I’m a growing enthusiast of Hong Kong cinema. I love the Shaw Brothers and kung fu movies, of course, and I dig me some John Woo, but I’ve never dug all that deep into it. So I was delighted to get a copy of Peking Opera Blues. It feels like a perfect example of what HK Cinema is – weird, hilarious, and action packed. You can read my full review here.
A Better Tomorrow (1986)
Directed by John Woo
Starring: Lung T, iLeslie Cheung, and Chow Yun-Fat
A reforming ex-gangster tries to reconcile with his estranged policeman brother, but the ties to his former gang are difficult to break.
Rating 7/10
John Woo’s breakout film contains most of his hallmarks – balletic gunplay, slow motion action, big emotions, and goofy comedy—but in slightly lessened form. There is some very good stuff here, but it feels like a trial run for later films like Hard Boiled or The Killer. Also, I’ve never been a big fan of the outsized emotions his characters have in these films. Maybe it is the difference in cultures, but it always feels cheesy and fake to me. But those action scenes are still top-notch.
City on Fire (1987)
Directed by Ringo Lam
Starring: Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee, Sun Yueh, Carrie Ng , and Roy Cheung
Synopsis: An undercover cop infiltrates a gang of thieves who plan to rob a jewelry store.
Rating: 7/10
City on Fire is now mostly known as one of the inspirations for Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. There are certainly similarities there, but Tarantino more than makes his film his own. Chow Yun-fat plays the undercover cop who doesn’t really want to be there. He’s ready to quit, but his uncle (who is also a cop) pushes him to complete the assignment. He kind-of, sort-of befriends one of the robbers, which makes the whole thing more complicated, especially when it goes bad.
There are some terrific set pieces and some very goofy romantic angles. I’m not super soaked in Hong Kong action movies. I’ve seen several, but not enough that I can claim any sort of authority on them. It always throws me off how weird the romances are in these things. Our guy here comes home, more or less harasses his lady by following her into the bathroom, then jumping into the shower with her, pushing into her space, and then giving her a ring. Then he postpones the wedding, then he doesn’t show up…etc. It’s probably a cultural thing, but so many of these films play the romances off with the weirdest bits of humor.
But Chow Yun-fat is amazing.
Drug War (2012)
Directed by Johnnie To
Starring: Louis Koo, Honglei Sun, and Huang Yi
Synopsis: A drug cartel boss who is arrested in a raid is coerced into betraying his former accomplices as part of an undercover operation.
Rating: 8/10
This is the type of film that will keep bringing me back to Johnnie To. The plot is convoluted and a little crazy, but also endlessly interesting with cops, informants, and bad guys switching allegiances and sides like a roulette table. The action is fierce, chaotic, and meticulously staged.
There is a scene late in the film where a cop handcuffs himself to a guy’s leg. Then the cop gets killed, so the bad guy has to run around dragging the cop’s corpse along with him. If that doesn’t make you want to watch this film, I don’t know what will.
Breaking News (2004)
Directed by Johnnie To
Starring: Richie Jen, Kelly Chen, and Nick Cheung
Synopsis: After a disastrous failure to stop a robber gang, the police attempt to redeem themselves through a series of publicity stunts and shootouts.
Rating: 7/10
I’m quite behind on these. They are easy to write and I always mean to write them right after I watch, but then something comes up and I forget. I watched this one five days ago. I’ll try to play catch-up this weekend.
Johnnie is a Hong Kong director whose name gets tossed around quite a bit in my circles, but I’d never seen one of his films until now. The Criterion Channel is running a whole bunch of them, and I chose this one pretty much at random. It was good enough to make me watch another one the very next day and then a third a couple of days later.
It begins with an incredible 7-minute-long one-take shot. It follows a man into a building (the camera cranes to a top floor and into a building, then back out again), followed by a shootout with the cops. This goes poorly for the cops, and they decide they need to put on a “show” for the media. Basically, they start using their own PR department to create videos to send to the news to indicate how awesome they are.
The action scenes (and there are quite a lot of them) are all staged really well. The media stuff feels very dated and has not aged particularly well. But as I said, there is enough to love here that I immediately watched another film from To.
My pneumonia is subsiding, but definitely not fully gone. I’d say I’m up about 80 percent on that front. But you may recall when I first started getting sick I complained about having done something to my hip. Well, that is back with a vengeance. I don’t know what I’ve done to it, but it hurt like crazy anytime I stand up and try to walk.
Getting is old is not fun, my friends.
I’m in no shape to write a long review tonight, but since I missed last week’s Friday Night Horror and haven’t written much since then I wanted to talk a little bit about this movie.
I actually started Smile 2 this evening. Got about halfway through then got hungry. When I had finished my meal, my daughter had snuck into my room to watch something of her own. My wife was downstairs and she doesn’t like horror movies so after a bit we landed on this, a rather silly and not very scary horror movie.
