Author: Jim McLennan

Jade Leung interview (1992 Eastern Heroes)

  By

[The following interview was taken from the now unavailable (as far as I know) Vol.2,#1 of ‘Eastern Heroes’ magazine, published in summer 1992. It’s occasionally cringe-inducing (Bey, if you’re going to chat up actresses, we don’t need to read about it in the transcript!), but has its moments. No copyright violation is intended, and it’s reproduced for informational and educational purposes only]

Bey Logan goes on a pussy hunt, and tracks down the ‘Black Cat’ herself, that sensuous, sexy and ever-so-slightly-psychopathic Jade Leung.

RAP ON A HOT TIN ROOF

My old mate Betty Chan was looking worried. “When we did the Black Cat press tour in Malaysia,” she confided, “Jade didn’t say anything…” This didn’t phase me a bit. I’ve met most of Hong Kong’s lethal leading ladies, from Michelle Khan to Yukari Oshima, and there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to meet the latest winsome woman warrior. D & B’s Black Cat has yet to get a release in the U.K. In fact, it has yet to get a distribution deal, which just goes to show how slow the U.K video market is at the moment. More than a few of you might well be wondering what’s so special about the him, and its leading lady. Trust me. Black Cat boldly goes where no H.K femme de la fureur flick has gone before, and the precious Jade is a Miss with a hit…

Luc Besson’s slick French thriller La Femme Nikita was a surprise success worldwide. The movie tells the tale of a psychotic Parisian street punk, played by Anne Parrillaud, who is drafted by a secret department of French Intelligence (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) to perform covert assassination missions. In the course of the film, the Nikita of the title suffers to the point that she is redeemed of her past sins, and finds a kind of freedom.

Many critics were stunned at the way Besson used a woman as a viable action hero. Clearly, they had never seen many of the Hong Kong hyperthrillers, films that prove time and again that a Yellow Widow is just as deadly, and that hell really has no fury like a woman’s scorn (or sidekick, for that matter). There’s nothing new about Chinese film-makers ‘borrowing’ the plot from a western movie, as D & B did when they lifted the Nikita storyline to make Black Cat. Previously, though, such transitions have tended to beef up the stunts ‘n’ guns ‘n’ gung fu content, while avoiding the kind of nudity and sexual situations commonplace in the west and in Japan. Just compare Killer’s Romance or Dragon From Russia with their original, the animated Crying Freeman! Black Cat, on the other paw, marks the first time that a Hong Kong movie has adapted a western tale and added an element of sensuality to the tale!

In the U.K, ‘Category 3’ is a kind of prisoner. In Hong Kong, it’s a kind of film that contains nudity, on-screen sex and obscene language. These three elements have been stocks in trade for Hollywood since the days of Cecil B. DeMille but, oddly, seeing at there are so many of the buggers, Chinese people seem to have been rather puritanical about reproducing reproduction. Until now. In the last year, ‘Category 3’ has leapt to the fore, spearheaded, in fact double spearheaded, by the extraordinary success of one Amy Yip, an actress who makes Dolly Parton look like Shelley Duvall, a woman who seems to have taken delivery of a pair of Scud missiles with the same subtlety with which Iraq received its Supergun barrel. Known far and wide as the ‘Dai (Big) Balls Queen’, Amy is a much-loved figure of fun. However, the raunchiness of some of this Mae East’s vehicles have paved the way for more mature treatments of adult sensuality in Hong Kong action pictures. A prime example of this new genre-within-a-genre is Black Cat.

“She’s very shy”, observed Betty, for the umpteenth time, as we awaited the arrival of the Divine Ms. Leung. Betty Chan, I should explain, is the luckless D&B P.R. person who gets lumbered with taking care of my every whim when I go on the beat in Kowloon. Previously, she had fixed up interviews for me with the likes of Cynthia Khan and Donnie Yen. Perhaps she was worried that my straight ahead, no-holds-barred, National Enquirer q-and-a technique would unnerve poor Jade. I feared not. Along with my usual wit and charm, I had a secret weapon. I speak French, and so does Jade Leung. Would this be enough to ensure a frank and meaningful exchange of ’phone numbers…um…views? Read on….

BEY LOGAN: Est ce-que ce tres difficile pour tourner les cascades dans votre premiere film d’action ?

JADE LEUNG: Oui, c’est tres difficile, mais j’ai… Ai-yah! Your French is better than mine! Let’s talk in English and Cantonese, please!

BL: Okay Jade, you just made your first action film….

JL: It’s my first film of any kind!

BL: So you were in at the deep end in terms of doing fights and stunts. What was your background prior to doing Black Cat?

JL: I’m from Hong Kong. I went to Switzerland for about four years. I was studying there. I came back to Hong Kong in 1990, and went to work as a model.

BL: What were you studying in Switzerland?

JL: How to speak French, but not too much! I stayed in a Chinese restaurant there, so I wasn’t always speaking French. Also, I studied fashion design.

BL: It’s a real jump from that to being an action film femme fatale. How were you discovered?

JL: At that time, (director) Steven Shin started looking for a new actress to star in this film, Black Cat. They had the script already. Then, a friend of Steven Shin introduced me to him, and he picked me out of two hundred girls who auditioned for the part. All the girls in the modeling agencies cast for the film.

BL: Why do you think they picked you, out of two hundred other beautiful girls?

JL: I think I had a certain ‘look’ they wanted, and also I am very strong! My style was suitable for Black Cat.

BL: Most performers pay their dues with small roles in films before becoming big stars, yet here you were with a starring role right of the bat. It must have been quite a challenge for you. Were you nervous before you started shooting?

JL: A little bit, but I liked the character of Black Cat, of the girl, so I feel I can accept the challenge.

BL: What kind of training did you have to undertake to prepare for the film?

JL: I did about three months training in Chinese kung fu, reactions, falls, weight training and so on. It was very hard!

BL: Obviously you carry off the action in the film very well, but, given the quality of the Chinese action directors, that probably wasn’t as hard as pulling off the acting side of the part. Did you have any acting lessons?

JL: No. Not one. On the set, the director prepares me and shows me how to act.

BL: A lot of people have said that Black Cat is very similar to La Femme Nikita. Est-ce-que tu connais cette filme?

JL: Oui. Je connais. I think that our Chinese film and this French film are not the same. The story has some similarities, but the way the story is told is different. Also, I think I play the character differently from the way the actress plays Nikita…

BL: You’re certainly a lot prettier than Anne Parrillaud…

JL: (giggling): Merci beaucoups!

BL: Both films are highly stylised in terms of the action and the violence, which is another reason people might compare them. Black Cat is a intense movie, and your character in it is a very extreme one. Do you find it easy to come off that level of intensity, or do you come off the set, go home and beat up the boyfriend?

JL: When I finish filming, I’m too tired to beat up anybody! The whole production took only one and half months to shoot. So my schedule was very tight. I’m in virtually every scene, so I didn’t have many rest days. Out of forty-five days, I worked every day! Sixteen hours for one day, I work! As you know, the film is set in Canada, in Hong Kong, in the U.S and in Japan, so, in each country, we have a different crew. However, in every country, I’m still working every day, with no rest!

BL: In the film, your character is a ruthless killer, but, in person, you’re obviously very nice and quiet and normal. How do you generate that kind of assassin mind set?

JL: That’s what acting is all about! I like acting, and I really liked the fact that the character was so extreme. It made it more fun! Sometimes, the girls in Hong Kong films are just there for the hero, you know?

BL: On-screen and off from what I hear…

JL: I loved playing such a violent role. It’s a real change for a girl in a Hong Kong movie.

BL: So how did you perfect your ‘mean’ look for Black Cat?

JL: Before shooting, I look in the mirror and try for the right expression. Then, when we’re filming, I try to remember how that look feels.

BL: Were you injured during filming?

JL: Everywhere except my face was injured.

BL: How they can beat upon such a beautiful body… (Jade giggles.) When you see the film now, which is your favourite scene?

JL: I like the first part very much. Everything until we go back to Hong Kong. You have seen the film?

BL: Yes. Betty screened it for me the other day. How was it working with my old friend Simon Yam? I made a film with him in England.

JL: He’s very good. He’s a good actor, and he taught me a lot. He’s like my big brother!

BL: He’s a cool guy…

JL: No. No. He’s very nice. He’s a very sweet guy. Actually, I think every girl is attracted to him.

BL: Yes. I meant he looks cool! Everyone knows Simon is really a pussycat. When you’re not filming, what do you like to do?

JL: I go to the gym every day, to work out for about two hours. Otherwise, I stay at home and watch videos or listen to music.

BL: You know, that’s exactly what Jackie Chan says he does when he’s not working! And we all think you guys have such wild lifestyles… One reason that Black Cat has become so notorious so fast is that its one of the first of this new kind of Category 3 action film. It’s mature in the way that an American action film is. How does it feel to be the symbol of this new wave of Chinese action actresses?

JL: It’s different from the kind of female action heroes we have had before, like Michelle Khan and Yeung Ly Tsing. So far, I’m the only one who can do this, and be a kung fu star and, I suppose, some kind of sex symbol. It doesn’t worry me at all. It was such a great part in Black Cat, but I know I can go on to play different kinds of roles.

BL: I know the nudity in Black Cat is still very low key compared to an American film, but it must still be quite difficult to do, especially in a Hong Kong movie, where mainstream films tend to be so puritanical with regard to the female form.

JL: I didn’t do the nude scenes deliberately to shock people, or to make my name. They were part of the script and I knew that when I accepted the role. As I’d been a model before, I’m not too self-conscious about my body, so I didn’t find it too embarrassing. Also, it was shot very discreetly. Also, Thomas Lam, who plays my lover in the film, was very gentle. You know the scene in the jacuzzi? He says to me before filming: “Okay, in this scene, I act like your boyfriend, and then, afterwards, we just forget about it.” He was very professional, and that helped a lot.

BL: I think that viewers in the West might be a little disappointed if they expect some hard raunch in Black Cat, because it really is very soft…

JL: Will it be the equivalent of a Category 3 when it’s released in Britain?

BL: Yes, but for the violence, not for the nudity or sexual situations. We get stronger stuff on TV over there. Jade, what will your next film be?

JL: Probably Black Cat 2.

BL: What a startlingly original title! I believe you’re signed to a six year contract with D&B…?

JL: Yes.
BL: And how old are you now?
JL: Twenty-two.

BL: Wow. Do you have a set number of films each year in your contract?

JL: Three films a year.

BL: Three films a year for six years! We’re going to be seeing a lot of you, and hopefully in more ways than one…

JL: (giggling): You’re bad!

BL: What was the funniest thing that happened during the shooting of Black Cat?

JL: Well, you know the scene where Thomas and I aim rolling aroundon the table? The kissing scene? We n.g. (no good shot) over thirty times! We kept rolling out of shot of the camera. Afterwards, both our lips are really red, from my lipstick!

BL: I think he was n.g.-ing on purpose. What kind of films do you like to watch? Chinese or American?

JL: American movies.
BL: Who’s your favourite American actor or actress?
JL: I like Julia Roberts very much…

BL: Really? I hear she may be playing the lead in the American version of Nikita. So, something you have in common with Julia Roberts!

JL: I don’t think of Black Cat as the Chinese version of Nikita…

BL: Well, a lot of people do. Amy Tsui (wife of director Tsui Siu Ming) was telling me that they planned to make a Chinese version of I.a Femme Nikita, but that they abandoned it because you guys got there first! (Jade’s pager beeps for the the umpteenth time during the interview) You know, for someone who’s not working at the moment, you get an awful lot of pager messages. Must be all your boyfriends…

JL: No, it’s not my boyfriends!

BL: Well it ouqht to be! Seriously I wouldn’t worry about Black Cat being compared with Nikita. It stands up surprisingly well, and I think you should worry more if Nikita had been a bad movie. If you could work with any director in Hong Kong, or any actor, who would it be?

JL: I would like to do a film with the actress Gong Li, you know, from Raise the Red Lantern?, and with her boyfriend, the director Chang Yee Mo. They’re both from Mainland China, and I really like their work.

