Bike Week Bonanza: Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Every Which Way But Loose, Heroes of the East

I've taken to riding an exercise bike and watching a movie every day to kill two birds with one stone.

Mortal Kombat (1995)

Surprisingly good and probably the best video game movie adaptation. It plays smart by keeping it close to the original “Deathmatch Tournament” plot with broadly-drawn archetypes meeting up to punch each other.

Set design is outstanding and the CGI isn't overused beyond the limits of mid-90s graphics. Christopher Lambert is a stroke of genius as Raiden. The rest of the heroes are well handled, especially Johnny Cage's story arc. The Goro costume/effects are impressive. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa steals the show as douchebag sorcerer Shang Tsung.

The fight scenes rely too much on quick cuts. Scorpion doesn't do much except have a cool fight with Cage. Sub-Zero dies like a bitch.

Unpretentious and a lot of fun. Probably the best Paul W. S. Anderson movie I've seen.

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

The sequel that replaces almost the entire cast except Liu Kang and Kitana. James Remar (from the Warriors) does a serviceable job as Raiden, but lacks the touch of amused madness that made Lambert's version so good. Brian Thompson (the bad guy from Cobra) is halfway to a good Shao-Kahn, but making him into a daddy's boy hurts the character badly, but that's also because Shinnok ruins everything.

Surprisingly faithful to Mortal Kombat 3's plot, it suffers from a plot that's more ambitious than its budget can allow. Smoke and Cyrax get fun fights. Nightwolf shows up for one scene to spout vision quest nonsense about animalities to Liu Kang. The heroic Sub-Zero II (yes, that's canon) shows up to fight Scorpion, spout some ninja nonsense, and then vanishes entirely from the movie in a complete waste of one of the series' most popular characters. Sheeva, Rain, and Baraka die like chumps. Which I guess is in character, but still...

CGI is more heavily used, to its detriment. Motaro looks like ass. Liu Kang and Shao-Kahn's dragon vs hydra Animality fight is AWFUL. Set design remains pretty good.

Considerably weaker than the first. Pretty bad, but entertaining at least.

Every Which Way But Loose (1978)

Clint Eastwood as street fighting trucker Philo Beddoe with a pet orangutan named Clyde. No reason given for Clyde. No reason needed.

Philo falls in love with a mysterious country-western singer Lynn Halsey-Taylor who leaves him one night and he takes off after her with his ape and his best friend Orville (Geoffrey Lewis).

Philo's something of an asshole since he keeps provoking fights everywhere he goes. He pisses off an idiot biker gang and a short-fused pair of cops. Both groups chase after him.

Its funny, and shows the American working class as affable and heroic. His sidekick Orville finds love with a young Beverly D'Angelo, but Philo himself discovers that the woman he's followed to Denver from California is a shallow, selfish manipulator.

Its good, but fairly subversive toward the idea of romance. Doesn't really stick the landing. Its got an old lady blowing up motorcycles with a shotgun, though, so there's that.

Heroes of the East AKA Shaolin Challenges Ninja AKA Zhong hua zhang fu (1978)

Shaw Brothers production. Directed by veteran martial artist/stunt actor/director Chia-Liang Liu and starring Shaw Brothers staple Gordon Liu/Chia-Hui Liu. Action comedy about a Chinese man put into an arranged marriage with a Japanese woman. Both like each other, but both are martial artists and deeply proud of their respective heritages/styles.

Misunderstandings lead to arguments, which lead to some Taming of the Shrew moments and then lead to him inadvertently insulting all of her martial arts teachers, who show up looking to avenge the insult.

Cue a series of fights where Liu has to fight them off one by one, using different Chinese Kung Fu styles against their varied Japanese styles.

Its got a light touch and (typical of the genre) the fight scenes are where it shines. Nunchaku, katana, jian swords, spears, sai, butterfly swords, three-sectioned-staff, judo, karate, drunken boxing, crane style, ninjutsu, etc. Watch Kung Fu movie fight choreography, and you'll see how just about every modern Western action director needs to be slapped in the face repeatedly for their terrible editing choices.

Naturally, the Chinese protagonist wins (reconciling with his wife along the way), but the Japanese fighters aren't treated like cartoon villains like in a lot of other Kung Fu cinema (remember, WWII Japan was not kind to China). Its a showcase and celebration of different styles of martial arts. Entertaining and impressive. 

“If I'm not back in five minutes, call the Pope.”

And so I'm back from outer space, and you can tell by that sad look upon my face that you should've changed that stupid lock and thrown away the—No. Wait. That's not right. Where was I?

Oh yes. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. It's like a 1980s Troma movie, but shot on 1970s film stock, except shot in the late 1990s in Ottawa, Ontario, and starring a few women who look like Suicide Girls.

This movie is WEIRD and DUMB. But is it the good kind of Weird and Dumb?

Story

Stop me if you've heard this before, but a bunch of vampires, led by Maxine Schreck (Murielle Varhelyi), Johnny Golgotha (Ian Driscoll) and Dr. Praetorious (Josh Grace), are killing and harvesting Canadian lesbians, so that they can wear their skin to gain immunity to sunlight. The only thing standing in their way? Savior of mankind and martial arts master Jesus of Nazareth (Phil Caracas) joined by his allies Mary Magnum (Maria Moulton) and silver-masked Mexican wrestler Santos Enmascardo de Plata (Jeff Moffet, and a nod to the actual El Santo luchador/movie star/vampire fighter)

Visuals

This was director Lee Demarbre's first feature length film, and it is extremely aware of its own amateurishness. I don't just mean the film quality. That's actually in its favor, since it really does remind me of 70s and 80s B-movies where the night scenes are poorly lit and the editing isn't quite as tight as it should be. The self-awareness expresses itself in the fight scenes, which are obviously not done by professional stunt people, but make up for it in goofiness. Jesus fights some vampires on the beach. Jesus fights a clown car's worth of Atheists in a public park who just showed up to pick a fight with him for no reason. Jesus & Santos kill a bar full of vampires with drumsticks, crutches, toothpicks and other improvised stakes. Dr. Praetorious (another nod to old cinema) fights Jesus by improvising organs as weapons.

