Dog Bite Dog (2006) November 11, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Thriller, 2000s films , 1 comment so farDirector: Soi Cheang Cast: Edison Chen, Sam Lee, Pei Pei Wei-Ying, Wayne Lai, Lam Suet Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Art Port Inc; Same Way Productions
The husband of a barrister pays to have a Cambodian hitman (Edison Chen) kill his wife. The killer’s getaway is thwarted by the police headed by Wai (Sam Lee) and is cornered, taking more lives before making a spectacular escape. Wai then comes after the killer with everything he’s got, even going well outside of the law to get revenge rather than justice.
Dog Bite Dog is an exceptionally squalid, gritty, dirty and distressing film. The excessive (but realistic) gore just keeps on coming and coming. No wonder this received a Cat III rating – I would seriously advise against eating while watching this film. It is also one of the bleakest, starkest and most nihilistic films I’ve seen in a long time. It doesn’t quite make The Deer Hunter look like a Three Stooges film, but it’s still pretty grim.
The cast are brilliant - including Edison Chen, believe it or not. He plays a young man raised in brutal fight camps in Cambodia who then progresses to assassination, and is man with nothing to lose. The main reason for Chen’s success here I suspect is the fact that he barely speaks, and when he does, it is in Cambodian. Against him is Sam Lee as Wai, a cop with his own problems – his father is currently in a coma and who will face accusations of drug dealing if he should wake. I only know Lee from comedic roles (including the horror comedy Bio Zombie) and I was initially sceptical of his ability to play it straight. However, he pulls it off, giving a great and natural performance. The cast is rounded out with the always watchable Wayne Lai (also from Bio Zombie, now that I think about it!), and Johnny To regulars Eddie Cheung and Lam Suet (who seems to be in just about everything I watch these days!). The only real female presence come from newcomer Pei Pei Wei-Ying, who is an abused young woman who forms an attachment with the hitman when he kills her bullying father.
The hatred of Wai for the hitman is handled in a believable manner and it is quite exciting when the two men meet for the first hour and a half of the film. One thing that did seem a little unnecessary was the inclusion of dog snarls and animal noises when the two start knocking each other about – yes, they’re like animals, I get it, stop hitting me over the head with the metaphor!
Without going into too much detail for those who are yet to see it, the film seems to wrap up in a satisfactory (if inevitably grim) way after about an hour and a half. Instead though, we get another fifteen minutes tacked on which I could have done without and do the film no favours whatsoever. The whole tone changes after this, and becomes a little predictable in my view. Also, do we really need another montage scene with a pop song playing over it? In 2006? In a film as dark as this? I do believe the director shot himself in the foot quite badly with this ill-considered coda. And when you thought the violence and gore had stopped once and for all, it’s time to get the sick bags out one final time for the climax.
There’s a reasonably good film in here, for sure, but it’s too uneven and the relentlessly dark tone makes it a bit of a hard slog to get through and I can’t honestly see myself ever wanting to sit through all that again. If you do watch Dog Bite Dog, don’t expect many chuckles – and it might be an idea to lay off the popcorn unless you want to see it again later.
Lam Suet-o-meter: Low. But here’s here and even has the name “Fat Lam”. I wonder how long it took to come up with that name?
Election (2005) November 5, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Drama, Thriller, 2000s films , 7 commentsDirector: Johnnie To Cast: Simon Yam, Tony Leung (Ka-Fai), Wong Chung, Louis Koo, Lam Suet Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Milkyway Image
My Johnnie To season continues with Election, a nasty look into the world of the Triad. The Wo Sing Triad is one of the biggest crime organisations in Hong Kong with an estimated membership of 50,000. Every two years, the leader is elected by a council of elders (or “uncles”), and this year’s contenders are Lok (Simon Yam) and Big D (Tony Leung Ka-Fai). When Big D loses the contest fair and square, he doesn’t take it well and threatens to steal the power from under his rival, something Lok will not allow. The chase is on for the century-old baton which will bestow official leadership to the head of the Wo Sing group, and possibly start a horrific civil war in the process.