BL: A real jump from Black Cat to Raise the Red Lantern! Which American director and actor would you like to work with?

JL: Al Pacino, Julia Roberts and, for director, Martin Scorsese!

BL: The Black Cat, the Pretty Woman, the Godfather and the director of Goodfellas and Raging Bull… That’s going to be quite a movie! You do some kung fu fighting in Black Cat. Have you kept that up since the movie?

JL No. Like most action actors here, I just learn on the set. Actually, for movies, you don’t need to go to a kwoon and learn from a sifu, but, if you want to fight for real, then you have to do that. Right now, I just go to the gym to do weights…

BL: What’s the Jade Leung Workout consist of?

JL: Swimming, to build up muscle tone, and aerobics, to lose weight, then all kind of weight training exercises to tone my muscles. All kind of things!

BL: Most Hong Kong actresses have pretty bad reputations in terms of their private life. Are you aware of this, and do you take steps to avoid it?

JL: I have my own lifestyle. I don’t care what other people do. I do my own thing!

BL: So a second Black Cat movie is definite?

JL: I think so, yes. We hope to shoot part of it in Russia. We should start early next year.

BL: Would you like to came to England some’ to meet all the fans you’re going to have after Black Cat is released?

JL: Yes. I’d love to come to England and I’ve never been there. I plan to come over next year, because I want to improve my English

BL: We could run a competition in the the magazine ‘Adopt Black Cat For A Month’. The winner could have you stay with them, and they could teach English! Good idea?

JL: (giggling): Yes! Great! You’re crazy..!

BL: So they tell me. Jade, good luck with Black Cat 2, and thanks for taking time out for this interview.

JL: Thank you very much.

(Thanks to D’n’B’s Betty Chan for her usual gracious assistance, and to the Kowloon Sheraton for, as ever, playing host to my rap session with Deeb’s latest lethal lady.)

Xena: Warrior Princess

  By

“X(ena) marks the spot.”

“In a time of ancient gods, warlords and kings, a land in turmoil cried out for a hero.
She was Xena: a mighty princess, forged in the heat of battle.
The power. The passion. The danger. Her courage will change the world.”

Xena is one of the definitive action-heroine shows of all time. Originally appearing as a supporting character in a three-episode story arc on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, in which she abandons her life as a warlord and opts instead to fight for good, as a way of making amends for her life. The producers opted to develop her as a spin-off, and the show ran for six seasons between 1995 and 2001, ending in a two-part finale (the review of which, below, was written first, hence it somewhat duplicates the overview here). It proved highly-popular for a show with no designated network home, pulling an audience in syndication of up to 7.8 million viewers during its second season, and inspiring a devoted fanbase that persists, even a decade after the show has come to an end.

I am not, apparently, the only person to remember the show fondly, and it is an important precursor to subsequent entries, both on television and in film. Joss Whedon has apparently credited the show with blazing the trail later followed by Buffy – not least in its musical episode, “Bitter Suite,” which was an obvious influence on “Once More, With Feeling”. The creator of Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino, was also a fan of the show; as documented in Double Dare, he hired Lawless’s stunt double, Zoe Bell, to double for Uma Thurmann in his two movies.

Central to its success was the marvellously-named Lucy Lawless, a New Zealand actress who was, surprisingly, not the first choice for the role. It was originally Vanessa Angel, but she fell sick and was unable to take part – and the rest is, as they say, history. Lawless simply looks the part, possessing an undeniable physical presence. Unlike many heroines, it’s very easy to believe she genuinely looks like she could kick your ass! Add cheekbones that could cut class, plus a smile giving the impression she was perpetually one step ahead of you, so don’t even think about it, and you have the perfect person for the character.

Alongside Xena is Gabrielle (Renee O’Connor), who represents the moral compass of the show. Gabrielle left her home in a (mostly) peaceful village, to pursue a life of adventure with Xena, but became as much a spiritual adviser as sidekick. While certainly possessing the potential to be immensely irritating, in a Jiminy Cricket kind of way, she did perhaps have a more interesting character arc, described by one writer as “from a spunky kid into an idealistic fighter who didn’t kill, then a total pacifist, and finally a formidable but battle-weary warrior.”

Both the setting and the approaches taken to the storytelling are, to be honest, all over the place. The locations roam from Greece to China, the period could be anywhere over a spell of several centuries, and the dialogue is absolutely late-20th rather than even remotely classical. Similarly, the tone, even within a single episode, can leap from drama to pathos to comedy to a slugfest, without pausing for breath. It’s an approach which is difficult to pull off: even Hercules, from much the same creators, often seemed forced or trite, but Xena manages, by and large, to get away with its cheerful disregard to historical veracity and consistency of atmosphere. That it’s clearly not intended to be take seriously, is clear from the sound effects, where even a turning of Xena’s head is accompanied by a “Whoosh!”

There was enormous, often ferocious debate among fandom over the nature of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship, some asserting they were a lesbian couple. While both showed plenty of evidence of heterosexuality, there was a lot of content open to interpretation – much of it absolutely deliberate, and known as “subtext” in Xena fandom. I never found it convincing. My issue with it was not one of sexuality, simply compatibility: Xena and Gabrielle were absolute opposites, in background, upbringing, personality and approach. They just didn’t “fit” each other, from what I could see, and there was no chemistry visible. Xena and Hercules: I could see that. Xena and the Queen of the Amazons: no problem there either. But Xena and Gabrielle? Sorry. Not buying this. It also played into the stereotype that any strong woman has to be a lesbian.

The ongoing discussions screaming matches in Xena fandom about this, as nicely documented in this piece, is largely what drove me away [s’funny, those screeching about tolerance often proved remarkably intolerant of others’ views]. Eventually from the show itself, as the makers opted to pander towards this vocal subset with increasing frequency, too often investing the show with elements which felt taken from a soap-opera. The finale was the only episode of that season I’d even seen. But the memories of the show remained, and when I discovered it on Netflix, I decided it was time to go back and watch the series. All 134 episodes. From the beginning. Seemed like a good idea at the time…

I’ll be covering them a season at a time. If you’re interested in more details, my notes can be found over on our forum, covering each episode in a bit more depth, with a pic from each.

Star: Lucy Lawless, Renee O’Connor, Ted Raimi, Hudson Leick

  • Xena: Warrior Princess season one

    Originally screened: September 1995

    It’s assumed viewers are at least somewhat familiar with Xena’s background, as she is first seen burying her armour in an effort to bury her past. Of course, this is about as successful as it usually is in fiction, and it’s not long before she’s saving villagers, including Gabrielle, from slavery. That includes an aerial battle atop platforms, which is the first sign of the show’s strong influence from Hong Kong action films; it was using wirework, in a way that predated its popular arrival in Hollywood. Similarly, the stunning New Zealand locations foreshadow Lord of the Rings, to the extent that I kept expecting to see hobbits gamboling along in Xena’s wake.

    There is a sense that the makers were still feeling their way to some extent, not quite certain how the relationships would work out, and the characters develop as the actors grew into them. The same goes for the action; especially early on, the doubling is clunkily shot, and Lawless is obviously not doing as much of her own work. The improvement over the course of the season was palpable, and by the end, both Xena and the stunt players had got a much better handle on the subtleties required. That said, I always had to wince when Xena would cartwheel her way into a situation – wouldn’t, oh, running have been quicker?

    There are some good guest appearances; Tim Thomerson plays a mercenary on the downside of his fame and career [think True Grit in ancient Greece], and we also see Karl Urban, who’d go on to play Bones in the Star Trek reboot. The best of these, however, is Bruce Campbell in “The Royal Couple of Thieves”. Show producer Rob Tapert was one of the producers of The Evil Dead, so has known Campbell for years, and used him to play Autolycus, the self-proclaimed King of Thieves. Xena demands his help to recover a potentially lethal religious relic, stolen from its owners, so the two have to pair up. The dialogue and coming timing here is great, and the same goes for “Warrior… Princess…” which sees Lawless play both Xena, and her look-alike, flighty princess Diana. It’s a startling demonstration of Lucy’s genuine talent as an actress.

    Player loading

    The best episode, however, is about as far from comedy as the show gets. I write a good deal more about it over on the forum, but it centers on Callisto, who watched her family die in a fire during a raid by Xena’s army, back when she was bad. Now, Callisto has set out to destroy Xena from the ground up. Featuring an amazingly psychotic performance from Hudson Leick as Callisto, it goes to prove that every great hero needs a great villain, and Callisto is the Joker to Xena’s Dark Knight. They play two sides of the same coin, Callisto pointing out that Xena has never been brought to justice for all her past crimes.

    Callisto is much further gone into the insanity abyss, as this speech she gives to Xena shows. “You let me go, and I will dedicate my life to killing everything you’ve loved: your friends, your family, your reputation, even your horse. You see, I am being so honest with you, because the idea of your pity is worse than death for me. You created a monster with integrity, Xena. Scary, isn’t it?” The show builds to a great battle between the two (above), inspired by a similar fight Jet Li had in Once Upon a Time in China. Watching this again… Yeah, I see why I loved the show!

    Season 1: Top 5 episodes

    # Jim IMDB voting
    1. Callisto Callisto
    2. The Royal Couple of Thieves Prometheus
    3. Warrior… Princess… Sins of the Past
    4. Sins of the Past The Greater Good
    5. Altared States Warrior… Princess…
    Continue reading →
  • Xena: Warrior Princess season two

    Originally screened: September 1996

    The defining moment of Xena’s sophomore season didn’t take place in any episode. In fact, it didn’t even take place in New Zealand, but thousands of miles away, During a rehearsal for an appearance on The Tonight show with Jay Leno, Lucy Lawless was thrown off a horse after it lost its footing, and broke her pelvis. It’s interesting to compare the reaction of the producers to what the Tapert/Raimi team did when the star of Spartacus, Andy Whitfield, was similarly a victim of severe misfortune, more than a decade later. There, they put the show entirely on hold and opted instead to film a prequel without him.

    Now, it’s not quite identical: Whitfield had cancer, which unfortunately proved fatal, and shooting had not commenced on his second series. Still, one wonders if, in hindsight, it might have been better – for the viewer at least – had the show gone on hiatus, rather than trying to (literally) limp along, with an action star incapable of doing any action for most of its run. Oh, you certainly have to admire the creative way in which everyone worked around it: rewriting an episode here, inserting a body swap there. But having Hudson Leick pretending to be Xena trapped in Callisto’s body, is like having Sir Anthony Hopkins play Clarice Sterling inside Hannibal Lecter. While I’m a huge Callisto mark, even I have to say, it completely negates the whole point.

    With Lawless’s limitations, the show was largely forced back on to the supporting characters post-fall, and that’s a bit of a mixed bag. Leick was better at being bad than being good, and Bruce Campbell was reliable as ever. But both Renee O’Connor and Ted Raimi were overexposed, and although they are fine in light comedy, they are just not capable of carrying a show from a dramatic point of view. Still, there were some solid episodes, my personal favorite being a successor to Warrior… Princess, giving Lawless three characters of disparate tone to juggle, and she does so magnificently. Despite general loathing in the fan community, I also enjoyed the Christmas episode, A Solstice Carol, for its loopy inventiveness. I mean… hula-hooping?

    There’s no doubt that the subtext between Xena and Gabrielle was more explicitly brought out in this series, with several sequences in various episodes that are clearly there purely to tease the fans. However, by the end of the seasons, there seems to have been a certain feeling, among some creators at least, that this had run its course. For instance, writer Chris Manheim said, “We kind of backpedaled a lot on all that [subtext]. I don’t know whether it’s getting read in no matter what we write. But I think we’ve said “Ah, we’ve had our run at that,” and just concentrate on other aspects of their relationship. Whatever people read into it they do… You can only do that so much before it gets to be old hat and kind of tired.”

    In terms of style and approach, the show covers even more ground here than the first time, from absolutely froth to grim darkness. Xena even gets crucified by Julius Caesar in one episode [confusingly, the actor responsible also crops up later, playing Cupid, complete with fluffy wings…]. I’m sure I’m not the only one who found themselves whistling Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, during the scene shown above right. Another unwitting Python reference is the wretched Here She Comss, Miss Amphipolis, a dreadful tale of drag-queen empowerment, featuring perhaps the least convincing female impersonator since John Cleese put on a dress – as on the left, watch that Adam’s apple bob….