Mr. Vampire is the first in what you might call the Hopping Vampire genre of Hong Kong cinema (I previously reviewed a later film in the genre, Encouter of the Spooky Kind (1980). The hopping vampires are actually Jiangshi, which come from traditional Chinese folklore and are something like a mix between vampires and zombies. Or so says Wikipedia anyway.
This film follows a Taoist priest and his two inept assistants who battle a super strong vampire, a couple of other vampires that he’s recently turned and eventually a succubus type ghost.
As you might suspect from that description it is a very silly movie. There are lots of broad jokes, goofy physical humor, and some pretty good kung fu action. It is, perhaps, a little too silly for my particular senses, but ultimately it won me over in its sheer entertainment value.
My wife seemed to enjoy it too. Definitely recommended when you are looking for something different.
We are neck deep into 31 Days of Horror. I love it. I love watching horror movies. I love writing about them. But I gotta admit, sometimes it is hard. Sometimes my “real” life wears me out, brings me down, freaking exhausts me.
This week has been a physically exhausting one for me at work. I come home and maybe watch a movie, but finding the energy to write about one has been difficult.
Luckily, I’ve written lots of other reviews for Cinema Sentries and now I get to share one with you.
Broken Oath is a Hong Kong, Kung Fu adaptation of the Lady Snowblood story. It isn’t as good as the original Japanese film, but it is still a lot of fun. You can read my review here.
George Lazenby has had a wonderfully strange career. His very first film was playing James Bond in Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) then he gave up that role thinking the 1970s would not be kind to Bond. Then he spent the next decade making wild European genre movies and has since played small roles in a variety of movies and TV series including a sting in some made-for-TV Emmanuelle rip-offs alongside Sylvia Kristel.
In A Queen’s Ransom, he plays an Irish mercenary out to assassinate the Queen of England on her visit to Hong Kong. The film actually shot footage of the real queen in her real visit to the Asian city and then basically built a movie around it. You can read my full review here.
Bruce Lee was supposed to have starred in this film. But he and director Wei Lo had something of a falling out and so Jimmy Wang Yu got the lead role.
It is a crazy movie with a ridiculous (and somewhat incomprehensible) plot. This is made a bit more comprehensible in the newly restored Hong Kong edit (it was chopped to pieces in the Internation edit upon initial release). But it still doesn’t make much sense.
But it is worth watching because the action is a lot of fun. I’m a sucker for Hong Kong action flicks and this totally delivers. You can read my full review here.
I naturally think of action movies when I think about 1980s movies. Action films along with slasher horror and romantic comedies defined the genres of 1980s cinema. When I think of 1980s action films I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Chuck Norris. I think about big explosions, increasingly bigger guns, and witty one-liners.
Big, bigger, and biggest defined American action films in the 1980s. But in Hong Kong, they were making a different kind of action film. Led by director John Woo, Hong Kong action films were much more stylized and interesting than their American counterparts. Woo’s action films were operatic in tone. They utilized slow motion and close-up gunfire. They also relied more heavily on telling a compelling story with thought paid attention to developing its characters. The explosions weren’t always big, but the emotions were.
I’m not extremely well versed in Hong Kong cinema, and I’ve only seen a few John Woo films, but watching The Killer reminded me that I need to dig further into them.
The Killer stars Chow Yun-fat as Ah Jong a hitman. Paid to assassinate a Triad leader he accidentally injures a nightclub singer named Jennie (Sally Yeh), leaving her partially blind. Ridden with guilt he begins visiting her secretly and eventually, the two become friends, without her ever knowing who he really is.
Hot on his trail are the gangsters who paid him to kill the Triad leader (his face was seen during that hit which may lead others to know who ordered the murder in the first place) and Detective Yi Ling (Danny Lee).
Ah John and Detective Ling develop a respect for one another as they both have a moral code and are both quite good at what they do. I was reminded quite a bit of Heat while watching this as the games they play with each other are reminiscent of Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in that film.
The action sequences in this film are incredible. I’ve watched several other 1980s action films this month and most of those big action sequences pale in comparison. American films tended to rely on the bigger is better principle. As long as things were constantly blowing up they called it a day. But Woo injects his film with a real sense of style. His action sequences are exciting.
And beautiful. All those close-up shots done in slow motion with operatic music playing really give those sequences a delicate beauty. There are a few scenes located in an old church filled candles that are stunningly gorgeous.
The story itself is fine. I can’t say I’m really moved by any of it, but I appreciate that the film is making an effort with it. It is definitely better than what they were doing with Rambo III.
But nobody watches action films for the story and what Woo and company provide us with those action sequences is more than enough to make The Killer highly recommended.
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