Negatively, the pacing of the movie is rather awful. It's only 85 minutes long but so many scenes drag on much longer than necessary, particularly the “Jesus shops at a thrift store for hip new clothes” scene that wears out the gag really, really fast. The fight in the park with the atheists I mentioned? Completely irrelevant to the plot. The “Jesus Signal” scene transition? That gets old too.

Writing

Like the directing, there's a lot of hit and miss in Ian Driscoll's script. Some of the elements are great, and really show a deep love for genre films of the past. The whole presence of Santos is really funny, and not just because “haha, here's a luchador.” Johnny Golgotha is an AMAZING name for a douchebag vampire and I am insanely jealous. The crazy narrator-preacher that pops up randomly to rant at the viewer through his awe inspiring beard? That's pretty great too (and the best acting in the movie, at least... I hope it was acting). Unfortunately, there's lots more jokes that fall flat, like the running gag of someone grabbing the butt of Santos' appropriately named Gloria Oddbottom.

Sound

Everything is dubbed. Everything. A lot doesn't quite synch up with the lip movements, which can be funny. The occasional *bonk* sound effect in combat isn't very funny. The songs? Also not great.

Conclusion

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter tries to walk a fine line between telling its own absurd grindhouse-esque tale with a straight face but then constantly winks at the camera that it knows its awful. It's shameless enthusiasm is commendable, and speaking from experience, it is damn challenging to make an intentionally cheesy film, so tremendous props for achieving that. Yet as a comedy, it ultimately falls flat for its dearth of good jokes. The concept is good fodder for absurdist humor, but it doesn't quite deliver in a way that, say, Tongan Ninja does, a contemporary movie that it shares a LOT of similarities with. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter feels like it makes a much funnier trailer than feature.

“Oh my god, its Glenn.”

You would think that every movie with the word “Ninja” in the title is a gateway to cheesy, borderline stupid, fun. I was once like you, naive and innocent. Not anymore. I saw Ninja Empire. Which IMDB tells me is actually originally called Ninja Phantom Heroes (sometimes with USA added on) and was released in 1987 by producer Tomas Tang and director Godfrey Ho and re-titled to Ninja Empire in a boxed set I have, which is made even more confusing because Godfrey Ho released a different movie called Ninja Empire in in 1990.

Even trying to dig up information about this wreck makes my head hurt.

Story
Well, its another result of a foreign film getting edited up with some new footage of Americans. For instance, the main body of the movie is some kind of 70s Hong Kong crime story that features characters being introduced and killed off left and right without even knowing their names or any kind of investment in them, our fine producers decided to edit in a plot about a former prisoner who also happens to be a ninja (we called him “Camo Ninja” because of his outfit) getting his rank back and sent to spy on stuff in Hong Kong and running in to his arch enemy “Painter Ninja” (because of his suit as white as his bleached hair). What are their names? I think they’re Ford and Morris respectively, but that's irrelevant. There’s a Hong Kong cop named Christine who partners up with Camo Ninja as well, but again, that’s irrelevant aside from getting captured. They fight here and there, but the real story seems to be about a kind of dynastic struggle between some crime families. I dunno. The ninja are just tacked on. There certainly isn’t an empire of them and they certainly don’t have anything to do with large chunks of runtime involving gangsters.

Visuals/Effects
The edited in stuff is way, way, way cheaper than the Hong Kong gangster movie stuff. The crime movie stuff doesn’t have any ninja. Sadly, the ninja segments are also the most entertaining bits, since at least there’s fighting and ninjas exploding upon death. Yes, ninjas explode upon death in this movie. I don’t think that’s how they actually work, but who cares, its something happening on screen that you can sort of follow. I will concede that the fight choreography isn't that terrible. In addition to the overall badness of the mashup, the editing is schizophrenic, where things will cut violently to a completely unrelated scene. Stuff I’ve read on the internet also implies that there’s a longer 90 minute cut out there. The version I saw was 78 minutes long, which is more than long enough.


Behold our villain, and his ninja training...playground.


Writing
Pretty much everything I complained about for Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women also applies here. Trying to shoehorn a completely different plot in just doesn’t work and the result is that both sections are incomprehensible. Whatever was written on the disc sleeve by way of a synopsis was for the 1990 Ninja Empire and not what this movie contained. I have no idea who these characters are, nor what they are trying to accomplish, nor why should I care.

Ninja Phantom Heroes/Empire goes an extra step by throwing in one of the most bullshit endings I’ve ever seen. Painter Ninja infiltrates Camo Ninja’s base to rescues his buddies, fights some more ninja, fights Camo Ninja, lots of crazy things are happening, ninjas are exploding, then there’s running around, and Painter Ninja turns around, ready to square off for a final showdown as Camo Ninja rescues the girl…

AND THE MOVIE JUST ENDS. No end credits. Just “The End.” IT JUST ENDS. As you sit in the ensuing darkness and silence, you feel two things: confusion as to what just happened followed by relief that the nightmare is over.

Sound
The sound is bad. The dub is atrocious and difficult to understand. Sound effects for things like shuriken are absurd. The music may be ripped off from other movies, according to some of the comments on YouTube (like reading YouTube comments is ever a wise decision).

Conclusion
Four-letter words. The angry kind that you don’t normally use in polite company. That’s what I would use to describe this movie. Hell, that’s what I DID use to describe this train wreck. I have a very high tolerance for schlock and can put up with a lot of crap but Ninja Phantom Heroes (USA)/Ninja Empire actually hurt. As bad as its two component stories are, they are much, much worse together. Zardoz is a coherent masterpiece compared to this. Troll 2 is a pleasant romp. About the only thing that I’ve seen that surpasses this movie in terribleness is Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. Ninja Empire is only slightly more watchable because things actually happen on-screen.