    Having Xena wander round a beauty pageant, defusing tensions between both competitors and organizers, seems to represent both the most desperate and transparent effort by the makers to save her pelvis, and the nadir of the series thus far. [Though producer Steven Sears said that episode was unaffected, it’s hard to believe such a woeful installment was as originally intended, and Manheim said the story “came about partly because…Lucy couldn’t fight much.”] While the underlying cause was unfortunate and certainly outside the makers’ control, their reaction seemed more concerned with contractual obligation than show quality, and it’s hard to deny the resulting, significant drop-off in standards which can be seen post-accident in this series.

    Season 2: Top 5 episodes

    # Jim IMDB voting
    1. Warrior… Princess… Tramp A Day In The Life
    2. Return of Callisto Ten Little Warlords
    3. A Solstice Carol Return of Callisto
    4. Intimate Strangers A Necessary Evil
    5. A Necessary Evil Warrior… Princess… Tramp
    Continue reading →
  • Xena: Warrior Princess series finale

    “Get your yi-yi’s out.”

    I used to be a Xena fan; for the first couple of series, I was a die-hard, never missed an episode, bought the merchandise, went to the gatherings, etc. I loved (with one exception) the supporting cast – Joxer, Ares, Autolycus – and still reckon Callisto remains one of the great TV villainesses of all time.

    But the dynamic of the series slowly changed; Xena’s irritating sidekick, Gabrielle, started getting more screen time, and it became more of a relationship-based show than the action/humour cross which I knew and loved. Finally, around the end of Series 3, I gave up (I think the musical episode was a watershed – as with Buffy); not even the news that the series was ending could lure me back, and the finale in Summer 2001 passed me by. It even took me a month to decide to pick up the DVD, and then it was only ‘cos I had a Best Buy gift card burning a hole in my pocket. But I’m glad I did, as it’s an ending fit for a warrior princess.

    Warning: the following, of necessity, contains extreme spoilers for the show’s end. Readers are advised not to proceed if they wish to avoid such knowledge.

    Let’s get the spoiler out of the way first: the original title for this review was, Oh My God – They Killed Xena! You Bastards!, but wiser counsel prevailed. To screams of fury from the Hard Core Nut Balls (as Lawless herself once described the more extreme fans), Xena died. And this time, it was permanent – something of a change for a show in which fatality was previously only a minor inconvenience. Indeed, one of the problems was there was no longer any tension, characters having come back from the grave so many times, even death no longer had a sting. The reason for the reaction, it seems, was less the actual death, than the separation of Xena and Gabrielle. For a small but extremely vociferous part of fandom invested the relationship between those two with far more than the actresses (and most of the creators) intended. These “subtexters” wanted to see the two walk off into the sunset, hand-in-hand – probably sporting crew cuts and Birkenstocks too, if you catch my drift. The makers sometimes jokily acknowledged these obsessives, which was perhaps like trying to put a fire out by throwing petrol on it.

    The things which made them dislike the finale were, perhaps, the ones why I enjoyed it. I was never bothered by the concept of a Xena being a lesbian, it was just the idea that whiny waste of space Gabrielle was her partner which I found inconceivable: sidekick, yes; love interest, no. The finale largely downplayed Gabrielle’s role: she was entirely absent from the half told in flashback, concerning a previous adventure back when Xena was, shall we say, “morally independent”.  This created the drive for the film. The incident in question saw Xena ransoming a Japanese girl – forming a bond with her which certainly has subtextual elements of its own. But it all went horribly wrong, and Xena caused – albeit inadvertently – the deaths of 40,000 people. Now, the only way for her to find redemption is to kill the demon which consumed their souls…but the only way to do that is to become a ghost herself. While there’s the usual escape clause, at the end we discover that any return to life would condemn the souls forever; Xena is not prepared to do this, and so remains dead into eternity.

    xenafinLike the series itself, the finale veered wildly between the fabulous and the questionable, vacuuming up influences like Tarantino on speed. From Japan: Kwaidan, Shogun Assassin and Akira Kurosawa. From Hong Kong: A Chinese Ghost Story, Once Upon a Time in China, Swordsman. From the West: The Evil Dead and Sergio Leone – the former makes sense, since director Tapert produced that classic slice of low-budget horror. Fortunately, it has a lot of its own to admire, rather than being a series of homages; the story is great, and the acting largely excellent.

    The highlight is probably Xena’s death, a five-minute sequence of harrowing intensity featuring a never-ending hail of arrows, into which our heroine struggles, intent on finding a warrior’s death. It’s a fabulous combination of effects and acting, which would be worthy of any movie – at the end, there’s a mass exhalation of breath, as you realise that those who live by the sharp, pointy object, die by the sharp, pointy object. It’s entirely fitting, and if the show had ended there, I’d have had no complaints. The actual climax is clunky and contrived in comparison, though the shock value present remains huge, since you confidently expect the revival of Xena, right up until the credits roll.

    On the downside are various, jarring inaccuracies: Xena’s ghost hugs Gabrielle but is incapable of holding her chakram (the “round killing thing”, if you didn’t know); some of the “samurai” possess blatant New Zealand accents; a giant explosion implies the medieval Japanese possessed nuclear weapons (given the location, this is in somewhat dubious taste). If Xena really cared for Gabrielle, why send her on a wild-goose chase of resurrection, when Xena knew it wouldn’t happen? Why did Gabrielle pause to get a full-back tattoo first, before going off on this, presumably somewhat urgent, quest? These are clumsy and obvious flaws which could/should have been corrected.

    It still remains a brave and uncompromising finale, in an era when “final” is usually about the last word you’d use to describe them. While the door is not completely closed – not in a milieu where humans can become immortal and then get killed anyway – in all likelihood it is the end of Xena, and marks the close of her chapter. From a beginning as a minor character on another show, she became a cultural icon; whatever you may think of the series, its important place in female action heroine history cannot be denied.

    Dir: Rob Tapert
    Stars: Lucy Lawless, Renee O’Connor

    Continue reading →

Velvet Gloves

  By

★½

This film is a 90-minute explanation of why Jade Leung’s star never took off. While some decisions Michelle Yeoh made might have been questionable, at least her films were rarely boring, and never down to the level of this piece of tedious dreck. It depicts the struggles of a class of policewomen (including Jade), to become part of the elite. The idea certainly has potential – the Inspector Wears Skirts series has a similar premise – but here, there is almost no character given to any of the girls; they all blur into each other, like a dozen GI Jane-wannabes.

The director – whoever they may be, since the credits were all in Chinese, and the Internet offers limited assistance either – also seems to believe that if two minutes of the ladies taking on an assault course is good, ten minutes must be better. Another example is the seven-day forced march, which feels like it was filmed in real time, and screws up the most obvious opportunity for tension. It does lead to a somewhat interesting sequence, where three of the women have to last two minutes fighting martial-arts instructors, to avoid getting kicked out. But there is no flow to the plot at all – it lurches from set-piece to set-piece without cohesion or progression. All of which would be tolerable if the action elements weren’t handled in such a lacklustre fashion, but there’s nothing here to write home about, except in a “PS. Obvious stunt doubling” kind of way.

For some strange reason, this film appears to be unavailable on DVD – should you want to see it (and if you do, I’ve clearly failed in my mission here), you’ll have to see the VCD, with its illegible subtitles and a plot synopsis which shakes hands and parts company with the truth after the first sentence. It opts to visit the land of Wild Fabrication instead, continuing: “Before graduation, the team is called to handle a hostage situation in a jewelry expo. Afterwards the girls are assigned to as the bodyguard of the first lady of a small country. But the first lady’s own rebellious guard kidnaps her and executes one of the girls…” There’s not a single word of truth there: the movie finishes – abruptly – on graduation day, after yet another training mission.

But if you know what film that synopsis actually describes, do let me know, because it’s almost certainly far more interesting and entertaining than this one. It may not be the worst action heroine film I’ve ever seen, but it’s probably the worst ever to come out of Hong Kong, which usually does such things with a certain degree of invention, enthusiasm and energy. None of these are visible here, in any amount.

Dir: Billy Chan Wui-Ngai
Stars: Jade Leung, Bobby Au, Farini Cheung, Zhang Fengyi

The Messenger: the story of Joan of Arc

  By

★★★
“Joan’s eminent originality was her common sense”

messengerThis was the the very first sentence of Michelet’s classic biography, published in 1853, but you’d be hard pressed to recognise the same person in Besson’s portrayal. A more accurate summary of this Joan would be the line spoken to her as she languished in prison: “You didn’t see what was, Jeanne – you saw what you wanted to see…” Besson comes down firmly in the school of thought which has Joan as a mentally deranged religious loony. While this is a viable theory, it doesn’t work as played by Jovovich – all twitchy, rolling her eyes and staring off into the distance – since it becomes impossible to see why anyone would have followed her. Unless we assume the 14th century French population were entirely gullible, she should have spent her life quietly as some village’s idiot. This cripples the film irreperably, since we feel little or no sympathy for a heroine depicted as a frothing zealot.

Historically too, it gets off to a bad start – an entirely fabricated incident in which Joan sees her sister first killed, then raped by an English soldier. This provides a spurious ground for Joan to hate the invaders, when contemporary accounts tell of her concern being almost equal for both sides. Also made-up is her finding a sword in a field, and there is a sudden leap, with Joan arriving to an audience with the King – in truth, she talked her way up the hierarchy. A rather lurid scene (missing from the US theatrical release) where Joan’s virginity is verified, marks the end of a troubling first act. Once her campaign begins, though, the film improves drastically, with excellent (if somewhat implausible – did they really use something resembling helicopter rotors as weapons?) battle scenes, that are at once enthralling and grim. It’s understandable when they unhinge Joan’s sanity even more; another of the themes seems to be that her mission was really non-Christian, in that it led to the deaths of so many people. Something about “thou shalt not kill”, though given the bloody history of Christianity, singling her out seems somewhat unfair. Tcheky Karyo delivers a fine performance as the leader of Joan’s army, facing the difficult task of balancing her expectations, with prosaic things like, oh, not getting killed.

Joan’s capture, trial and execution are fairly close to the truth, though in reality, the King was less involved and more concerned for Joan than shown. It certainly is reasonable to suggest that a naive innocent such as Joan would have been used for political ends. Once she’d outlasted her usefulness – and with the king on the throne, she quickly became more a hindrance than a help – she would have needed to be disposed of. Must confess, I quite like the concept of Joan as a medieval version of Lee Harvey Oswald. Dustin Hoffman’s appearance as Joan’s conscience is another neat touch, and his sarcasm works well. Indeed, the film is one good performance from being excellent. The bad news is, it’s Jovovich who is the culprit (a messenger who deserves to be shot?), though Besson and co-writer Andrew Birkin perhaps warrant most of the criticism for twisting facts and characters in order to fit a predetermined goal. Their Joan is so far from the historical record, they’d have been better off placing their character in an entirely fictitious setting.

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Faye Dunaway, Tcheky Karyo

Satin Steel

  By

★★★½

This fast, furious, largely daft movie was Jade’s immediate follow up to the two Black Cat films. If they were based on Nikita, the inspiration here is clearly Lethal Weapon, with Leung as a headstrong cop (also named Jade Leung!) who believes in shooting first and asking questions…oh, somewhere between eventually and never. With her sensible partner (Lee), she chases evil weapons broker Mr. Fowler and his gang from Singapore to Indonesia. It eventually ends above a volcano, with Jade clinging desperately to a helicopter.

The elements here are hugely variable: Leung and Lee have great chemistry, but Lee’s boyfriend Paul (Chan) may be the most irritating bastard in cinema history – his every appearance provoked a strong desire to throw things at the TV, and we cheered loudly when he was gunned down, particularly since it shut him up for a bit. In contrast Russell Wong is more sympathetic as Fowler’s naive lawyer, though since we know what happened to Jade’s first husband, this relationship might as well be wearing a sweatshirt marked ‘Doomed’. One also wonders why an international arms dealer would employ a troupe of native dancers as henchmen.

