Seven Samurai (1954) September 3, 2008
Posted by Cal in : War, 1950s films , 3 commentsDirector: Akira Kurosawa Main Cast: Takashi Shimura; Toshirô Mifune; Yoshio Inaba; Daisuke Katô; Seiji Miyaguchi; Minoru Chiaki; Isao Kimura Territory: Japan
“This may be the one that kills us” - Kambei
In the 16th Century, during the age of Japan’s bloody civil wars, a small village is in imminent danger of being over-run by bandits, until the village elder declares that they must hire Samurai to protect them. Six Ronin are gathered, and due to hardships of their own, agree to work simply for food. A seventh, pretending to be a Samurai but actually an orphan farmer, follows behind and is eventually accepted into the group. Together with the villagers, the Samurai defend the village from the bandit horde.
Seven Samurai is often cited as the first modern action movie, and it’s easy to see why – the film feels a lot more current than a film from 1954 should be. A lot of this is down to techniques, both in scripting and direction, which were new then and are still in use today. More importantly, it’s also a fantastic film, and one that has earned its status as an immortal classic.
“A true Samurai never drinks enough to dull his wits” - Kambei
The characters of the Samurai themselves are captivating. Kambei (Takashi Shimura) is approached by the villagers after they see him perform an act of heroism while on their travels looking for suitable recruits. We first meet him in a town where he agrees to rescue a child from a thief holding him hostage in a barn. Kambei shaves his head (removing his topknot – a shocking thing for a Samurai to do) and poses as a monk to rescue the child. We then learn he is a veteran of many battles, all of which he fought on the losing side. He is followed in town by a young idealistic Samurai called Katsushiro (Isao Kimura), who Kambei takes under his wing. Kambei then assumes the lead and recruits the other Samurai, starting with the archer Gorobei (Yoshio Inaba) who joins simply because he likes Kambei’s character. Then a chance meeting with an old war comrade and Shichiroji (Daisuke Katô) is brought on board followed by Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi), an elder Samurai who’s an expert swordsman, and Heihachi, “an amusing man” and provider of moral support. Armed with six Samurai, they are heading back to their village when they notice they are being followed by Kikuchiyo (Toshirô Mifune), a wannabe Samurai and a figure of fun for the group.
It is Mufune’s character who is the focus of most of the film. He is both the unlikely hero and the comic relief. He is illiterate and shows the other Samurai a stolen family tree, in the hope of proving himself to be a nobleman – except when he points to himself on paper, he chooses a thirteen-year-old’s identity, and the name – Kikuchiyo – is a girl’s. It’s a gag that still works today (as well as him carrying a sword too big to compensate for his lack of ability) and further adds to the film’s timeless quality. But Kikuchiyo is more than comic relief; he ends up as the real thing.
Subtlety is the key to the characterisation, and the film itself most of the time. Although it does dip into melodrama on a few occasions, given the strength of the remaining material it’s easy to overlook a couple of minutes’ worth of arms flailing about and uncontrollable wailing (by the villagers, not the Samurai, obviously). The film does run for an extraordinarily long time (well over three hours in NTSC) but, like a true classic, never outstays its welcome. The length is necessary for the viewer to bond with the characters (especially Kyuzo, I find, as he tends to be in the background a lot).
“Two more down” - Kyuzo
It’s difficult to begin to give any critical analysis of the film as so many quotes and images pop up in your head when thinking back to it. A brief few snapshots: Kyuzo disappearing into the night to get one of the muskets from the bandits without fuss, ceremony or false modesty; Kikuchiyo showing up for his audition blind drunk and claiming to be a 13 year old girl; the defence of the village by trapping one or two bandits at a time within the village itself; Kambei shaving his topknot off to save the child; Shichiroji’s sinisterly happy smile when Kambei tells him that this job might be the one that kills them; the revenge attack on the bandit stronghold; Kikuchiyo finally proving his worth on the battlefield. The highlights are literally too many to name.
“By protecting others, you save yourself” - Kambei
After a time, you grow intimate with the village and its inhabitants. You don’t need to be told that, near the end of the movie, the place where all the villagers are waiting with their bamboo pikes is the north of the town because we already know the place like the back of our hand. We know that the three buildings lying outside the protected area are doomed but a necessary loss to protect the rest of the village, and are annoyed at those who selfishly want to save them for their own purpose. We identify with Yohei (Bokuzen Hidari), the elderly farmer, because he is the everyman, and ourselves.
All of this (and more) makes Seven Samurai one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen. I know it’s on a lot of “top films” lists, but I generally don’t agree with such things. This is definitely an exception, and if you haven’t seen it yet, prepare to be engrossed in these Samurai’s small but significant world.