No trailer, but holy crap, this clip contains most of what happened after "THE END" of the cut I watched.

I'd say I was surprised that the fight devolves into Painter Ninja throwing tin plates at Camo Ninja, who fends them off with an umbrella that shoots bottle rockets, but I'm not. I just wish the rest of the movie was that memorable. 

“What I do not give, you must never take by force.”

Remember Hero and House of Flying Daggers? (Oh, crap, haven’t reviewed House of Flying Daggers yet. IGNORE ME!!) Well, that same director, Yimou Zhang made yet another period martial arts movie, this time with Chow Yun-Fat and a grandiose sense of scale that would make Cecil B. DeMille jealous. Here’s 2006’s Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia aka Curse of the Golden Flower.

Story
Take a whole bunch of plot elements from Shakespeare’s Tragedies, throw them into ancient China and wait for the body count. Explaining it further will simply complicate things, but here goes. Emperor Ping (Yun-Fat Chow -- using the names as they appear on IMDB here) is a bearded badass warlord who rules with an iron fist. He’s got a beautiful wife, Empress Phoenix (Li Gong), whom he is poisoning daily in order to drive her insane (he can’t kill her outright because her father is a powerful lord). Thing is, she knows he’s poisoning her and she’s planning a coup to get her revenge. Between the two of them, they start manipulating the three Princes: Prince Jai (Jay Chou), Crown Prince Wan (Ye Liu) and Prince Yu (Junjie Quin) like pawns on a chessboard. The plot gets heavy.

And then ninjas show up. Yes, this is China, but damn it, the Emperor has a small army of guys who dress in black, strike from the shadows and generally behave exactly like typical movie ninjas.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Yimou Zhang and cinematography by Xiaoding Zhao, the first thing that strikes you (and continues to strike you throughout) is the sheer volume of color that explodes onto your eyeballs. Gold figures prominently, but next to that, there’s a dazzling rainbow that is constantly assailing your brain. I imagine if you this movie was combined with LSD, heads would physically explode.

Color saturation overdose aside, the movie, like Yimou’s other films, is strikingly beautiful. The fights are breathtaking and brutal and have a punctuate the narrative nicely.

Writing
Written by Yimou Zhang and based on the play “Lei yu” by Yu Cao, the plot really does feel like Shakespeare’s Tragedies were stitched together into a Byzantine framework of subterfuge, betrayal, rebellion, tyranny, lust, incest, poisoning, shocking revelations and so on. All that’s missing is cannibalism. I’m saying this is a bad thing, since the end result is a complex but coherent creature with its own personality. Just don’t go into it expecting a happy ending.

Sound
Original music by Shigeru Umebayashi. The score is quite appropriate for a movie of this grandeur, with the action sequences being accompanied by a thunderous score.

Conclusion
Curse of the Golden Flower is one hell of a visual trip, and its helped by a significantly deep storyline that is full of crazy twists and turns. It begins as a slow boil, but by the time shit hits the fan, it REALLY hits the fan. Very recommended.

Also: THE COLORS!! THE COLORS!!!

“You fight like a baby. A DEAD baby!”

Not a whole lot I have to say in prologue about this one other than I’ve got a fondness for ninja movies and a fondness for Flight of the Conchords. 2002’s Tongan Ninja happens to combine elements from both, considering it’s a ninja action-comedy-musical set in New Zealand.

Story
So we have two martial arts students on the island of Tonga, one a heroic, honorable and naïve student named Sione Finau (Sam Manu) and his childhood rival, the arrogant, cheating Action Fighter (formerly Marvin) (Jemaine Clement). Sione gets sent by his master to help out a restaurant owning friend who’s been beat up by the goons of the So-Called Syndicate. He gets to Wellington, New Zealand and finds the onwer’s daughter, Miss Lee (Linda Tseng), being shaken down by the So-Called Syndicate and of course, has to fight his way through a bunch of Mr. Big’s (Victor Rodger) goons, including Asian Side-Kick (Raybon Kan), Herman the Henchman (David Fane), Knife Man, Gun Man and a final showdown with Action Fighter. Its fairly standard martial arts plot stuff, but that’s the point of the whole thing.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Jason Stutter, “low budget” perfectly describes this movie. This is not a bad thing, since it helps the lowbrow comedy of the movie since a lot of otherwise “big budget” encounters are explicitly pointed out and denied to the audience. There is also a healthy dose of CGI which is comically obvious as well. Fight scenes are decent but also intentionally not very good.

Writing
The writing team of Jemain Clement and Jason Stutter are perfectly aware of the kind of low budget movie they are making and they’re also very aware of the genre they’re making fun of. There’s also a healthy dose of deadpan, self-deprecating Kiwi humor.

Sound
The original music by David Donaldson, Plan 9 and Steve Roche isn’t fancy but it gets the job done. The original songs on the other hand, especially the title song sung by an Elvis-dressed Jemaine Clement, are quite catchy.



Conclusion
It is easy to dismiss Tongan Ninja as a silly little fluff parody, and, well, it is. But its also a surprisingly clever little movie and a testament to the “can-do” spirit of independent filmmaking. I actually like it quite a lot, and it has a feel very similar to Black Dynamite (though lacking the production values) but I’ll admit its probably not for everyone.

“With no family name to live up to, I devoted myself to the sword.”

I’ve got a soft spot for epics set in ancient & medieval periods. In fact, that’s what really drew me to Asian films in general because Western period films with swords tend to follow the same kind of formula and I was curious to see how the other side of the world did them. Turns out they have their own cinematic formulas, but that’s besides the point. The stuff I just said is merely a highbrow justification for watching people with swords kick ass, and 2002’s Ying xiong (Hero to Western audiences) brings the pain.