While the plot and characterisation leaves a little to be desired in originality and execution, the action is plentiful and energetic. Of particular note is the previously-mentioned helicopter sequence – at first, we suspected heavy stunt doubling, but later on, there are a couple of shots which give pause for thought, and Jade deserves greater credit. It’s just a shame it ends so abruptly. Jade’s battle against the dancers is also pretty cool, and Lee has a good fight at a train station, culminating with a leap in front of an oncoming engine that merited an immediate rewind and rewatch.

There is, however, something obviously cheap and apparently rushed about the whole endeavour, and it feels like one of the later entries in Cynthia Khan’s filmography – particularly, Angel on Fire, which also had two policewomen from different lands, travelling to a third (and presumably, cheaper to film in!) country to find the villains. One suspects Jade was under pressure to make another movie while her star was still rising, regardless of the end product’s quality.

Dir: Tony Leung Siu-Hung
Stars: Jade Leung, Anita Lee, Russell Wong, Kenneth Chan

Jade Leung: the last action heroine

  By

“The Leung and the Restless”

The 1980’s were the Golden Era for action heroines in Hong Kong cinema. Names like Cynthia Khan (a.k.a. Cynthia Yeoh), Michelle Khan, Yukari Oshima, Cynthia Rothrock and Moon Lee all came to prominence in the decade. Just sliding in before the bubble burst was Jade Leung, who came out of nowhere to win Best Newcomer at the Hong Kong Film Awards for her performance in 1991’s Black Cat. Jade was born in the then-British colony, November 23rd 1969, but spent four of her later teenage years in Switzerland, where she studied fashion and learned French. In 1990, she returned to Hong Kong and was one of 200+ actresses to audition for Steven Shin, director of Black Cat. She won out, despite her lack of experience, and underwent a rigorous training program to get in shape for the movie.

Its success, particularly in international markets (when shown as part of a series at the National Film Theatre in London, it pulled a bigger crowd than Drunken Master 2) lead to her being signed to a long-term deal by D&B Films. Unfortunately, the studio wasn’t around long enough to fulfill its end of the bargain, and Jade has been bouncing around, in search of adequate roles ever since. She hasn’t always been successful, saying of Fox Hunter, “There is no sense whatsoever to the movie’s content… It was also the most arduous, most painful movie I have done.”

Mind you, unbiased observers would likely point to Enemy Shadow in that category – during the filming of that one, Jade was badly burnt when a stunt went wrong. “When I opened my eyes, I was enveloped by blistering flames. During that moment, many questions that I had never thought of before flashed across my mind, there was a thin fine line between life and death. Afterwards, remembering that the camera was rolling in front of me, they were waiting for me to dart out to conclude the day’s work, I ignored everything and made a dash.” The near-fatal accident can still be seen in the movie.

While most of her contemporaries have since left the industry – for example, Moon Lee now runs a well-respected dance studio – Jade Leung continues to make films. She has also appeared in TV dramas, such as Battle Against Evil, and written a diet book, though as titles like 2000’s Black Cat in Jail or last year’s Black Cat Agent Files suggest, she has to some extent never escaped her most famous role. Jade has never achieved the international renown of Michelle Yeoh, and remains little known outside her native land. As we’ll see, this is perhaps unsurprising, because her filmography struggles to get past mediocre, and she has largely dead-ended in low-budget quickies. Yet, as one of the few remaining active action heroines working in Hong Kong, she probably deserves more respect and coverage than she has so far received. Here’s a look at some of the entries in her filmography.

Black Cat

By Jim McLennan

★★★½

blackcatBefore the official remake of Nikita came out, Hong Kong had already delivered its take on the matter. The film starts in New York, and a large part of this is in English, though the acting there is so woeful as to make you lean towards the Chinese dubbed version. The heroine, Erica, is made more sympathetic: while she still kills a cop, she’s not a junkie, and is “shot” while trying to escape. She wakes up under the watchful eye of Simon Yam, in the “Uncle Bob” role (though here, he’s a ‘cousin’).

From here, the plot is similar to Nikita – missions, qualms, romance, escape attempt, etc – and interestingly, her boyfriend (Thomas Lam) is a photographer, an idea also used in the later Point. There are, however, significant differences in the details. For example, Erica has a chip implanted in her brain, supposedly, to help her achieve her full potential, but all it seems to do is give her raging headaches [admittedly, a potentially useful control mechanism]. They also skip the etiquette lessons, which seemed irrelevant to me anyway – how do good table manners help, when your mission solely involves the use of a sniper rifle?

The specifics of her missions are also altered. The final test, rather than an assassination in a restaurant, is to kill the bride at a Jewish wedding, for reasons left unexplained – but given the heavy weaponry carried by a lot of guests, it’s perhaps no bad thing! Others involve shooting an executive of the WWF (the nature group, not the wrestling federation!), a throat-slitting at a Japanese hot spring resort, and, in the best-staged sequence, dropping a lot of metal from a great height onto the roof of her target.

However, the movie’s main strength is Jade Leung, who fully deserved the Best Newcomer award she won at the 11th Hong Kong Film Awards. Every facet of her character is consistent and believable, certainly more so than Bridget Fonda – it’s at least the equal of Anne Parillaud, and arguably may be even better. Yam is perhaps a kinder, gentler handler: he doesn’t shoot his protege in the leg, for example, yet the relationship between them is missing the romantic spark which lurked in the original. As for Thomas Lam, he’s not Dermot Mulroney, and that alone is an improvement.

The film is undeniably flawed, not least in a soundtrack that is often wildly inappropriate, and seems to have been pulled at random from easy-listening CDs. But its core is solid, and in a lot of ways, this is a more justifiable movie than Point of No Return. While the story remains the same, Black Cat does at least bring a bottle to the party, adding enough new twists to make it interesting (and avoid a lawsuit). Leung’s fine performance is an unexpected bonus.

Dir: Stephen Shin
Star: Jade Leung, Simon Yam, Thomas Lam

Black Cat 2: The Assassination of President Yeltsin

By Jim McLennan

★★★

blackcat2While neither Nikita nor The Assassin ever resulted in a sequel, the success of Black Cat lead, immediately to a follow-up. This is both good, in that it forced D&B Films into coming up with some new concepts, and bad, because what they came up with is a barely coherent mess. They take Leung – who had won the ‘Best Newcomer’ award – and give her a role where she gets to speak twice. The real star is Robin Shou, well before his Mortal Kombat days, and with a much better haircut too.

He plays a CIA operative – the laserdisk subs say this stands for Central Intelligent Agency, clearly dating this before 9/11 – who is investigating a group out to assassinate President Yeltsin. Their chosen hitman has been beefed up with some kind of ill-explained technological wizardry, but luckily, one person can detect the radiation he gives off: Black Cat, who now has a chip in her head (to match the one on her shoulder, hohoho). This leads to an amusing sequence where Black Cat heads off on her own, charges into a mall, and shoots an old lady because – wouldn’t you know it? – the senior citizen just happens to be giving off the same kind of radiation, courtesy of her medical treatment. Well, I found it amusing, anyway; there’s something about a head-shot which spatters the face of a nearby clown with copious amounts of blood. Er, just me, then? :-)

 Okay, the movie may never be dull, and is certainly not short on action. Yet it doesn’t make any sense. Why would the CIA send operatives into Russia to save their president? And what are they doing operating in America? Isn’t that illegal? Oh, I forgot – it’s the CIA we’re talking about here. Leung’s robotic performance – even though entirely appropriate, since she now comes with an remote-control off switch – also feels like a terrible waste of her talents. There’s a lot of wire-work in the action sequences, but it’s not badly done; the highlight is probably a fight in a steel-works where both Robin and Jade have to take on large numbers of adversaries. The final battle, when Black Cat fights the assassin around the wreckage of a crashed plane, is cool too, with the two antagonists bouncing off the debris.

However, the overall impact is bitty and sporadic. While there are some nice ideas, they are poorly thought-out and developed, and the script doesn’t meld them into any kind of satisfactory structure. The action sequences feel equally bolted-on, though I did like the use of a President Yeltsin lookalike (at least, one presumes it was a lookalike, though I recall the real ex-President Gorbachev did appear in a Wim Wenders film). After the critical acclaim that greeted her debut, Jade Leung could have turned her skills in any direction; unfortunately, this disappointing follow-up is largely symptomatic of the poor choices that seem to have dogged her subsequent career.

Dir: Stephen Shin
Stars: Robin Shou, Jade Leung, Zoltan Buday, Patrick Stark

Satin Steel

By Jim McLennan

★★★½

This fast, furious, largely daft movie was Jade’s immediate follow up to the two Black Cat films. If they were based on Nikita, the inspiration here is clearly Lethal Weapon, with Leung as a headstrong cop (also named Jade Leung!) who believes in shooting first and asking questions…oh, somewhere between eventually and never. With her sensible partner (Lee), she chases evil weapons broker Mr. Fowler and his gang from Singapore to Indonesia. It eventually ends above a volcano, with Jade clinging desperately to a helicopter.

The elements here are hugely variable: Leung and Lee have great chemistry, but Lee’s boyfriend Paul (Chan) may be the most irritating bastard in cinema history – his every appearance provoked a strong desire to throw things at the TV, and we cheered loudly when he was gunned down, particularly since it shut him up for a bit. In contrast Russell Wong is more sympathetic as Fowler’s naive lawyer, though since we know what happened to Jade’s first husband, this relationship might as well be wearing a sweatshirt marked ‘Doomed’. One also wonders why an international arms dealer would employ a troupe of native dancers as henchmen.

While the plot and characterisation leaves a little to be desired in originality and execution, the action is plentiful and energetic. Of particular note is the previously-mentioned helicopter sequence – at first, we suspected heavy stunt doubling, but later on, there are a couple of shots which give pause for thought, and Jade deserves greater credit. It’s just a shame it ends so abruptly. Jade’s battle against the dancers is also pretty cool, and Lee has a good fight at a train station, culminating with a leap in front of an oncoming engine that merited an immediate rewind and rewatch.

There is, however, something obviously cheap and apparently rushed about the whole endeavour, and it feels like one of the later entries in Cynthia Khan’s filmography – particularly, Angel on Fire, which also had two policewomen from different lands, travelling to a third (and presumably, cheaper to film in!) country to find the villains. One suspects Jade was under pressure to make another movie while her star was still rising, regardless of the end product’s quality.

Dir: Tony Leung Siu-Hung
Stars: Jade Leung, Anita Lee, Russell Wong, Kenneth Chan

Velvet Gloves

By Jim McLennan

★½

This film is a 90-minute explanation of why Jade Leung’s star never took off. While some decisions Michelle Yeoh made might have been questionable, at least her films were rarely boring, and never down to the level of this piece of tedious dreck. It depicts the struggles of a class of policewomen (including Jade), to become part of the elite. The idea certainly has potential – the Inspector Wears Skirts series has a similar premise – but here, there is almost no character given to any of the girls; they all blur into each other, like a dozen GI Jane-wannabes.

The director – whoever they may be, since the credits were all in Chinese, and the Internet offers limited assistance either – also seems to believe that if two minutes of the ladies taking on an assault course is good, ten minutes must be better. Another example is the seven-day forced march, which feels like it was filmed in real time, and screws up the most obvious opportunity for tension. It does lead to a somewhat interesting sequence, where three of the women have to last two minutes fighting martial-arts instructors, to avoid getting kicked out. But there is no flow to the plot at all – it lurches from set-piece to set-piece without cohesion or progression. All of which would be tolerable if the action elements weren’t handled in such a lacklustre fashion, but there’s nothing here to write home about, except in a “PS. Obvious stunt doubling” kind of way.

For some strange reason, this film appears to be unavailable on DVD – should you want to see it (and if you do, I’ve clearly failed in my mission here), you’ll have to see the VCD, with its illegible subtitles and a plot synopsis which shakes hands and parts company with the truth after the first sentence. It opts to visit the land of Wild Fabrication instead, continuing: “Before graduation, the team is called to handle a hostage situation in a jewelry expo. Afterwards the girls are assigned to as the bodyguard of the first lady of a small country. But the first lady’s own rebellious guard kidnaps her and executes one of the girls…” There’s not a single word of truth there: the movie finishes – abruptly – on graduation day, after yet another training mission.