Election’s tale of warring Triads, corruption, tradition, political allegories and spoon-eating psychopaths (yes, you read that right) was nominated for a whole bunch of Golden Horse awards in 2006 and even won a few (including Best Picture and Best Director). It is a very well presented film with a great acoustic guitar theme, and Johnny To again shows he’s great at shooting exteriors. The characters are mostly great and believable, but I was quite surprised when I heard that the Tony Leung that was in this film was Leung Ka-Fai and not Leung Chiu-Wai. Maybe To made a mistake and hired the wrong one and couldn’t back out, but this particular Leung overcooks it a bit in my opinion in this one. Yam is excellent as the more restrained Lok, a gangster who also has to contend with family life with his son and I particularly liked Wong Tin-Lam as Teng Wai, a very human “uncle”. Old Shaw Brothers superstar David Chiang also gets a role as an anti-Triad police officer, which surprised me – I thought he’d retired to Canada years ago!
The film does play well as a serious look at organised crime and the consequences of being in such an organisation, but it also has flashes of comedy (such as when the representatives of Lok and Big D resort to sabotaging each other’s cars) which is sometimes very dark. There are also moments of suspense and action when the ceremonial baton is unearthed and transported from the Mainland to Hong Kong. Whoever owns the baton is seen to be in control of the Society, and this means that those who want it will stop at nothing to obtain it.
Election is not an action film or a “Heroic Bloodshed” film; it is more of a crime drama, and one scene reminded me strongly of a scene from Krzysztof Keislowski’s A Short Film About Killing. It’s not all doom and gloom, but it’s not light and fluffy either. It’s also a little confusing in places, which I’m coming to understand is par for the course with a Johnnie To film. I’m thinking another viewing will probably yield more appreciation. I’m not sure if this film is meant to be a satire on the corruptive nature of democracy, but I’m pretty sure one of the lessons taught by the film is that patience is a virtue. Either that or don’t accept invitations to go fishing with someone you once screwed over.
Lam Suet-o-meter: Medium. Mr Lam is the aptly named “Big Head”. Quite a lot of exposure for this part…
The Mission (1999) October 31, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Thriller, 1990s films , add a commentDirector: Johnnie To Cast: Anthony Wong, Lam Suet, Francis Ng, Jackie Lui, Roy Cheung, Simon Yam Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Milkyway Image
Triad boss Lung (Eddie Ko) is targeted for assassination by persons unknown. Mid-level gangster Frank (Simon Yam) assembles a team of bodyguards to keep Lung safe and to draw out the assassin. These turn out to be Curtis (Anthony Wong), Shin (Jackie Lui), Roy (Francis Ng), Mike (Roy Cheung) and James (Lam Suet).
It seems like a simplistic plot, and in a way it is, but Johnnie To’s The Mission is a lot more involved than it first appears. Besides, the real meat of the film can’t be mentioned without causing some serious spoilers for anyone who’s never seen it.
The team of bodyguards is assembled without the viewer knowing anything about them, and this causes some confusion (well, it did with me, anyway). Their backgrounds aren’t talked about (except for Curtis, who is a hairdresser in his other life!) and until things get underway you’re left wondering what the hell’s going on too much of the time. It was obviously a deliberate ploy by To to give the characters an air of mystery, but in my opinion, he achieves this a little too well. It comes as a great relief when things eventually settle down and everything clicks into place, and I strongly suspect this will be a much more enjoyable film to watch on second viewing.
There are some great touches, such as when the gangsters are waiting around for their boss and decide to kick a crumpled ball of paper to each other to while away the time. It’s a human touch that is lacking from too many films of this nature, and makes what follows surprisingly believable.
The gunfights are also handled in a very different way from your standard “Heroic Bloodshed”. In one stand out scene, the gang seem almost bored by an attack on them. Showing the mundanity of “another day at the office” for a gang of gun-wielding killers sends shivers down the spine.
Acting throughout is outstanding, and Anthony Wong shows his usual understated flair. The supporting actors, many of who would reappear for To’s Exiled in 2006, also perform brilliantly. The only flaw to the film is a rather by-the-numbers synth score and the aforementioned difficulty of the early stages of the film.