Plot
Set in the 200s BC during a period of constantly fighting warlords, the powerful King of Qin is trying to make a push to unify the land, but he’s justifiably paranoid about several assassins that are after him, BUT, a police prefect from a small town has apparently taken them down. The King grants the prefect an audience to explain how he was able to achieve this stunning achievement. The action is then told in flashbacks.

Characters
Nameless: Jet Li is our main character, a man who’s grown up without a name or family, so everybody just calls him Nameless (which is technically a name so its really more ironic----stop it) and he devoted his entire life to swordsmanship because, well, not like he had any family ties. He is quite awesome.

King of Qin: Daoming Chen is our warlord, a man with a fierce reputation for brutality and strongarm tactics that makes sense for the man who became the first Emperor of China in 221 BC (the guy did some pretty despotic things in his lifetime). Anyway, he’s dangerous, but highly intelligent and classy, and about the only guy who can unite China and put an end to the constant fighting. And, in one of the flashbacks, he can hold his own in a fight too.

Sky: Donnie Yen is only in one scene, but it’s a badass one where Nameless fights him in a rain-soaked building. Sky’s a master of the spear, so he’s got reach on the swordsman.

Broken Sword: Tony Leung Chiu Wai is a very complicated character who’s in a bulk of the flashbacks. He’s Flying Snow’s lover, but also Moon’s mentor, which in some of the flashbacks is a love triangle. Anyway, he’s a really thoughtful swordsman who fought Qin in single combat but pulled back from killing the King. It’s a little hard to explain without spoiling the movie, but out of this assemblage of badasses, he is the biggest.

Flying Snow: Maggie Cheung is a beautiful and deadly swordswoman. She’s got a major grudge against Qin and is one of the most vocal against the King.

Moon: The always beautiful Ziyi Zhang is Broken Sword’s apprentice. More of a minor figure in the movie’s events, she does get into some trouble because of her hot blooded nature that leads to some groovy fight scenes.

Visuals/Effects
Yimou Zhang is an astoundingly good director. Crouching Tiger was very artistically done, but Hero takes that visual artistry and runs it up to insane heights. Each flashback has a different color palette that dominates the costumes, mood and emotion, so you’ve got Red, Blue, Green, White that sort of thing that contrasts with the Black of the “main” action of Nameless’ audience with Qin. With each you get an action sequence that goes big on doing insanely awesome visual stunts, and only one of them (the Blue fight) gets kind of annoyingly ridiculous. Now, a huge part of what makes the visuals work is the cinematography of Christopher Doyle. And I feel pretty bad about passing over the achievements of cinematographers/directors of photography in previous installments, because they are really important to setting the visual tone a director’s going for. So here’s a resolution: I’ll try to give more credit to these often unsung heroes of filmmaking when a movie's visuals are excellently done.

Writing
Feng Li, Bin Wang & Yimou Zhang wrote the screenplay, and the structure is interesting. Like I said, its told mostly in flashbacks, but the flashbacks themselves are often conflicting. It’s a credit to the writers that everything does make sense by the end as the real story is discovered by Qin (and the audience).

Sound
Tan Dun delivers another epic Chinese Marital Arts Movie score.

Conclusion
Ying xiong got a lot of publicity when it came out in the States because of the “Quentin Tarantino Presents” tacked on (he was also associated that way with Iron Monkey). And while I do appreciate the enthusiastic attention Tarantino brings to foreign films like these, Yimou Zhang’s style is strong enough to be taken for its own merits. This movie is awesome.


Nice trailer, too

“Drinking gives Herculean strength!”

Booze and fighting go together like…well, booze and fighting. Comedy gold for some, recipe for tragedy for others, we here at Castle RMWC are not here to waggle fingers at the moral ramifications of alcohol abuse. Especially not when Jackie Chan’s involved, because if 1994’s Jui kuen II (Drunken Master II or The Legend of Drunken Master in English) has taught me anything, its that you don’t want to get between a Chinese folk hero and his alcohol.

Plot
In 19th Century China, our hero returns with his father from a shopping trip, but during a stop on the train, he gets mixed up in an accidental item switch as a box of ginseng that he was supposed to protect gets swapped with a box containing a priceless artifact. A series of misadventures leads to him getting mixed up with crooked British ambassadors and Chinese businessmen who are selling off Chinese artifacts for a quick buck to foreigners. Combat hilarity ensues.

Characters
Wong Fei-hung: Jackie Chan returns to a role that he played in 1978 for Drunken Master I. Wong is the enthusiastic but not exactly forward-thinking son of a doctor. He wants to help people out, and does so eventually, but he ends up causing himself a load of troubles along the way. That’s okay, because he’s a solid martial arts master (well, you’d expect that from Jackie Chan) that can hold his own in a fight. This is all well and good, but when the movie’s called drunken master, you expect some masterful drunken boxing, and when he finally hits the bottle, its like Popeye downing his spinach, and Fei-hung pulls off some visually incredible and over the top feats. Naturally he’s our funny and deadly badass.

Wong Kei-ying: Lung Ti is Fei-hung’s stoic and rather stern physician father. He also runs a martial arts school. He is very disapproving of his son drinking to increase his combat skills, considering it shameful and much too easy to go overboard into straight up sloppy drunk.

Mrs. Wong: Anita Mui is Kei-ying’s wife. Obviously a second one since she’s not Fei-hung’s mother. She’s more of a comic relief character, gambling with her lady friends when her husband’s away and generally encouraging Fei-hung to drink when he gets into fights. For a step-mother, she and Fei-hung get along great.

Tsang the Fishmonger: Felix Wong plays, well, a guy who sells fish. However, he’s also something of a friendly rival with Fei-hung in terms of martial arts.

John: Ken Lo is the final boss bad guy who fights Fei-hung in the huge set-piece finale. A gangster who’s been selling off priceless Chinese artifacts to the British ambassador, he’s got no regard for his nation’s history, doesn’t fight fair and has a lieutenant named Henry (Ho-Sung Pak) who is also a martial arts guy.