But if you know what film that synopsis actually describes, do let me know, because it’s almost certainly far more interesting and entertaining than this one. It may not be the worst action heroine film I’ve ever seen, but it’s probably the worst ever to come out of Hong Kong, which usually does such things with a certain degree of invention, enthusiasm and energy. None of these are visible here, in any amount.

Dir: Billy Chan Wui-Ngai
Stars: Jade Leung, Bobby Au, Farini Cheung, Zhang Fengyi

Fox Hunter

By Jim McLennan

★★★½
“For Fox’s sake…”

foxhunterGrittily disturbing, only some misplaced and failed stabs at comedy prevent this from likely being Leung’s best work ever. She plays rookie Hong Kong cop Jenny, following in the footsteps of her late father, who takes on an undercover mission aimed at trapping gangster Tung (Fung). While it succeeds, Tung escapes, and takes vengeance on Jenny, killing her uncle in brutal fashion. This, in turn, pushes her over the edge, and she teams up with his pimp-turned-informant (Chan), who is feeling aggrieved after having not received his promised reward from the authorities. The pair head to China, where Tung is hiding out, only for Jenny to rapidly wear out her welcome with the local cops and their commander (Guang). Worse is to follow, when Tung finds out they are on his tail, he begins a campaign of terrorism, culminating in wiring an entire shopping mall with explosives. He’s very fond of explosives…

The cover (right) is surely among the least accurate I’ve seen, depicting a frothy concoction mercifully not present – and the movie contains absolutely no pineapples at all, in case you were wondering. In particular, they really shouldn’t have tried to make Chan’s character any kind of comedic foil, because it just doesn’t work. During the early going, I was praying for his rapid, painful demise, though he does become more sympathetic in the second half. Fortunately, the other aspects outweigh the ill-considered negatives. Though this is one of only four films directed by Tung Wai (including an all time HK favorite, Magic Cop), he has a long pedigree as an action director – among his works previously covered here are Mulan, Reign of Assassins and The Assassin – and that’s when this movie shines. Particular standouts are a sequence in which Tung shows up at the apartment complex where our pair are hiding out, and the final battle up and down the insides of the mall.

It’s clear throughout that Leung is doing most, if not all, her own stunts; the sequence where she uses a sofa to escape a grenade blast is so realistic, you can virtually smell her singed eyebrows. It also helps that she isn’t portrayed as all at some kind of superwoman. Indeed, Tung is depicted as stronger, and far more brutal than the heroine, resulting in a genuine sense of peril for her – Jenny has to dig deep into her reservoir of tenacity simply in order to survive his onslaught, never mind prevailing over her nemesis. As well as the cover, the English-language title doesn’t do this justice, conjuring up a rather different set of images. While I get the sense of her going after a predator, something like Wolf Hunter might have been more appropriate, in terms of getting the hard-edged tone for which this aims.

Dir: Stephen Tung Wai
Star: Jade Leung, Jordan Chan, Ching Fung, Yu Rong Guang

See also: 1992 interview with Jade Leung, taken from Eastern Heroes.

Women Who Kick Butt box-set

  By

★★½

Ten movies in a box for $17.99 – how can you possibly go wrong? And yet…I have this nagging feeling that there’s a reason you’re paying $1.80 per flick. But, hey: if there are two good films in the set, I’ll have got my money’s worth. Any more, and I’ll be delirious happy. So, we’ll be temporarily abandoning our usual ratings for a more financial one as we attempt to discover, are these films worth $1.80? Looking at the titles on the back, I’m not overly optimistic. There’s only about three I’ve heard of, and they seem to be ordered like a baseball line-up, with the strongest at the top, right down to total obscurities. Not to be coerced by such a transparent ploy, we naturally started off with #10.

Death Run to Istanbul

Dir: Rachel Gordon.
Stars: Fallon, Bill Ballis, Dean Thomas

Now at the plate…batting 0-for-13…a 1993 film so obscure it doesn’t even have an Internet Movie Database entry. This may be because it is utterly dreadful; my 14-year old stepdaughter makes films with her friends on weekends, and they are far superior. Doesn’t help that the synopsis given is almost entirely fictional:

  • Fantasy: “When ‘The Committee’ kidnaps a former cop’s sister, they didn’t stop to think about the big brother factor! A former police lieutenant and marine, Gary calls on his old kickboxing buddy Jason to go deep into the underworld with him…”
  • Reality: A junkie (Thomas) loses a suitcase of drugs belonging to a crime boss, so gets snatched off the street by the villains. His sister (Fallon) goes in to rescue him.

Sheesh. Woefully inept in every way. Example #1: the heroine’s blonde sidekick escapes from captivity…yet is next seen being interrogated by the chief villain (Ballis)…before vanishing from the movie entirely. It’s as if someone put the reels together in the wrong order – except it’s shot on video. Example #2: right at the climax, the heroine’s martial arts teacher is shot dead. The movie cuts to her laying flowers on his grave, presumably after the police investigation, autopsy and funeral. Did every other character take those days off? Example #3: they forget to add sound effects to one fight.

I could go on, and fill the entire page with precise details of how appalling this is. The fights are largely tedious, the cast can’t act (or overact horribly) and have no charisma, and there are huge chunks where nothing is happening at all. As for Istanbul? It gets mentioned once; the film never leaves Venice Beach. The only slightly interesting character is a very scary evil henchwoman, who turns up briefly. She is the sole reason this possesses any value at all, and we’re only talking about $0.10.

T.N.T. Jackson

Dir: Cirio Santiago.
Stars: Jeannie Bell, Stan Shaw, Ken Metcalf, Pat Anderson

Feeling in need of escape, we sprinted to the front of the DVD-box for the top-billed movie. Getting the bad news in first: the sound and vision suck. The print looks like it’s 70 years old, and we had to fiddle to get any audio at all – and that came from the back speakers only. It’s also horribly dated, in every way, from the fashions through to the dialogue.

…and yet, curiously, it’s fun. Chris remembers seeing this in Times Square on a double bill with Superfly, and that would have been a real hoot. Bell has attitude in abundance as the titular heroine (best line, “Yeah, and I’m Snow White with a case of sunburn”) who goes to “Hong Kong” i.e. the Phillipines, to look for her missing brother, only to fall in with bad drug dealers. “Titular” is perhaps appropriate given the gratuitous topless-fu scene involving the former Playboy playmate, yet it’s less exploitative than you might expect. The ethnically diverse cast generally acquit themselves well, with a script co-written by cult actor Dick Miller, a regular for both Roger Corman and Joe Dante.

Action-wise, the doubling for Bell is a little too obvious, but she has a nice line in gory arm-snapping which we wanted to see more of. Pat Anderson also makes an impression as an undercover cop, and has a good battle with the heroine in a graveyard. The end result is schlock entertainment with hardly a dull moment in its 73 minutes, that leaves us not averse to getting a better copy (and as I write, Chris is surfing Ebay for Super Fly!). Several marks off for print quality, yet still a solid $4.00.

Flight to Danger

Dir: Sara Matthews and Gina Jourard.
Star: Sara Matthews, Gina Jourard, Barbara Minardi, Lynn Eglash Reynaud

Knew we were in trouble when I saw ‘Vista Street Entertainment’; yes, it’s from the same company that brought us Death Ride to Istanbul. It’s supposed to be about an “all-women’s martial arts team” in Paris, but when sod-all had happened after twenty minutes, I cut my losses and hit the ‘Eject’ button. If it seemed perhaps a little more technically competent than DRtI, it was even more astonishingly tedious. While I might have been slightly amused to see how the sub-poverty row Vista Street tried to fake Paris, life’s too short. I do this for fun, not my living. Value: $0.00.

Street Angels. ‘A Vista Str…’ Not tonight, thank you. We’re running to the front of the box, in the hope of finding something not shot on video.

The Firing Line

firinglineDir: John Gale.
Stars Reb Brown, Shannon Tweed, Kahlena Marie

Supposedly set in South America, Brown is a ‘military adviser’ (read, CIA spook) who swaps sides and signs up with the opposition after the rebel leader he brought in for trial is executed. Tweed plays the exercise equipment saleswoman (!) who gets involved, and gradually becomes a gun-toting revolutionary (!!) – though let’s get one thing straight, the DVD cover on the right below bears no relationship to her character, or indeed the movie at all. Indeed, Tweed is surprisingly chaste, with one skinny-dip and a love scene with Brown, both PG-rated.

There are some interesting ideas here, such as the good guys being Communists (or at least, described as such by the ruling party); in a Hollywood movie, this counts as amazingly radical. It’s also laudable that the rebel’s leader is a woman (played effectively by Kahlena Marie). However, the action sequences are over-long and, frankly, extremely boring, with perhaps only the last one having any significance in the larger scheme of things.

Tweed’s transition to a gung-ho fighter is glossed over with a bit of target practice; it’d have been far more interesting if she’d really been an undercover CIA operative. Or a government agent, sent to discover the rebel’s hideout. Or…well, make up your own improvements here, as there’s plenty of room. It’s not worthless, certainly – after Vista Street Entertainment, I’ve revising my definition of the term – but not particularly worthful, either. Call it $1.50.

Street Angels

Dir: George Phillip Saunders.
Stars: George Phillip Saunders, Dee Hengotler, Gwen Somers, Honey Lauren

Well, get out the crayolas and colour me surprised. Vista Street Entertainment in competent film shock. We’re not talking Oscars, but it isn’t fifteen minutes of plot extended to 90 minutes through gratuitous dancing, the actors have a clue, it’s directed and shot with some ability, and the fight scenes are decently staged. This is a lot more than I expected, and after the previous two atrocities, is a breath of only slightly stale air. A cop loses his partner to The Phantom, and frees three women from jail to act as an extra-judicial counterforce against this mysterious villain and his henchmen. It’s pretty cliched – the women, one dark-haired, one blonde and a redhead, used to be [yawn!] a cop, a marine and a gang girl – but is done with enough energy to pass muster. The hero comes across somewhere between Kurt Russell and a foul-mouthed version of Philip Marlowe, though the heroines do less butt-kicking than I hoped.

It’s all serviceable enough, though it still isn’t wise to try lines like, “Street Angels? It sounds like a really bad, no-budget B-movie!”, when it’s painfully obvious that you are a moderately bad, no-budget B-movie. Witness the scene right at the start, where a villain tries to break a bottle for use as a weapon: it takes four attempts, and he’s left with something half an inch long and entirely unthreatening. There’s also an odd homoerotic subtext – the villain is blatantly bi, while at the end the hero goes off with his arm around, not the girls, but a young boy rescued from the Phantom. Kinda dubious, but this is still adequate, and I’d be happy to have paid $2.50 for this.

Get Christie Love

Dir: Willam A. Graham.
Star: Teresa Graves, Harry Guardino, Louise Sorel, Paul Stevens

Based on a novel by Dorothy Uhnak, Graves (like Goldie Hawn, an alumni of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In), is the titular black policewoman, trying to track down the ledger of a drug importer. She knows his girlfriend is the key, and has to find a lever to use on her, in order to find the information she wants.

Due to the TV-pilot origins, this movie is rather more restrained in its sex and violence than ‘proper’ blaxploitation films, but what it lacks in grit and realistic urban feel is largely made up for in plot and character. Love comes across as a detective more than a fighter, though isn’t averse to necessary roughness. There’s also an inter-racial romantic angle hinted at, between the heroine and her boss, which was probably hugely daring for the time, but more is made of Love being a female cop than a black one, though she still possesses a certain style and a hot VW convertible. In contrast, check out the Amish-giant looking dude, in possession of what is perhaps the worst jacket in cinema history.