I defended my post” - Yohei
For the second time in as many weeks, I feel compelled to mention the DVD release of the film. I’ve seen this film on both the BFI and Criterion release (not on the same evening, though!). Though the Criterion 3 Disc set is nothing short of beautiful, the less-expensive BFI disc is not inferior in terms of transfer. Obviously, there are fewer extras on the latter, stretching only to an audio commentary (I guess there wasn’t much else they could fit on the disc). The extras on the Criterion release are great – a cosy two-hour chat with Kurosawa in his own living room and a very interesting fifty-minute documentary on the film being the most noteworthy, as well as a lovely little booklet of essays and interviews to round off the package. I do have an issue with them both though and it’s about the subtitles. The BFI release is excellently subtitled but occasionally neglects to subtitle short responses or people just shouting out someone’s name, which I found a little annoying. The Criterion disc addresses this but it does tend to use modern Americanised English quite a lot, which definitely feels out of place in a film about 16th Century Japan. These minor gripes aside, you can’t really go wrong with either disc. Another small piece of advice: the Criterion disc seems to run a lot longer than the BFI disc even taking the Pal speedup into consideration. I’m reasonably certain there’s nothing missing in the BFI version, and note that the Criterion disc includes the intermission segment.
“In the end, we lost this battle too” - Kambei
Mercenaries From Hong Kong (1982) March 29, 2008
Posted by Cal in : Action, War, 1980s films , add a commentDirector: Wong Jing Cast: Ti Lung; Chan Wai-Man; Chan Pak-Cheung; Lo Leih; Johnny Wang; Wong Yu Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Shaw Brothers
A businessman’s daughter contacts mercenary-for-hire Luo Li (Ti Lung) to avenge her father’s murder by an assassin who has fled to Cambodia. Luo assembles his crack team for the journey into war-torn Cambodia: a knife expert, a deadly sniper, a bare-fist fighting expert, a thief and a bomb specialist and heads into the danger zone. But once there, their plan alters when it becomes evident that things aren’t as straightforward as they seem…
Mercenaries From Hong Kong opens with a shot of Ti Lung pumping iron to an anonymous instrumental band’s rendition of Blue Oyster Cult’s Teen Archer, and you immediately know this isn’t going to be a run-of-the-mill Shaw Brothers Kung Fu flick. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the use of so many Shaw players, you may be forgiven for thinking you were watching a Golden Harvest film. For a company that never really moved with the times, Mercenaries From Hong Kong looks amazingly “contemporary” for a late-period Shaw flick, and unlike virtually all other productions from the era, hardly any of it is shot on a claustrophobic sound stage, and outdoor sets and locations are used extensively.
The story is hardly original, and pretty much rips off every war movie where an ensemble cast goes off behind enemy lines. Small band of commandoes against insurmountable odds? Check. Soldier hoping to pay for life-saving operation for sick daughter? Check. Two members of team hating each other’s guts until their backs are against the wall? Check. Backstabbing traitor masquerading as everyone’s friend? Big fat check. And when one of the team asks Luo to look after his child “in case anything happens to me”, you just know he isn’t going to make it. You might as well just shoot him in the face there and then, get it over with and recalculate everyone’s paycheck. Especially when he stupidly forgets his lucky necklace before engaging the enemy.
As well as the hackneyed plot devices and clichés, the direction isn’t terribly good. Wong Jing became infamous for his screwball comedies and exploitation movies, and both genres impose on Mercenaries From Hong Kong to a certain degree. We have a scene of Ti Lung being The Exterminator, while the inclusion of Nat Chan Pak-Cheung brings a little too much light relief for my taste. In fact, humour crops up a number of times and it just impedes the film’s progress and atmosphere.
However, one thing can’t be denied: Mercenaries From Hong Kong is extremely good fun despite (or maybe because of) its cornier elements. There’s a mass brawl in a shopping centre that is really exciting to watch, and features dozens of improvised weapon-wielding stuntmen and extras. The action scenes in general are another aspect that looks decidedly un-Shaw-like and again look more like they came from Golden Harvest’s fight choreographers. The cast includes some of Shaw’s top players as well as their perennial action-man Ti Lung, and it’s fantastic seeing Johnny Wang and Lo Leih given good-guy roles for a change. Immortal bad guys Lei Hoi-Sang and Yuen Wah also turn up to add some weight to the heavies on the other side.
It’s surprising (and a little disappointing) how little of this film is actually set in the jungles of Cambodia, as primarily the action takes place in and around Hong Kong, but Mercenaries From Hong Kong probably exceeded its remit by coming up with a film that still entertains some 26 years after it was made.
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.
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.
Sengoku Jieitai (1979) July 19, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, Sci-Fi, War, 1970s films , add a commentDirector: Mitsumasa Saito Cast: Sonny Chiba, Jun Eto, Toshitaka Kadokawa Territory: Japan Production Company: Kadokawa Haruki Jimusho
AKA Time Slip
A group of Japanese infantry are out on manoeuvres one night when they find themselves sharing a surreal psychedelic experience. Once the dust clears, the soldiers are shocked to find the nearby power plant has vanished and they are being observed by a group of horsemen dressed as Samurai. What they take to be an historical re-enactment turns decidedly sinister when they are ambushed by about a hundred of these figures, and the arrows they are firing are far from fake! Lieutenant Iba (Sonny Chiba) takes charge of his men, and along with a helicopter, a tank, a small military boat and a truck armed with a carbine, he cuts a bloody swath through what he begins to realise is 16th century Japan. The soldiers theorise that they have experienced a “Time Slip”, a kind of chronological earthquake that has transported them back 400 years to a particularly turbulent point in Japan’s history, with clans fighting each other for dominance in a country torn apart by civil war.