Visuals/Effects
Chian-Liang Liu (and Jackie Chan for the climactic fight scene) directed this, and while a lot of the regular scenes are perfectly fine, we’re all here because of the fight scenes, and they are solid. Each is a fantastic set piece that uses as much of the environment as possible in that signature Jackie Chan style. Of particular note are the street fight where Fei-hung first gets liquored up and whups gangster ass but good, the fighting retreat against a horde of Axe Gang members who storm a restaurant Fei-hung and a policeman are talking in, and then obviously the final battle. You can’t go wrong for fight scenes in this movie. It’s impossible. The best part is that the fights are not claustrophobically edited so that you get only close ups of faces and people’s fists. I generally prefer being able to follow what’s going on in a fight scene, and that too, is solid.

Writing
Edward Tang, Man-Ming Tong & Gai Chi Yuen wrote the screenplay, and generally get things done well. It is a martial arts movie first though, and the general plot is more of a vehicle to explain when Fei-hung is always getting into visually spectacular fights. There are a lot of jokes, and a lot work, some don’t, and some don’t cross the Pacific that well, I suppose. The real comedy is mostly visual, anyway. Then there are the occasional serious moments, which get rather grim, like when Kei-ying rages at his son for drinking after he promised not to.

Sound
Michael Wandmacher apparently did the score for the 2000 North American release (which, sadly, is the version I watched because a lot was cut out apparently) and Wai Lap Wu did the original score. The score is good and very conducive to ADVENTURE!

Now, the version that I saw was dubbed and had no option for Cantonese audio with English subtitles. Unfortunate, yes, but since this is a lighter movie than say, Hero, its not a deal breaker. Still, if you can get the original Chinese audio, that would be preferable.

Conclusion
Jui kuen II is not exactly what you’d call Oscar material. However, it is a prime example of not only Hong Kong action cinema but also of Jackie Chan’s signature action/comedy style in full effect. It is a Jackie Chan movie about Drunken Fist Boxing and delivers exactly what it promises it will. Wholeheartedly recommended, but from the sentence above, you should know if this is for you or not.

“Now, when I say, "Who's da mastah?" you say, "Sho'nuff!"

How can I possibly introduce Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon? Made in 1985, it’s a martial arts film that dips its toes into blaxsploitation, but not really. It’s a martial arts musical comedy, but how much of that is intentionally funny, I’m not quite sure of. It is an unapologetic B movie with a cult following though.

Plot
Dateline: Harlem (as opposed to Haarlem, which is in the Netherlands), the Mid-80s. A young black student of martial arts seeks to perfect his skills by finding a master who will help him achieve the power of “the glow.” Alongside his quest, he runs afoul of a beautiful, young singer/MTV vee-jay who is almost constantly being harassed and kidnapped by the goons of a deranged arcade owner who is trying to push his girlfriend’s terrible music videos on the world. Yes, really. Our hero also has to reconcile with his much “hipper” brother and deal with a belligerent rival. All of this happens in 109 minutes.

Characters
Leroy Green/Bruce Leroy: Taimak plays our Hero, the honest, innocent, almost painfully naïve student of kung fu who goes around Harlem dressed up in a Bruce Lee like outfit with a Coolie hat. Virtuous and peaceful, he teaches at a dojo and is really just interested in perfecting his own abilities for most of the film. To that end, he seeks out “The Master,” rumored to work in a fortune cookie factory, but he gets swept up in a rivalry with Sho’nuff and with always ending up rescuing Laura. He’s an interesting character, a little bit on the stock side of things, but likable in his wide-eyed “good guy-ness” (I know its not a word).

Laura Charles: Vanity (singer and former protégé of Prince) plays the damsel in distress who just can’t seem to catch a break from the villains. She starts falling in love with Leroy, as happens in these films.

Eddie Arkadian: Christopher Murney is the Villain of the movie, an insane, short, bald man who would kill to get his girlfriend’s terrible music video played on the air. Which is as goofy as you’d think it sounds, but the character never lets up on his mania, so he actually ends up being pretty creepy. He’s also got a former boxer named Rock as his henchman. They’ve got a fish tank with…something in it that can strip meat off the bone in seconds.

Angela Viracco: Faith Prince plays the ditzy but not evil girlfriend of Eddie with quite a few Cyndi Lauper touches.

Richie Green: Leo O’Brien plays Leroy’s kid brother, who keeps talking big about getting Laura as his girlfriend and basically asking his brother “what the hell’s up with you?” for his Asian fixation. Ultimately, he’s there to serve as a comic foil (as a sassy, streetwise black kid) to his forthright, uptight brother.

Sho’nuff the Shogun of Harlem: Julius J. Carry III plays the film’s badass and is the reason you watch this movie. I’m serious. He has a posse, a custom-painted van, beats the living hell out of anything that looks at him crosswise (movie-goers, furniture in a pizza shop, etc) and has a pair of those solid plastic, Venetian blind style shades big in the 80’s (that Kanye tried to bring back). He talks smack and has the muscle to back it up.

There’s also an appearance by a very, very, very young Ernie Reyes Jr. (from TMNT 2 and, uh, Surf Ninjas) and also frickin’ William H. Macy in a small part as Laura’s assistant who tries to warn her about how dangerous Eddie Arkadian is.

Visuals/Effects
Bearing in mind that we are in cheesy 80’s film territory, the directing done by Michael Schultz (who’s done a lot of television work) is not bad. In terms of an overall visual impact, the watchword is “colorful.” Hair is big in this film, and so is the neon lighting. You’ve been warned. The influence of Bruce Lee is all over this movie too, with some footage from his film, particularly Enter The Dragon.

Now, as an action movie, the martial arts stuff was actually really good and fun to watch. The climactic fight scene between Leroy and Sho’nuff is actually pretty kickass and features quite a bit of the desired Glow when used by both combatants as a surprisingly good special effect.