The TV show, also starring Graves, ran for one season on ABC in 1974-5; in April 1997, there were reports that Whitney Houston had signed up to do a remake for Danny DeVito’s Jersey Films but – perhaps fortunately – nothing ever came of it (Quentin Tarantino would have wanted to direct, having been a fan as a kid). The movie, while certainly dated, is a little more thoughtful than most entries in the genre, and if the print here has seen better decades (several of them!), you can peer through the tinting to find a decent effort, worth $3.00 of anyone’s money.

getchristielove

High Kicks

Dir: Ruta K. Aras.
Star: Tara Lee-Anne Roth, Dennis Swarthout, Sandy Kay, Kevin Knotts

Think this might have strayed in from the Women Who Work Their Butts collection by accident, as this has more gratuitous aerobics than any film since that Travolta/Curtis “classic”, Perfect – the presence of an ‘aerobics choreographer’ in the end credits is relevant here. The heroine (Roth) owns an aerobics studio, and when she gets raped by the local street gang, turns to a passing sailor (Swarthout) and his mates for help.

Thereby hangs the problem with this film, in that it’s the sailor who kicks most butt. Only in the last five minutes does the heroine stop standing at the side; up until then, she’s been largely in need of rescuing. There are a couple of potentially interesting angles; her revenge becomes almost gleeful, but neither this, nor the rivalry between her and one of her customers for the sailor’s affections, go anywhere. The film could have shed interesting light on the psychology of retaliation and the cycle of violence. Alternatively, she could have used her new martial-arts skills to kick her rival’s ass from here to Hollywood. Instead, it does nothing but roll out the cliches.

Right from the interminable opening credits – three minutes of sod-all happening – there is hardly a scene which isn’t twice as long as necessary. Some of the fights aren’t bad, even if one of the good guys bears a disturbing resemblance to Jean-Claude Van Damme. But much like the rest of the film, they offer nothing new or interesting. You could probably burn up a few calories doing aerobics along with the cast; for the more sloth-like among us, it has very little to interest. You’d probably be hoping for change from $1.00.

Emanuelle, Queen of the Desert

Dir: Bruno Fontana.
Star: Laura Gemser, Angelo Infanti, Gabrielle Tinti, Giovanni Brusadori

You might be asking, what’s an Emmanuelle film doing, in a Women Who Kick Butt box-set? Good question, partly answered by the spelling: check it out, there’s only one M in this Emanuelle, to avoid copyright suits. This one is played by Laura Gemser, who appeared in a slew of 70’s/80’s Italian soft- and hard-porn films, chiefly for Joe D’Amato.

This one, also known as La Belva dalle calda pelle and Dirty Seven, is based on a novel by director Fontana. It starts promisingly enough, with Gemser as a mysterious avenging angel who sets about destroying a troop of soldiers, using her womanly wiles to turn them against each other in revenge for… Well, this is where the film falls down, in an amazingly lengthy flashback sequence which documents every detail of the events leading up to… something that most viewers will already have worked out, making the whole process tiresomely redundant.

This is a shame, as Gemser makes a great predatory femme fatale (see also another porn star, Brigitte Lahaie, in Jean Rollin’s Fascination) and the destruction of the troop from the inside is a potentially great idea. The wild landscape, in which urban man is clearly out of his depth, is also reminiscent of Walkabout. In the end, however, it’s largely a tedious flick about a bunch of soldiers – most of them possess few redeeming features, and in the main, neither really does the film. Call it $2.00, most of it for Gemser.

Sister Streetfighter

Dir: K.Yamaguchi.
Star: Sue Shiomi, Sonny Chiba, May Hayakawa, Sanae Obori

sisterstreetfighterfz2Jackpot! Finally – nine movies in – we hit one which stands a good chance of being watched again. Having recently endured the awfulness which is Dragon Princess, I wasn’t expecting much, but was delightfully impressed by the imagination on view here – not to mention the non-stop violence. The plot is similar to TNT Jackson, with Shiomi seeking her brother who has vanished into the Japanese underworld, adding a large dose of Enter the Dragon for good measure. The film is totally berserk, to the point where I suspect half an hour has been randomly edited out. At one point, the heroine is thrown hundreds of feet down from a bridge; when she returns, no explanation of her miraculous survival is forthcoming.

At another point, we get a catalogue of the bad guy’s collection of killers (some people collect stamps – others, psychotic assassins with interesting weaponry); one teasingly described as “Eva Parrish – Karate champion of Australia”, vanishes from the movie, never to be seen again. This is a pity, because we were eagerly anticipating a full-on east-meets-west catfight. What’s left is still fabulous – not least because it’s a good print, and even letterboxed. The villain, who keeps his dark glasses on during sex, and decries cop shows as being “too violent”, before smacking his bitch up. The henchmen, wearing what appear to be black wicker waste-paper baskets on their head. The guy who fires a blow-dart into a caged bird – here at GWG, we welcome any excuse for a recreation of Monty Python’s Parrot Sketch. Then there’s Shiomi herself, who is great, killing flies to make her point, and equally good wielding sai, nunchakus or simply her fists. It’s grand entertainment for a Friday night, and even $9.99 would be well worth it.

Leaving Scars

Dir: Brad Jacques.
Stars: Lisa Boyle, Robin Downs, Jonathan Slater

Sister Streetfighter had taken the tension away, as if your team had scored a couple of late goals to break open a close game. And a good thing too, since Scars, despite the presence of star Lisa Boyle large on the cover of the box set, fits least in with the theme, and really shouldn’t be here at all. It’s a sleazy (and perhaps accurate) portrayal of Hollywood life, with slimebags, scumballs, scuzz-buckets and much drug-taking, centred around a floppy disk which the heroine, an aspiring actress, has given to her by a soon-to-be-murdered friend. The usual seeking activities ensue.

Apart from convincing me I do not want my step-daughter to pursue an acting career, there’s very little to recommend this. Certainly, Boyle does almost none of the promised butt-kicking, save one spray from an automatic weapon – very careless of those gun-runners to leave the merchandise around like that, fully loaded ‘n’ all… There’s a fair bit of nudity, though I should warn you the silicone is obvious, and the production values are obviously low-rent.

What gives this any value at all is the commentary track – yep, a commentary track – in which the producers talk about making the film, and as an insight into low-budget cinema, it’s rather more interesting than the product itself. A total surprise to find this, since there is no mention of it anywhere on the box, it roughly triples the value if we were talking about the movie alone, to $1.50.

Adding up all the above figures, we get a total of $25.59 for the box set as a whole, which should label it as a hit. However, Sister Streetfigher alone is responsible for almost 40%; adding in TNT Jackson and Get Christie Love and you’ve got virtually two-thirds of the value, because there is just way too much filler in this box. Better to buy the four film Savage Sisters set, which includes the three above and (the admittedly worthless) High Kicks, but can be found for $8.98 or less and will take up half the space on your shelves.

Joan of Arc: History vs. Cinema

  By
Joan of Arc Ingrid Bergman Leelee Sobieski Milla Jovovich

“Art imitating Arc?”

Isn’t it always the way. You wait six hundred years for a bio-pic, then two come along at once. Though actually, France’s patron saint has been the subject of films since the very earliest days of cinema – George Melies made a 12-scene reconstruction of her life in 1900 – but for no readily apparent reason, 1999 saw both a feature and a TV miniseries covering the topic. Before we discuss those, and some other related works, some background is probably wise, as when ever you deal with movies based on historical events. Real life is rarely cinematic, and any conflict is liable to leave factual accuracy in the dirt, going “Did anyone get the number of that truck?” So, here is a potted biography of the Maid of Orleans

Born in the French province of Champagne in 1412, to a peasant farmer, Joan (or Jeanne – I’ll largely stick to the Anglicization) never learned to read or write, but was regarded by her contemporaries as a highly pious child. It was at the age of 13 that she first heard voices, but it took several years before they convinced her to leave home and help the French king, who was engaged in a battle to liberate the country from England. She presented herself to the local commander, who was skeptical at first, but was eventually convinced after Joan reported news of an English defeat before official confirmation arrived. Joan, clad in male attire to protect her modesty, travelled to see the king, and convinced him of the legitimacy of his claim to the throne, despite a faction of the court strongly opposing her influence. Her faith, simplicity and honesty won the day, and she acquired her sword, found buried behind an altar, in the exact spot she said it would be.

Although she did not engage in actual combat, her presence in the thick of battle acted as a unifying and galvanising force to the French, and she also imposed a pious attitude among her soldiers (no mean task, given they included the infamous Giles de Rais!), for example, driving away the camp whores. Joan’s soldiers raised the siege of Orleans, despite her being shot in the shoulder by an arrow, and subsequent successes led to the coronation of their king in July 1429. Had she gone home at this point, as she wanted to, her life would undoubtedly have been longer and happier. Instead, she continued her efforts to free her nation, and was injured again during an abortive assault on Paris, this time in the thigh. The following May, she was captured by John of Luxembourg, who sold her to the English. Charged with heresy, Joan continued to make a good impression, eventually causing the case to be held in camera.

This was nothing more than a show trial, despite the efforts of those in charge to find support: according to biographer Jules Michelet, one jurist said “that everything about the trial was wrong; that it failed to respect the proper forms; that the assessors were not free; that the sessions were held in secrecy; that the accused…could not be expected to argue with learned doctors” and finished by declaring that it “was a trial to impugn the honour of the prince whose cause this girl is supporting; you should frankly say so.” Perhaps wisely, the holder of these opinions opted to leave France immediately for the safety of Rome.

Inevitably, her visions were declared diabolical in nature, and she was told to recant or face the stake. Initially, she refused, but faced with imminent death, her courage understandably failed and she gave in. Her death sentence was suspended, to the chagrin of the English, who wanted her disposed of permanently. However, shortly afterwards, she resumed her wearing of male clothes – perhaps to prevent her guards from raping her, or because her normal attire was taken away. This was sufficient to have her condemned as a relapsed heretic; she was burned at the stake on May 30th, 1431. Joan was just nineteen years old. Twenty-four years later, however, a new trial overturned the verdict (albeit rather too late), beginning the process of rehabilitation which would conclude with her canonisation in 1920.

So much for the historical record. What of these subsequent productions telling her story? Are they accurate to the facts? And, perhaps more importantly, do they work as entertainment?

Joan the Woman

By Jim McLennan

★★★½
“The first second* action heroine?”

I don’t watch many silent films: it’s such an entirely different experience, obviously, much less driven by dialogue and more by gestures, leading to a style that can look extremely over-theatrical to the modern viewer. My efforts to enjoy the likes of Nosferatu, for example, have usually ended in my providing an accompaniment of snoring, to be honest. This was much better. Despite a running time of over two hours, this 1916 DeMille epic successfully held my interest, as it told the story of Joan of Arc. The framing device uses the then-contemporary World War I, and an English soldier (Reid) finds Joan’s sword in the trenches, the night before a dangerous mission [Interesting how the English are the enemy in the back-story, but the good guys “now” – at the time of release, America was still several months from entering the war, on the British side]. He then experiences a flashback vision, taking him to medieval France, where he is an English soldier saved by Joan (Farrar) in her milkmaid days. We follow her for the story you know, becoming the inspiration for the French army to defeat the English, before her capture, trial for heresy and – I trust I’m not spoiling this – burning at the stake.

Now, don’t expect Joan to go hand-to-hand with the English army here. Still, she’s no nominal figurehead, instead leading her forces from the absolute front, as they break the siege at Orleans. She’s first into the breach, waving the standard to encourage them on, until she takes an arrow in the shoulder. Certainly, there’s no denying her heroic credentials: she’s portrayed as brave and committed to doing the right thing. The film probably does a better job of establishing her as a credible leader than the Luc Besson adaptation: you can see why people would follow her, and it plays the religious elements relatively soft. And the action sequences demonstrate why DeMille’s reputation for epics is well-deserved, with the battle for Orleans impressively-staged, capturing the chaos of war, without needing to resort the the blender-style editing or shaky camerawork, too often seen in modern war movies.

It’s a shame there isn’t more of that. Instead, after Orleans, the rest of her war campaign is covered in a caption, and the film is, understandably, less successful, when it comes to the more talky aspects of her life. In particular, Joan’s trial and incarceration becomes a lengthy sequence of meaningful stares and dramatic flailing. Still, I liked the way it all wrapped around, Joan’s story giving the soldier the courage to go on his mission, though the ending is more mournful than I expected. All told, for something approaching its one-hundredth birthday, this certainly didn’t feel like it, and DeMille deserves credit for laying some foundations for film-makers to come.

