (and a quick scan on the internet seems to confirm, or at least validate the theory) that A Fistful of Dollars is set after The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and that Leone’s 1966 masterpiece is a prequel to this film. Whether the Man With No Name had a name or not is still a matter of debate. The tag seems to have been an invention of US distributors, but interestingly, although referred to by other characters under a variety of names from film to film, he never actually refers to himself under any of them. For example, in this one, he’s called Joe, but only by the elderly undertaker.
The music is provided by Ennio Morricone, and his style is evident even this early in his career with his haunting score of grunts, whistles along with more traditional musical instruments. Clint provides his own voice for the English language version, and he obviously took a great deal of care in the looping process to lip-synch the audio. I’m glad I ‘discovered’ these films in the DVD age, as I’m positive that all of Leone’s films would have looked utterly rubbish in a fullscreen format. You would just miss far too much detail on a pan-and-scan edition that it just wouldn’t be worth it as Leone seemed to work entirely in extreme close-ups and dramatic panoramic shots.
For anyone who still hasn’t discovered the Leone/Eastwood films, this is the obvious place to start, and A Fistful of Dollars still makes for entertaining viewing today. But be advised that there was better to come.
Kill Bill (2003/2004) July 28, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, Thriller, Non-Asian , 7 commentsDirector: Quentin Tarantino Cast: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A Fox Guest Starring: Sonny Chiba, Lau Ka-Fai (Gordon Liu) Territory: USA
The Bride (Uma Thurman) wakes from a coma after being shot in the head by Bill (David Carradine) on her wedding day for attempting to leave his crime organisation and the “Deadly Viper Assassination Squad”. Her unborn child gone, the only thing she can think about is revenge on Bill and the rest of the assassination squad who killed those she loved.
Assuming no prior knowledge, Kill Bill was released in two separate parts upon Tarantino’s discovery that he had shot “too much good footage” for one movie. However, I have decided to treat it more or less as one film for this review, with just an occasional reference to the two Volumes.
Kill Bill’s intentions are clear right from the beginning – we start with the Shaw Brothers’ fanfare and “Shawscape” logo and with a genuine 70’s “Now for our Feature Presentation” type of promo film. Quentin Tarantino’s revenge movie picks bits and pieces from just about every genre of cult cinema but focuses on Japanese and Chinese action movies as well as general “revenge” movies from the 70’s. Tarantino doesn’t so much nod to these types of movies as headbutt them, such is his heavy-handedness at times. We are regularly treated to B-movie dialogue and (presumably) deliberately wooden acting in keeping with the source material. Which is all well and good and does have a certain entertainment value of its own, but when lines like: “That’s right – I killed your Master. And now I’m going to kill you – with your own sword…” are uttered, I have to cringe a little. I was sure it was going to be followed up with “So. You think you can beat me? Well then. You must be tired of living!” but thankfully it wasn’t.
I’m not going to give away The Bride’s real name, which seems to be a secret through most of the film for some strange reason, even warranting beeping out when uttered by the characters. It’s just one example of the strange stylistic choices Tarantino makes in the film. Some are quite good though, and point to the possibility that the film is set in an alternate reality (for some reason, I found The Bride’s ability to take her Katana onboard an aircraft quite inventive).
The House of Blue Leaves section that closes Volume One is for many a highlight, but for me was the least enjoyable part of the whole experience (with the exception of the Anime sequence, which I didn’t care for at all). Tarantino mixes Japanese and Chinese movie styles without adding anything interesting of his own. The Crazy 88 gang are despatched by the Bride with deliberatly overblown violence and gore in a scene too reminiscent of Vengeance!, The Boxer from Shantung, and…well, a dozen Chang Cheh films from the early 70’s. Oh, and let’s not forget the nod to The Streetfighter when we switch to monochrome, and the fact that Uma Thurman wears Bruce Lee’s tracksuit from Game of Death. The whole section troubled me for a long time before I finally put my finger on it – it all looks too much like how a westerner with limited knowledge of Hong Kong/Japanese action movies would expect their action sequences to look like. Obviously this is not true (and let’s not forget Yuen Wo-Ping is the primary action director), but I couldn’t help think it whenever someone moves their head from side to side quickly and the air “swishes” in a ridiculous manner. Is he taking the piss or what?
Which leads me neatly on to the obligatory training section. Uma Thurman trains under Baak Mei (here under his Mandarin name of Pai Mei) in yet another homage to Hong Kong Kung Fu flicks from the 70’s. Tarantino uses (and reuses) the patented Shaw Brothers shaky zoom all the way through this sequence in what struck me as the most tiring public display of fanboy masturbation possible.
When he’s not cherry-picking Asian cult cinema the film is actually quite watchable, and does have some flash and flare. David Carradine is excellent (which surprised me) and he gives the best performance by a country mile, with his believable portrayal of an everyday man with sickeningly nasty qualities who manages to be thought provoking without lapsing into cartoon villainy. His discourse on Superman is also well delivered, in a scene evocative of Jules’ final speech in Pulp Fiction.
Sonny Chiba must also get a mention as the Swordsmith Hattori Hanzo. He’s clearly having a great time in his scene with Thurman, and although he doesn’t take part in the action himself, his cameo remains one of the highlights of the movie. He’s also remarkably well preserved for a man of his advancing years.
Lau Ka-Fai (or Gordon Liu, if you prefer) is the other genuine Hero of the East to take screen time here, and has a dual role of sorts. Firstly, he’s Johnny Mo of the Crazy 88’s and then he’s legendary Shaolin-burner Baak Mei (who appears quite sprightly despite being several hundred yeas old). In the first role, he sports a Kato mask (is there nothing Tarantino hasn’t referenced in this movie?!) and provides little more than Uma-fodder. As Baak Mei, he looks pretty much identical to every other depiction of the man himself or any other cruel but brilliant Master training his unruly pupil. He handles the action scenes about as well as you’d expect, and doesn’t seem to have aged a jot since his 70’s heyday.
The rest of the cast include our favourite ear-slicing psycho Michael Madsen, who turns in a nice performance of a former swordsman turned drunkard and faded star Daryl Hannah, who partakes in the only truly great action scene when she takes on The Bride in an inadequately small caravan. This scene more than makes up for the deficiencies of everything that goes before it with its cartoon violence and dark humour. Lucy Liu plays half Japanese/half Chinese American O-Ren Ishii, a head of some kind of Yakuza clan. Yeah, whatever.
The soundtrack’s excellent (thankfully, one constant in Tarantino’s oeuvre) and I would actually defend the film’s length as being essential to the conclusion. And despite some of my grave misgivings, I’d have to say I actually like the film (didn’t see that coming, did you?). But it seems to me that Kill Bill is a cinematic equivalent of a cover versions album. And while some cover version albums are certainly entertaining, they do tend to make one wish that the band or artiste had spent the time writing new material and that’s pretty much how I feel when I view this film.
Oh, and Uma Thurman has the most horrible toes I’ve ever seen on a woman.