Writing
The script by Louis Venosta tells the story without too many hitches. Things happen and fight scenes are not withheld from the audience. The story seems to be almost self aware, like the filmmakers are giving a wink to the audience, but its never really clear when the ridiculous stuff is supposed to be part of that joke or was just a budget/time thing. Probably the most interesting thing the writing does is play around with stereotypes, with various characters that either play up their ethnic stereotype or play against it completely. It’s a nice touch, actually.

Sound
The original music by Bruce Miller and Misha Segal gets the job done, but the real draw is the crazy, over-the-top 80’s songs from DeBarge, Vanity, Stevie Wonder and even Smoky Robinson. Still, probably the best song for the movie is “The Last Dragon” written by Bruce Miller & Norman Whitfield, performed by Dwight David and played during the final fight. Its an ear worm that’ll lodge itself into your head, telling you that you are the last dragon and do in fact, possess the power of the Glow.

Conclusion
It’s a cult movie, and that factors into my assessment of things. As such, yeah, The Last Dragon is pretty hilarious, memorable and full of plenty of scenes that are both awesome and induce head scratching. The movie is apparently being remade with Samuel L. Jackson taking over the part of Sho’nuff, and that sounds promising, but the original is a pretty fun action/comedy that has a subplot of Leroy trying to get into a fortune cookie factory run by three Asians that are more ghetto than he is. That’s the kind of movie this is, so you should know if that’s the kind of stuff you want to sit through. As for me, yeah, it was a lot of cheesy fun.

“A real man sheds his blood before he sheds his tears.”

So, fun fact, after seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in theaters, the next martial arts movie I saw was 1993’s Siu nin Wong Fei Hung ji: Tit Ma Lau (hereafter referred to as Iron Monkey) as one of my early experiences in college and it kind of got the ball really rolling for me as far as kung fu cinema goes. You may have heard of it when it got a 2001 re-release with a “Quentin Tarantino Presents” stamped onto it.

Plot
China in the mid 1800s is plagued with disasters (flooding, refugee migration, corrupt officials and, uh, plague itself). In a southern town, a corrupt governor is milking his subjects dry, something which a local Robin Hood type of character who dresses in black and covers the lower half of his face does not take kindly too. Angered by the impudence, the governor blackmails a traveling monk/herbalist into hunting down the criminal while imprisoning his son. The monk meets a kind doctor who helps him out, and the stakes get raised when an imperial minister arrives to put a stop to the Iron Monkey’s actions. Hilarity and ADVENTURE! follow for the next 85-90 minutes.

Characters
Dr. Yang: Rongguang Yu plays the town’s kind, benevolent doctor who gives the poor peasants free subscriptions and the rich folks expensive subscriptions. Obviously he’s the Iron Monkey, but the mystery of the thief’s identity isn’t the point. He knows a lot about medicine and Shaolin kung fu, and is a pretty likable guy. As Iron Monkey, he’s really badass, throwing money at the poor folks with notes attached and making sure that nobody tries to steal any of it away.

Miss Orchid: Jean Wang plays Dr. Yang’s assistant/nurse and an accomplished martial artists as well. She’s in on the Iron Monkey’s activities.

Wong Kei-Ying: Martial arts superstar Donnie Yen plays the traveling monk/doctor, famous martial artist kind of guy who’s got his young son with him. During an altercation where he proceeds to beat the asses of several thugs, he gets arrested on suspicion of being the Iron Monkey. Blackmailed into tracking the thief down, he finds out that the common people won’t sell anything to him because of his publicly stated mission. He comes across Dr. Yang and they become buddies, but of course things get complicated when a new minister comes into town.

Wong Fei-Hung: Kei-Ying’s son, played by (female) Sze-Man Tsang. The character is a little kid, but training in martial arts and in herbal properties and a habit of calling out the names of his attacks. Normally, kids in these movies are really annoying, but here, it’s a little badass in training, who would grow up to become one of China’s great 19th -20th Century folk heroes (which doesn‘t mean a lot in the West, but over there the character is very well-liked). The little kid can kick some serious ass.

Chief Fox: Shun-Yee Yuen is the bumbling, corrupt but likable Chief/Master of security. He’s crooked enough to take bribes from local criminals, but draws the line at said crooks trying to force a woman into prostitution or torturing a kid. He gets his butt whupped quite a lot in the film, being a whipping boy for both the bad guy and the Iron Monkey, but he’s sympathetic, likable and actually smarter than he lets on.

The Governor: A corrupt, hedonistic official who’s bribed his way into office and leeches off the people to support the luxurious lifestyle of his nine wives. A comedic villain who nonetheless gets some actual tyranny done before being replaced by the serious villain.

The Minister: The REAL villain of the movie. He’s a big, bearded Shaolin practitioner who’s a disgrace to the tenets of monasticism. Lecherous and violent, he’s got a squad of Shaolin monks who follow him in deed and creed, as well as two minibosses in the shape of a scarred swordsman and an ugly nun with a major facial blemish. He’s serious business and shit gets real when he finally shows up.

Visuals/Effects
Woo-ping Yuen is a major name in the action choreography world, having directed the fight scenes of countless kung fu movies, as well as The Matrix and Kill Bill films. As the overall director of the film, he’s also very good, but the movie never leaves behind his area of expertise. The fight scenes in this film are both awesome (at all times) and hilarious (when need be). The climactic fight is the ultimate set piece of the film, featuring three characters fighting it out on narrow wooden posts above a courtyard that is ON FIRE.

Writing
The writing team was Tai-Muk Lau, Cheung Tan, Pik-yin Tang and Hark Tsui. Now, I don’t know any of the Chinese dialects, and I’m always a little leery of subtitle quality, so I can’t really comment on dialog. However, the characterizations are clearly defined (which works in a story like this) and the pacing is excellent, all while being its own movie full of ADVENTURE! and not simply a “Chinese Robin Hood” film.