Dir: Cecil B. DeMille
Star: Geraldine Farrar, Wallace Reid, Raymond Hatton, Theodore Roberts
* = I’ve since discovered a 1915 Italian film, Filibus, which predates this. A review is here.

Joan Of Arc (1948)

By Jim McLennan

★★
“Joan of Talk”

joanofarcingridThis film’s origins as a stage play are painfully apparent, and you can also see why the distributor’s felt it needed to have 45 minutes cut out before it could be released, as frankly, it’s a bit of a bore. The battle to recapture Orleans is the only action of note here, even though that represented the start of the Maid’s campaign to restore France to its proper ruler (Ferrer), rather than the end. After that, this more or less skips forward to his coronation, then Joan’s capture, spending the rest of the movie – and there’s a lot of it – going through the trial, and the railroading of the heroine into, first throwing herself on the church’s mercy, then recanting her recantation and returning to wearing men’s clothes, thereby sealing her fate. There’s not much here which you won’t have seen before, if you’ve seen any of the other versions of the story, touching the usual bases from Joan’s revelations that she’s going to be the saviour of France, through her trip to see the Dauphin, and so on. It does downplay the “voices” aspect, especially early on, perhaps a wise move since it’s difficult to depict, without making her seem like a religious fruitcake.

The other problem I find is Bergman. It’s not so much her performance here, which is actually very good, and help hold the film up when things get particularly static: she hits her emotional marks well, and the Oscar nomination she received was not undeserved. However, she was solidly into her thirties by this point, probably close to twice the age of the actual Miss of Arc [hat-tip to Bill and Ted!]; there’s only so far make-up can go in taking years off someone. It does seem to have been a character to whom she related: she’s play the role again later, for Roberto Rossellini in Joan at the Stake, when she was nearly forty. The other problem is Bergman’s Scandinavian origins, which poke through her dialogue persistently, also damaging the illusion; it might have been fine in forties Hollywood, where one European accent was considered much the same as another, but now, it sounds too much Joan was a Swedish exchange student or au-pair – especially when she’s wearing her headsquare, and looks ready for a spot of light dusting.

But there’s no denying it looks the part, with production value seeping out of every frame – the Oscars this actually won, for cinematography and costume design, are hard to argue. However, there’s only so far this can take a film, along with Bergman glowing her way through her scenes, in such a way you could probably read a newspaper by her incandescence. That distance is considerably less than 145 minutes, and by the time this is over, you might find yourself guiltily cheering for her arrival at the stake, knowing this means the end is nigh.

Dir: Victor Fleming
Star: Ingrid Bergman, Francis L. Sullivan, José Ferrer, J. Carrol Naish

Saint Joan

By Jim McLennan

★★
“Joan of Inaction”

saintjoanAn adaptation by noted playwright Graham Green of George Bernard Shaw’s 1924 play, this is most famous for the extensive search undertaken by director Preminger to find the “right” Joan for the job, which involved testing over 18,000 candidates before settling on Seberg. whose only previous acting to that point had been in school plays. That’s in sharp contrast to the experience in the rest of the cast, which included Widmark as Charles, the Dauphin enthroned by Joan’s actions, and Gielgud as the Earl of Warwick, whose schemes lead to the heroine’s death at the stake. But what’s most notable here, in contrast to some of the other versions of the story we’ve written about, Preminger and Greene seem entirely disinterested in the process which brought the Dauphin to the crown. We see Joan’s rise to command, but the film then skips over everything from her approaching the fortress of Orleans, to the coronation of King Charles. In other words: the fun bits.

The framing story has Joan as a specter, visiting the aged king, along with the ghost of the Earl and other participants in her life, such as the English soldier who took pity on Joan at the stake and gave her a makeshift cross to hold. The adaptation whacked out, it appears, close to half the running-time of the play, and one had to wonder whether it is any more faithful to the work’s spirit. For in the preface to his work, Shaw explicitly wrote, “Any book about Joan which begins by describing her as a beauty may be at once classed as a romance. Not one of Joan’s comrades, in village, court, or camp, even when they were straining themselves to please the king by praising her, ever claimed that she was pretty.” This is in sharp contrast to Seberg, who even after giving up her long feminine locks for the almost compulsory crew-cut, looks more like Audrey Hepburn’s tomboyish little sister than someone, in Shaw’s words, “unattractive sexually to a degree that seemed to [contemporary writers] miraculous.”

It’s not entirely without merit; some of Shaw’s text still retains its impact, such as Joan’s explanation of why the French are losing: “Our soldiers are always beaten because they are fighting only to save their skins; and the shortest way to save your skin is to run away. Our knights are thinking only of the money they will make in ransoms: it is not kill or be killed with them, but pay or be paid. But I will teach them all to fight that the will of God may be done in France; and then they will drive the poor goddams before them like sheep.” The sheer certainty in Joan’s mind that’s she’s right, and will accept no arguments to the contrary, is impressive. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to sustain the film overall, and you’re left without much insight into either the history, or the personalities who created it.

Dir: Otto Preminger
Star: Jean Seberg, Richard Widmark, Anton Walbrook, John Gielgud

The Messenger: the story of Joan of Arc

By Jim McLennan

★★★
“Joan’s eminent originality was her common sense”

messengerThis was the the very first sentence of Michelet’s classic biography, published in 1853, but you’d be hard pressed to recognise the same person in Besson’s portrayal. A more accurate summary of this Joan would be the line spoken to her as she languished in prison: “You didn’t see what was, Jeanne – you saw what you wanted to see…” Besson comes down firmly in the school of thought which has Joan as a mentally deranged religious loony. While this is a viable theory, it doesn’t work as played by Jovovich – all twitchy, rolling her eyes and staring off into the distance – since it becomes impossible to see why anyone would have followed her. Unless we assume the 14th century French population were entirely gullible, she should have spent her life quietly as some village’s idiot. This cripples the film irreperably, since we feel little or no sympathy for a heroine depicted as a frothing zealot.

Historically too, it gets off to a bad start – an entirely fabricated incident in which Joan sees her sister first killed, then raped by an English soldier. This provides a spurious ground for Joan to hate the invaders, when contemporary accounts tell of her concern being almost equal for both sides. Also made-up is her finding a sword in a field, and there is a sudden leap, with Joan arriving to an audience with the King – in truth, she talked her way up the hierarchy. A rather lurid scene (missing from the US theatrical release) where Joan’s virginity is verified, marks the end of a troubling first act. Once her campaign begins, though, the film improves drastically, with excellent (if somewhat implausible – did they really use something resembling helicopter rotors as weapons?) battle scenes, that are at once enthralling and grim. It’s understandable when they unhinge Joan’s sanity even more; another of the themes seems to be that her mission was really non-Christian, in that it led to the deaths of so many people. Something about “thou shalt not kill”, though given the bloody history of Christianity, singling her out seems somewhat unfair. Tcheky Karyo delivers a fine performance as the leader of Joan’s army, facing the difficult task of balancing her expectations, with prosaic things like, oh, not getting killed.

Joan’s capture, trial and execution are fairly close to the truth, though in reality, the King was less involved and more concerned for Joan than shown. It certainly is reasonable to suggest that a naive innocent such as Joan would have been used for political ends. Once she’d outlasted her usefulness – and with the king on the throne, she quickly became more a hindrance than a help – she would have needed to be disposed of. Must confess, I quite like the concept of Joan as a medieval version of Lee Harvey Oswald. Dustin Hoffman’s appearance as Joan’s conscience is another neat touch, and his sarcasm works well. Indeed, the film is one good performance from being excellent. The bad news is, it’s Jovovich who is the culprit (a messenger who deserves to be shot?), though Besson and co-writer Andrew Birkin perhaps warrant most of the criticism for twisting facts and characters in order to fit a predetermined goal. Their Joan is so far from the historical record, they’d have been better off placing their character in an entirely fictitious setting.

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Faye Dunaway, Tcheky Karyo

Joan of Arc (1999)

By Jim McLennan

★★★★

joanofarcOne problem with history is that viewers likely know how it ends: if you want to surprise them, why bother making a historical drama? Joan of Arc knows this, so starts with her burning at the stake. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword: it robs the climax of its striking power, yet acknowledges without doubt, that this is a tragedy. The theme of manipulation is again strong here, with Joan discarded after having outlived her usefulness, despite an odd character change in the second half, where she drifts for a jarring moment into petulant bitch mode. It’s almost as if the makers hinted at a megalomaniacal side, crazed by power, and her fatalistic approach to her capture rings false – probably because it is nowhere near the truth. There’s more fabrication early on, with Joan an unwanted daughter who sees a friend (blind, no less) killed by enemy soldiers – must she always be some kind of post-traumatic stress survivor?

Once it hits its stride, however, there is rarely a wrong step, at least dramatically speaking – the French king again comes off as far more implicated in Joan’s death than evidence suggests. Neil Patrick Harris is convincing as Charles, who moves from self-doubt to certainty in his divine right to be king, then on to using that power against the one who put him there. Peter O’Toole too turns in a fine performance as Bishop Cauchon, though more facts are tampered with, allowing him to act as Charles’ spiritual advisor when he was actually always on the English/Burgundian side. That it’s a TV miniseries is apparent, with 15th century France populated by remarkably clear-skinned and straight-teethed people. There’s even hints of romance between Joan and her companion, Jean de Metz, which serves little purpose. The battle scenes, too, are all but bloodless – I wasn’t expecting the decapitations and arterial spurting seen in Besson’s film, but I didn’t really want the Middle Ages, sanitized for my protection. Even the guy dying of plague looks pretty good. [Chris noted a glaring continuity error at the end: on her way up to the stake, Joan is wearing shoes, but by the time she gets there, she’s barefoot!]

However, the main difference between this and The Messenger is that Joan of Arc is convincing. Perhaps with the advantage of having extra time (the DVD of the miniseries runs 189 minutes), they make the effort to show her interacting with other characters, and Sobieski’s calm, complete assurance is a striking contrast to Jovovich. The viewer can see why people would believe her, and it naturally follows they will too – Sobieski’s Emmy nomination was entirely well-deserved. Despite playing fast and loose with the facts (another example: Joan’s brother was not killed in battle, but lived to see her trial verdict overturned), this strong central performance holds the film together and, with the aid of the other fine actors, makes it eminently watchable. It may not be historically accurate, but it does a fine job of explaining why her myth is still honoured in the third millennium, without coming down in one camp or the other regarding the source of her visions. There are few TV miniseries worth watching, and fewer still worth owning, but this one comes highly recommended.

Dir: Christian Duguay
Star: Leelee Sobieski, Neil Patrick Harris, Peter O’Toole, Chad Willett

 

(Development) Hell is for Heroines: The Films That Never Were

  By

For every script that makes it to the theatres – or even to video – a dozen crash and burn somewhere on the road. The reasons why are often impossible to discover. Movie studios are understandably reticent about their failures, not least because they tend to cost a lot more money than our screw-ups. However, these scripts often refuse to die, and a number have become public, whether from disgruntled writers or through studio interns.

Often, studios won’t give up on the central idea entirely – in two out of the three cases here, the movies were eventually made, and the remaining one is still possible. Obviously, any draft is likely to change en route to the screen, but for the examples here, new and radically different scripts were/will be commissioned. Barely the faintest trace of these proto-versions remain to be spotted, and that is what makes them so intriguing, since they provide a glimpse into what might have been…

George A. Romero: Resident Evil

“I just…never seen ’em comin’, Reddy. Never even…had a chance to…turn a gun on ’em.”

Romero is most – indeed, almost solely – famous for his trilogy, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, so seemed ideal for a movie based on zombie slaughterthon Resident Evil. Brought on as writer/director after filming a Japanese commercial for the game, the script he came up with was rejected by the producers and he was dumped. According to Romero, “I don’t think they were into the spirit of the video game and wanted to make it more of a war movie.” After Steven Norrington (Blade) & Jamie Blanks (Urban Legend) were supposedly attached, the job eventually fell to Paul W.S. Anderson. His take was certainly more of an action flick than a zombie one, and probably also had less in common with the game itself [see elsewhere for our review] But what of Romero’s version?