Unfortunately, the Mei-Ah disc from Hong Kong is a travesty. For some reason, the distributor’s caption seems to have burned itself on the print and appears like a kind of watermark through the entire film. If that wasn’t enough, the picture transfer is shoddy anyway, and the sound is muffled and muddy. It actually looks like a VHS bootleg, and this kind of thing it totally unacceptable for any film made in the last ten years, let alone one as good as this. My copy also came from Hong Kong with a big dent in the cover like someone had spent a fair while sitting on it, but I realise that this might not apply to all copies of the disc…
The Big Holdup (1975) September 29, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Thriller, 1970s films , add a commentDirector: Chor Yuen Starring: Danny Lee, Chen Kuan-Tai, Tin Ching Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Shaw Brothers
A gang of young robbers steal HK$5,000,000 as it is being transferred from a bank and get promptly ratted on by their boss, Maiguang (Tin Ching). Maiguang then, just as promptly, gets knocked off by his boss. The youngsters, now fugitives from the law, try to piece together what went wrong as they evade the law.
The Big Holdup is meant to be a taut crime thriller from veteran director Chor Yuen. The first half hour typifies exactly why I love Hong Kong cinema yet sometimes find it so frustrating – the pace never lets up for a second, and packs in so much energy for a full-length film in its own right. Unfortunately, as is quite often the case, this results in one hell of a confusing mess, as characters are introduced with scarcely a line of dialogue, people are casually bumped-off and betrayals are heaped on betrayals.
Thankfully, the second half hour calms down considerably and the film gets a chance to breathe. We find that each of the five fugitives have a good reason to turn from the path of the righteous into a life of crime (we hitherto couldn’t care whether they lived or died – another failing of the earlier act of the film). We have Chen Kuan-Tai as Ma Rulong, who, in a rare non-action role, actually plays an action film star who has fallen on hard times (the scene where he gets screwed over by his film studio is probably not far from the truth), Danny Lee as Jiuzai who just wants to feed his siblings away from their father who is psychotically addicted to cigarettes (that’s what it says in the subtitles, anyway). Elsewhere, we have the former racing driver whose wife has just six months to life but longs for a world cruise and a pair of brothers in trouble with the Triads.
After the backstories have been told, we come back to the present day and rejoin the characters as they fight for survival. The final half hour deals with each member’s varying fate.
If you can make it past the first half hour of this film you might find some enjoyment here, but generally The Big Holdup feels rather predictable. Incidentally, there is no “holdup” in this film, which I found rather disappointing; I was expecting a kind of early People’s Hero (which I hear is finally getting a DVD release soon). The directorial style seems a bit hackneyed as well now, with a lot of interior shots with overhead lights swinging dramatically where they don’t really have a need to swing at all. In any event, it’s unlikely you’re going to stumble on this film by accident, so avoiding it shouldn’t be a problem. If you do want to seek it out, it’s probable that you already know exactly what you’re getting.
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.
Bullet Train (1975) June 9, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Drama, Thriller, 1970s films , add a commentDirector: Junya Sato Cast: Ken Takakura, Kei Yamamoto, Eiji Go, Sonny Chiba Territory: Japan Production Company: Toei Productions
The Hikari 109 Bullet Train has an unexpected passenger – a bomb that primes itself when the train reaches 80KPH. Subsequently, if the train decreases speed below 80KPH, the bomb will go off - killing the 1,500 people on board.
Quite obviously used as a starting point for Jan de Bont’s Speed in 1994, it still has to be realised that Bullet Train is a different kettle of fish altogether. In actual fact, it is in itself a kind of remake of Airport.
Or at least it starts out that way. The passengers assemble at the start and all the classics are there – the spoilt pop star, the twitchy, self-centred businessman, the convict en-route to prison and of course everyone’s favourite – the pregnant woman. Plus we have extremely sweaty train driver Aoki (Sonny Chiba, in an exclusively seated role), the unflappable train crew and the guys running the show in the control booth.
A great deal of tension is created early on when the Control Centre discover the train’s been compromised and relay the information to the driver. However, what you expect to be a series of mishaps and challenges along the route never really happens. There’s one problem when a train ahead on the track has mechanical problems, and inevitably the pregnant woman goes into labour, but not a lot else until much later on.