Sound
The score by Richard Yuen is entirely appropriate for the action on screen, but it does its job without superseding the movie. I can’t remember any particular moment that really stood out.

Conclusion
Iron Monkey is a really fun film. I am somewhat aware that the version that has reached American shores is allegedly bastardized, but if the version I watched has been chopped up, I didn’t notice anything really amiss. It’s a light, enjoyable and primarily fun kung fu movie that, while it doesn’t reach say an artistic level that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon does, is still highly entertaining. It was my “gateway drug” into Kung Fu movies, and I can actively recommend it to others.

“I’m not here to fight. I’m here to play soccer.”

It takes some effort to get me to give even a passing glance at a sports film, usually because the plots are always terribly predictable about a team of misfits/losers receiving proper coaching and overcoming the odds to win the big game. It gets old. Soccer, or futbol, is a sport that I just can’t possibly drum up interest in. I’ve tried watching it, and I know it’s a very demanding sport requiring expert reflexes and endurance, but I just can’t get excited about it when Zidane isn’t head butting people.

So why do I own 2001’s Siu lam juk kau (Shaolin Soccer) directed by Stephen Chow? Well, we’ll get there.

Plot
A disgraced soccer star falls on hard times and almost twenty years later, he stumbles on a Shaolin practitioner and cleaner with a mean kick. After convincing the young man that he can use his skills for soccer, the guy recruits all of his old buddies, who’ve also fallen on tough times. Under their new coach, they learn the nuances of playing the game and proceed to demolish everyone in their way until they get to the finals, where they square off against the bad guy team, owned by the guy who ruined their coach’s life in the first place. Hilarity ensues for 112 or so minutes.

CharactersFung (Golden Leg): Ng Man Tat plays the disgraced and crippled soccer star. In 1983, he was paid to throw a game, did so, and was taken down by an angry mob. Now, Fung is a broken shell of a man, just fired from his job working for his former teammate. As a coach, he gets a new purpose in life, and that purpose is making lots and lots of money from the Shaolin talent he gets.

Sing (Mighty Steel Leg): Stephen Chow himself as the incredibly eager kicker. What he really wants to do is spread the ideals and practical applications of Shaolin Kung Fu to the entire world. He tries using song (which fails miserably) and then sees soccer as a way to do it. His superhuman kicking abilities make him an ideal striker and offensive player, but he has to learn control. The subplot involves his interactions with a shy, kind, unattractive girl who works at a food stand. His eagerness and ability, combined with the sheer over-the-top nature of his playing makes him the film’s badass.

Mui: Wei Zhao plays the aforesaid shy girl. She’s a shrinking violet who uses tai chi to cook steam rolls, but can’t stand up to her harpy of a boss. Her subplot is about falling in love with Sing and standing up for herself. Once she does, she becomes quite badass. She’s also very attractive, but spends most of the movie under makeup designed to make her unattractive.

Hung: Patrick Tse Yin is the owner and head coach of Team Evil. He screwed over Fung twenty years ago and is now a rich, successful businessman and coach, and a heartless bastard. He doesn’t have an overbearing presence in the film until the end, but he’s hammy and playfully evil, and uses a combination of “American drugs,” SCIENCE and quite possibly sorcery to shape his players into mean bastards who tend to emanate black tendrils of shadow when “powering up.”

Iron Head (First Brother): Yut Fei Wong as the oldest of Sing’s Shaolin brothers, he’s working a thankless job in a restaurant who’s owner has a penchant for breaking bottles over his head. He plays the world weary, “getting too old for this shit” guy on the team, and is usually seen with a cigarette sticking out of his mouth.

Iron Shirt Tin (Third Brother): Kai Man Tin plays the bespectacled, neurotic businessman. Harried at work, he masters catching the ball with his gut and firing it back.

Lightning Hands (Fourth Brother): Kwok-Kwan Chan is the lanky, young brother who becomes the team’s goalie and adopts a clearly Bruce Lee-inspired jumpsuit.

Hooking Leg (Second Brother): Chi Ling Chiu is the short tempered, formerly handsome, balding brother who makes an excellent defensive player.

Light Weight (Small Brother): Chi Chung Lam is the overweight brother who can’t help stuffing his face. He’s also incredibly agile and capable of leaping over anybody else. There’s a running gag during practice involving people breaking eggs and him charging forward to lap up the yolk.

Visuals/Effects
Stephen Chow has an incredible eye for visual gags that can go from awesome to absurd. For instance, Steel Leg swings his leg at a goon and stops just short, but the wind from it keeps blowing the goon’s hair for a few seconds later. During the team’s first match, as the brothers are getting their asses beat, Steel Leg is crawling around and manages to pick up a helmet and a rifle and calls in for backup as tracer fire covers the screen. Then it cuts to his coach yelling at him to stand up and he’s holding a shoe and a stick. The movie isn’t afraid of going into the surreal or absurd for a laugh. The action is a given, and suitably badass, but there’s even a brief dance number where a bunch of random people on the street start up in a choreographed routine before Mui’s boss shoos them away.

As far as action goes, its very well done, and the CGI effects are pretty noticeable, but they’re never the focus of the scene. They’re only there to allow the ball to do things that are physically impossible. Slow motion is used appropriately, and action scenes are well shot and edited. The games are really great, and all of the brothers get times to shine on the field.

Writing
Stephen Chow and Kan-Cheung Tsang do a very good job at taking the standard sports movie tropes and spicing things up with Kung Fu. The plot is linear, but the characters are likable and the pacing is nice and swift.

Sound
Jacky Chan, Lowell Lo, and Raymond Wong all worked on the score. It works really well most of the time for the action scenes with percussive themes. The music over the opening credits is particularly awesome.

Conclusion
So Shaolin Soccer is a fantastic comedy. It fires on all cylinders and actually made watching soccer fun (for me at least). It’s a lighthearted comedy that delivers exactly what it says it will without anything unnecessary or ineffective. I absolutely recommend this brilliant little film. I can’t say anything about the English dub, but then again, why would you watch that?