Sengoku Jieitai is an odd mix of Sci-Fi, war and action. The first thirty minutes move at a blinding pace, with hardly a pause for breath. One of the highlights is the Time Slip effect itself – this is none of your sudden white flashes of light and bang! you’re back in the 16th century. What we end up with is something so visually striking that my usual two-syllable vocabulary cannot do it justice.
After that, things begin to slow down a little and it’s here that the problems become evident. Sengoku Jieitai is often so episodic in nature that it feels sometimes like a TV mini-series bolted together to make a feature film. It also has some plot threads that seemingly end up going nowhere, and some unnecessary flashbacks and pop video style montages of people left behind which adds to the disorientation. Furthermore, only Iba and the Samurai Kagetora are given any kind of individual personality – the rest just seem like cardboard cutouts. Indeed, one character’s only contribution seems to be to utter the line “I need a piss” at every opportunity. It is clear that the film is in serious need of a little trimming, and it’s interesting to note that the international version was about 30 minutes shorter than this version, and I assume it did away with a lot of the extraneous material.
Right, griping over, what is the rest like? Occasionally, it’s bloody brilliant. Sonny Chiba is great and proves himself to be more macho than usual as Lieutenant Iba. He abseils from a helicopter (which would have been really special were it not for the fact that he did the exact same thing in Golgo 13), takes a very dangerous-looking ride in the back of a jeep going through some very rough terrain, and generally kicks, shoots and slices his way through the movie. Even being shot with an arrow is a minor inconvenience. His reaction to a mutiny is also as bloody and final as you’d expect from a Chiba movie.
You’ve got to laugh at the gung-ho approach to the Sci-Fi angle as well. In time-travel films we are constantly given dire warnings about altering the course of history. So does Lieutenant Iba heed these warnings? Not a bit of it! He chooses a side and ploughs right into the civil war, his rationale being that the upset to history will cause another “Time Slip” and bring them all back to the 20th century.
The most impressive aspect of the film is the epic battle scenes, which employ hundreds of horses and extras, all dressed in period costume. The scope and execution of these scenes are sometimes breathtaking. Of course, the Samurai are no match for 20th century hardware, which cuts though them like a hot knife through butter, but the final confrontation is thrilling to watch. Definitely a film to check out if you think it might appeal to you.
This film goes by many names so I’ve decided to use the Japanese title. It’s currently available in the UK under the terrible title of GI Samurai, but appears to be the full version (minus 40 seconds for “illegal horsefalls”), which is the version reviewed here.
Sons of Good Earth (1965) May 5, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Drama, War, Romance, 1960s films , add a commentDirector: King Hu Starring: Peter Chen, Lee Kwan, Betty Loh, Kok Lee-Yan, King Hu Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Shaw Brothers
The year is 1937 – just prior to the Japanese invasion of China. Painters Ju Rui and Lao San (Peter Chen and Lee Kwan) inadvertently stumble upon He Hua (Betty Loh), a woman sold into the sex industry at a local brothel. Doing the decent thing, they protect her from the brothel keeper by posing as a married couple. The relationship quickly becomes the real thing after a comment by kindly old sergeant Hao (Kok Lee-Yan), who proves to be too clever to have the wool pulled over his eyes. Their peaceful life is shattered when the Japanese invaders come to town and begin their reign of terror. But certain citizens such as Director Ding (King Hu) start mobilizing guerrilla forces in the area.
This was King Hu’s first film as sole director (although he has that credit on The Story of Sue San, he was apparently supervised by Li Han-Hsiang), but already some King Hu trademarks are in place. It starts as one thing (a romantic comedy, believe it or not) and ends up as something completely different (a war film), going through something else in the middle (a political drama, for want of a better term) without the separate pieces jarring together horribly. The film is also shot fantastically, but that is standard for a King Hu film and hardly warrants a mention. Actually, the soundtrack almost steals the show – there’s so much martial music here that it reminds you of one of those big WWII epics made in Hollywood during the period.
The two leads play painters caught up in the whole mess, and do a pretty good job of it. Lee Kwan will be familiar to many as a comedy actor in such films as Fearless Hyena, but here he pretty much plays it straight. There are also so many familiar faces in this such as veterans Kok Lee-Yan, Ku Feng and Tien Feng – who between them probably racked up film appearances well into triple figures! King Hu himself appears in a supporting heroic role, and does a pretty decent job of it.
There are certain small lapses in the narrative from time to time, but the whole thing hangs together surprisingly well and there’s hardly a hint of melodrama involved. This is perhaps the least sensationalist portrayal of the Japanese invasion of China I’ve seen, but you’ve still got your despicable villains (one of whom is played by Fung Ngai, who seems to have made a career out of playing Japanese villains). The film does have an unnecessarily jingoistic feel at times, and it’s hard to believe that the Chinese weren’t actually at war with anybody when this film was made, least of all the Japanese.
You will have to suspend your disbelief a number of times, but Sons of Good Earth is certainly worth watching.