The reason for this is that for quite a lot of the movie we follow the bombers. Lead bomber Okita (Ken Takakura) pretty much takes centre stage throughout – and at one point late in the movie I’d even forgotten about the train entirely! It must be said the film’s handling of the terrorists is unique and actually rather interesting – they are portrayed as human, compassionate and they elicit a damn sight more sympathy than the obnoxious passengers on the train. It’s an odd direction, certainly. Their cause (if they have one) is never mentioned, and they are always referred to only as “radicals”. It seems to me that they are in it purely for the money, rather than for any political motivation. However, not being particularly knowledgeable about Japan’s socio-political stance during the mid 70’s, it could just be a form of the filmmakers showing some tact by not naming any specific cause by name.
All this kind of makes for a bit of a jumble of a movie. Certainly the “disaster” angle of the film is a washout, as we don’t really see enough of the train and it’s inhabitants to care – and as mentioned before, they’re a pretty objectionable lot anyway. These films work by creating a sense of claustrophobia, creating the illusion that the viewer is also in the perilous situation, but when so much of the film is shot away from the train this never has the chance to work.
The version reviewed here is the unabridged Japanese language version released by Optimum Asia. At over two and a half hours, it’s certainly an epic (even the cut version is nearly two hours long), and I don’t think there’s enough in there to warrant that running time. But Bullet Train is occasionally enjoyable – it’s just that I can’t see myself wanting to watch it again anytime soon.
Virus (1980) June 2, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Blogroll, Thriller, 1980s films , 4 commentsDirector: Kinji Fukasaku Cast: Masao Kusakari, Bo Svenson, George Kennedy, Robert Vaughn Territory: Japan
A horrifying man-made virus is unleashed onto the world – killing everyone except the world’s scientists stationed in Antarctica and the crew of a nuclear submarine which set sail before the outbreak. The stunned survivors gather together, but find that old nationalistic prejudices still apply despite the apocalypse. Then, a final act of human stupidity threatens to destroy the Antarctic base and finally put an end to mankind.
My all-time favourite novel is Stephen King’s The Stand, which has clearly been used as a template for the apocalyptic theme of this film. Both use a man-made flu-like virus which is accidentally unleashed (although I can’t remember now if this was ever explicitly mentioned in the first published version of The Stand, which was the only version available at the time this film was made) and devastates the world. It does then veer off in a different direction, with the survivors at the South Pole trying to resurrect the human race against a Cold War backdrop.
To give it its due Virus has aged particularly well, Cold War references aside. A lot of the themes could well apply today, and, for a film set in the near future of 1982, that is certainly quite a feat. The scope of the film is also extremely commendable – it seems that no sociological issue is left unaddressed. It’s often a downfall of films like these that gloss over certain important issues, whether it be social, sexual, political, national or suchlike.
And that’s where, I think, the film falls down. I feel Virus never really establishes a focus. It can be reasonably said that there is no “star” of this film, and that can be a tad disconcerting. A case could be made that Masao Kusakari is the focus as he has the most screen time, but his character is as broadly drawn as anybody’s, really. And his English is not quite good enough to carry him through the picture – there were several times I found myself struggling to understand him.
I also have trouble with the film’s response to sexual attitude – after the rape of one of the community’s eight women, the response is along the lines of “well, it’s terrible, but it’s bound to happen”. They then rule that the women must, essentially, “service” the 850-odd men on a rota basis. The women, evidently, do not argue against this. Abstinence is not an option, then?
All of the detail that Virus goes into portray the end of the world makes for a pretty plodding movie, and it’s only in the last half hour that it really takes off. I understand the film bombed on release, which is probably why I’d never heard of it until about three weeks ago. But the large-scale international cast and high production values (it was the most expensive film from Japan at the time) do make for a reasonably well-presented project. However, Chuck Connors as an Englishman? I think not! Actually, the best bit of casting goes to the bloke who played Dr Horatio Kane in my old favourite Kill and Kill Again. He even gets a couple of lines!
The version reviewed here is the full Japanese version, which has been remastered and presented in widescreen and runs at about 2 hours 35 minutes. There are other versions available, but they are abridged and usually fullscreen. The full-length version can be obtained on Region 1 DVD on the “Sonny Chiba Action Pack”, which is odd as it’s not an action movie nor a Sonny Chiba movie (he has about thirty seconds worth of screen time and maybe two lines of dialogue). Although it can’t complete with other apocalypse films (one of my favourites is a little New Zealand film called The Quiet Earth) it is rather a shame that the film seems to have fallen by the wayside and largely been forgotten.