Beware of spoilers in the trailer.

Why is it trailer for foreign films in the American market always seem to lose all of the charm that makes the film worth watching?

“My name is Li Mu Bai. The Green Destiny is mine.”

I wasn’t joking when I said 2000 was a good year for Oscar bait that I’d go for. Ang Lee’s Wo hu cang long (hereafter referred to as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for simplicity’s sake) is a period drama that involves swords, revenge, death and love, and squared off against Gladiator at the Academy Awards.

Plot
Based on the fourth book of a five novel cycle, the movie is about a teenage girl on the cusp of her arranged marriage who would rather be independent and run away. To that end, she steals a famous sword from a famous swordsman and causes nocturnal mischief under the aegis of her mentor, a man-hating criminal. The warrior and his almost-but-not-quite lover set out to reclaim the sword. Quite a bit of DRAMA combined with ADVENTURE! follows for the next 120 minutes.

Characters
Jen Yu: Zhang Ziyi in her breakout role as the rebellious noblewoman. She’s at the center of the story, and brings quite a bit sympathy for a character that is ultimately a spoiled, rich bitch who doesn’t think things through leading to bloody consequences. But there’s a reason for her anger. She’s a character that is stifling in a rigid society that demands proper behavior at all times from people at all social stations. But it doesn’t excuse her actions in the least, and several people die because of her.

Master Li Mu Bai: Chow Yun Fat plays a veteran warrior of great repute who is trying to retire from his lifestyle and settle down to a life of quiet contemplation in a temple. As a gesture of this retirement, he makes a gift of his great sword, the Green Destiny to a local official/friend of his named Sir Te. The sword has a habit of being stolen that irks him, and the sudden appearance in the town of a woman named Jade Fox keeps him from hanging up his sword for good. Li Mu Bai has a quiet dignity and strength that’s just plain badass, especially when he starts fighting. There is, however, more to him that it seems. There are hints that the contemplative life of a monastery doesn’t have the answers or serenity that he seeks, and his longtime friend and partner, Yu Shu Lien, is revealed to be one of the most important things in his life. Speaking of which…

Yu Shu Lien: Michelle Yeoh plays Li Mu Bai’s friend and love interest. Her father established a “security firm” and she eventually inherited the business of professional ass-beating. Her friendship with Li Mu Bai goes way back, but due to societal constraints and personal hesitations, neither acted on their feelings for each other in the past. She becomes a close friend of Jen Yu’s during the film, bonding like sisters, and she tries to steer the young girl along a path that is more moderated than the one Jade Fox offers. A stoic, mature warrior woman, she conveys phenomenal volumes of depth and sympathy with subtle facial expressions and movements. For being both a smart and capable warrior, businesswoman and general fascinating character, she takes my nod as Badass of the Film (though Li Mu Bai is easily a hair’s breadth away from being it).

Lo “Dark Cloud”: A wild bandit leader who met Jen Yu when he raided her caravan and stole her comb. She took offense to that and gave chase, and the two had a whirlwind romance. That’s revealed in a flashback. Lo comes to the city to find her and take her away from the repressive courtly life, but in a lot of ways, only makes more trouble for everyone when he shows up. He’s a wildly audacious free spirit of a character, and his open, honest love for Jen Yu is a great contrast to the severe restraint of everybody else.

Jade Fox: Cheng Pei-Pei plays a bitter, angry woman who acts as Jen Yu’s maid/servant, but is also tutoring her in the ways of combat. She infiltrated a monastery once and murdered Li Mu Bai’s master after observing the school’s combat techniques and sleeping with him. She hates men in general, largely because they keep women down in society, but she’s also pretty psychopathic as far as mentors go.

There are a few other important characters, like Sir Te who I mentioned already and a police inspector/officer who’s in it quite a bit. He’s trying to track down the stolen sword and bring in Jade Fox as well, but he’s there mostly to get his ass kicked.

Visuals/Effects
Pretty. That’s the first impression. Ang Lee’s eye for Dramatic storytelling and setting the mood are great in this film. Colors are lush and the second act is defined by desert browns and the third by forest greens. Its very nicely done.

Of course, being a martial arts film in the Wuxia tradition, there’s plenty of fightin’ to see, and they’re easy on the eyes. The three that particularly stand out to me are the fight in the tea house where Jen Yu tears up a restaurant fighting a bunch of goons who only wanted a friendly sparring match, the incredible duel with Yu Shu Lien in the “dojo” and the iconic fight between Jen and Li Mu Bai in the trees. Extensive wire work was used to make all the leaping and soaring and standing on thin tree branches possible, which was amazing at the time, but it has aged a little bit. Not so much that it breaks suspension of disbelief, but if you’re jaded, the treetop fight really stretches it. Just roll with it.

Writing
Du Lu Wang wrote the book and I know nothing about the series it belongs to. Hiu-Ling Wang, James Schamus & Kuo Jung Tsai handled the script adaptation. And there are some interesting contrasts with Gladiator. First, its written in Mandarin Chinese, but second, the pacing is more drawn out as the characters backstories and connections are slowly revealed. It’s a more sophisticated method that adds layers of depth to the characters in a very good way. The plot itself delves very heavily into the Romance genre (classical Romance, not modern kissy-face romance) and despite being about only a few characters, feels very epic in scope.

Sound
Composer Tan Dun & Yo Yo Ma worked together on creating the sound for the movie, and its not what you’d expect of an ADVENTURE! score. Most of the themes are haunting cello work, and the action scenes go heavily into percussion. Overall, its very restrained, moody with elements of passion bubbling under the surface and totally appropriate to what’s on screen.

Conclusion
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an excellent, excellent film. Beautifully shot with compelling characters and story with haunting music, the movie does fire on all cylinders. It was also something of a gateway drug into the realm period martial arts films from Hong Kong.