The main thrust – a mission to contain an outbreak of reanimating T-virus in an underground lab – is preserved, but the hero is male. Chris discovers that girlfriend Jill is part of an undercover military team, and through a (frankly implausible) series of events, ends up on the job as well. The rest of the team is the usual mix of heroes and villains, though “Rosie Rodriguez, a tough, body-built babe” suggests one too many viewings of Aliens.

Romero’s problems are, as ever, plot and dialogue. Chris literally stumbles into a secret entrance, yet apparently played there as a child. Chris and Jill get one brief scene, are separated for 30 pages, then come perilously close to having a quickie between kills. Then there are speeches like, “They made you believe you were doing a good thing when it wasn’t good at all. It was evil! The kind of evil that resides in all of us. Makes us greedy, uncaring. The kind of evil that will wipe us out, in the end. Unless we stand up against it.”

However, the pace is fast and the bio-organic weapons show good imagination – particularly the undead sharks, an idea first mooted in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie. There’s also intelligent, aggressive plants, a giant snake, and the pinnacle of research, the Tyrant, simply one bad mother which I’d really like to have seen on screen. It all ends in a hotly pursued dash out of the facility, similar to the eventual movie, though the very end owes a little to Return of the Living Dead.

That sort of thing means you can see why the producers felt deja vu – indeed, a character even says, “Christ, this is like Night of the Living Dead!” The emphasis is on the zombies; in particular, the dispatch thereof – you’d get more head shots from this film than pumping your ticket money into House of the Dead. I sense the intense, graphic violence would likely have displeased the MPAA, a group with which Romero has crossed swords in the past. Dog Soldiers covered similar “soldiers-in-peril” territory and showed the concept was not without promise, though I profess myself satisfied with the way Resident Evil eventually turned out, despite the cool monsters here. Maybe some ideas will eventually surface in Romero’s long-mooted fourth entry in the zombie series: Brunch of the Dead, anyone?

 Daniel Waters: Catwoman

“Sanity to the wind, the large, now-eerily-shadowy lounge has been completely swallowed by the most multi-layered, full-throttle cat-fight in the history of cinema. The women totally communicate in cat-screeches, all human capabilities on hold.”

Daniel Waters’ career has been one of ups and downs. For every brilliantly-observed piece of satire, such as Heathers, there has been…well, Hudson Hawk. However, also on his resume is perhaps the best Dark Knight movie yet made, Batman Returns – though, let’s face it, with a supporting cast including Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito, a telephone directory would likely have made compelling viewing.

After that film’s success, a Catwoman feature was floated, and Waters wrote a script, dated June 16th, 1995, but it never made it into production. Waters seems to have bad luck like that; see also his The Model Daughter and adaptation of Stranger in a Strange Land. Or, rather, you can’t, as neither got made. Nobody seems to know for sure why Catwoman wasn’t produced, but Michelle Pfeiffer’s pregnancy around this time probably helped shove it onto the back burner. The departure of Burton from the franchise also dampened Pfeiffer’s interest.

Waters’ strength is parody through excess, and there’s something about the world he envisages which parallels the society in Demolition Man, except in reverse. While both enforce happiness on their inhabitants, San Angeles has erased violence in all its forms (at least until the arrival of Snipes and Stallone!), while Oasisburg has turned vigilantism into a spectator sport. The Cult of Good, led by Captain God, wipe the floor with criminals, to the cheers of an adoring crowd. However, they aren’t quite what they seem, as Selina Kyle finds out. She’s recovering there after losing her memory in the events of Batman Returns, but dons her catsuit once again to take on the not-so-good guys.

There is a feminist subtext here, particularly a sequence where the camera swoops around Oasisburg, passing over the undertrodden females. Subsequently, a slew of…ah, copycats hit the city streets, in a backlash of feminist fury. Yet Daniel Waters’ middle name is not “subtlety”, and neither sex gets off lightly – this sexual revolution ends in a massive…er, catfight in the ladies’ room.

This is, very clearly, a parody of the superhero genre, playing with the conventions of secret identities, powers, merchandising and so on. The part of Spooky, one of the CoG members who is a woman masquerading as a male superhero, looks to have been written for Michelle Yeoh – one move is described as “a famous maneuver of renowned Hong Kong actress Michelle Khan — hint, hint” which puts Waters several years ahead of Hollywood in recognising her talents.

It is perhaps a little too light-hearted for the likes of Tim Burton, and somebody such as Sam Raimi would have been a better fit. Outside of Selina, there’s not much characterisation, but it’s still undeniably a fun script to read, with any number of scenes – not least the finale – that leap off the page into the imagination.

Subsequently, Selena Kyle vanished from the Ashley Judd version of the story, being replaced by a character called Patience Price – see here for a review of a 2002 script. However, the latest word on the Halle Berry version seems to be to toss everything out: “We aren’t keeping anything from Catwoman except the original idea: the character,” said slated director Pitof in an interview. Odds are that it will be a very different film from Waters’ script. And that’s probably a shame.

Brent Friedman: Tomb Raider

“Lara takes a few steps back, runs and leaps to the first pillar, pulling herself up on top. A tall flame ignites from the top center of the pillar! Instinctively, Lara backflips, executing a half twist in midair as she lunges back for the ledge”

Few films had as twisted a path to the screen as Tomb Raider. [For a three-part history of some of the rumours since August 1997, see here, here, and here] Friedman’s was among the first – and certainly first publicised – attempts at a script, on which Patrick Massett, John Zinman, Akiva Goldsman, Luc Besson, and Steven E. DeSouza later tried their hands. Both Friedman and DeSouza had experience in transforming games to movies (Mortal Kombat and Streetfighter II respectively), but neither received credit for the final version.

Friedman’s script, dated 17th July 1998, is pretty lacklustre and cliched; reports suggest he was caught between the demands of Paramount Pictures and Eidos Interactive, and as a result ending up compromising away any originality and imagination. Part of the problem was that of all the producers and executives involved, only one had actually played the game. This might explain the opening sequence in which both Lara’s parents are killed in a Himalayan air-crash, a radical deviation from the game mythos.

The McGuffin here is a map which points the way to El Dorado, the lost city of the…er, Incas? Aztecs? Mayans? Atlantans? Lara is pitted against Malvern, an Australian who also, in one of the film’s eye-rolling character traits, owns a whaling ship, so must be the bad guy. Lara battles him over a secret treasure capable of transforming base metals – in a twist, it’s used to make plutonium rather than gold.

The script bips from Tibet to Curacao, then settles down in Peru, before a finale in the Pacific, where Lara’s actions are hardly ecologically sound, and kinda contrast with the “villainous aquatic mammal killer” theme. Mind you, there’s something mildly sadistic about this Lara: at one point she shoots two rivals with tranquilizer darts, then covers them in honey and leaves them to the fire ants.

Once they enter the El Dorado complexes, the script reads like a description of levels from the game, with levers to pull, gaps to jump, tunnels to swim through, and keys to rooms located in other places. It’s hard to see how this could have been brought to the screen without feeling like you were watching someone playing the game. In addition, the trick used to locate an entrance is a painfully direct steal from the textbook of Dr. Jones – as is the massive, rolling boulder that forms one of the traps inside.

Interestingly, one element that survived to the final movie is a fight which turns out to be a training session, in which her Tibetan monk mentor, Karak, resembles Clouseau’s Cato. The script is also heavily gadget-laden, making Lara come across like some Jane Bond, rather than someone who is all the secret weapon she needs. Overall, it’s not likely to grab the viewer by the throat, and would likely have failed to satisfy game fans or casual theatre-goers. However, it’s not much worse than the one eventually used – let’s hope the upcoming sequel, Cradle of Life, addresses this weakness, perhaps the most common one seen in game-to-movie conversions.

Postscript: I was also going to include William Gibson’s script for Alien III here, but after discovering that movie went through no less than ten writers, think it deserves an entire article on its own, covering the horde of different versions available. Don’t hold your breath though…

Witchblade: season two

  By

★★★½
“Girls with gauntlets.”

Much as in the first season, the second series of Witchblade brushed against greatness. Unlike the first, where you can point at the final episode as the key weakness, this time round it is a chronic rather than acute malaise that prevents it from getting the seal of approval. When it was great, it was fabulous – it just seemed that for every full, satisfying episode, there was a lame clunker to compensate. Particularly at the start of the season, there seemed to be precious little imagination on view.

Before we get to that, however, there was the little matter of heading forwards once again, Sara having effectively wished the entire first season into a plot-hole. To the writers’ credit, everything went forward in a completely different direction, from the moment Sara and her partner opted not to go into the theatre where, in the first series, everything had begun. Things diverged so rapidly from here that by the end of the double-length first episode, Kenneth Irons was dead, though as previously seen, this is only a minor inconvenience in the Witchblade universe. As Gabriel says in the finale, “Death is a revolving door.” I profess myself quite satisfied with how this was handled – it was the next few episodes which were distinctly ho-hum, with little in the way of memorable moments. Oh, look: there’s a new drug in town; Nottingham hires assassins to kill Sara; multiple personalities. And I had to cheat and look up synopses elsewhere to glean this much information, since they were notable largely for the lack of impression they made on me. I do recall being immensely irritated by the strobe-lit fight scenes, however, the sort of thing you do when you’re trying to hide ineptness.

Things probably reached their nadir in Nailed, in which a stereotypical, drooling paedophile kidnapped Danny’s niece. The Witchblade, with an impressively convenient sense of dramatic timing, revealed his location just in time for them to rush to the rescue, in what was otherwise little more than a lame rip-off of Cape Fear. Fortunately, I missed this episode when it aired (being off getting married!), and only caught up with it during the marathon. Otherwise, I might well have given up on the show. Which would have been a terrible shame, as things started to perk up thereafter. I always enjoy episodes where external mythos enter the show, and Lagrimas mixed the Wandering Jew fable in beautifully, with its cursed immortal, seeking death at the hands of the Witchblade. Hierophant was a little too Keyser Sose-ish for my tastes, but Veritas probably ranks as my favourite episode to date. Oddly, the legend it utilised, while much more recent, didn’t seem out of place in the slightest. We were largely one step ahead of the story, but only in an “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” way, and I suspect the Powers That Be will rear their ugly heads again in season three.

The finale, Ubique, also has to rate highly, for sheer perversity at the very least – Nottingham reaches new levels of creepiness in his final scenes with Lucrezia. Throw in a kicking soundtrack (Lords of Acid!), some spectacular deaths, and we’ll forgive a central plot device teetering curiously close to the main premise of feardotcom, which opened in cinemas the very same week. Among the interesting themes on view are the way both Pezzini and Nottingham both struggle to come to terms with the loss of their fathers, albeit temporarily in the latter’s case. This may be linked to one of the unresolved issues carried forward; who is the guy with wavy grey hair who always seems to be lurking round Sara? Indeed, the whole Nottingham/Pezzini relationship had perhaps more depth than any other in the show; veering between love, hate and obsession, with never a dull moment.

Season 3 looked like it might have some stiff competition for Sara’s favours, particularly with Concobar (rather less irritating this time round) lurking in a coma. Add in Gabriel’s little kiss in the finale, and it seemed like time for all applicants to take a number and form an orderly queue. On the other hand, couldn’t see why they keep both Jake and Danny in the show, as their roles overlapped far too much. A permanent, irrevocable death would have made people sit up and take notice – my vote in this department goes to Jake… Despite the second season, overall, rating the same as the first, I reached the end of this one with more optimism in Witchblade‘s future. However, TNT didn’t share this confidence, in part perhaps because of Yancy’s inability to keep out of bars, and the series wasn’t renewed. This may have been wise – on January 3rd, 2003, Butler was arrested after allegedly punching her father, punching and attempting to bite her uncle, and head-butting a police officer. For the moment, Sara Pezzini is in limbo, but really, a better fate is deserved for one of the more innovative series to hit the airwaves in the past couple of years.

Star: Yancy Butler, David Chokachi, Eric Etebari,  Will Yun Lee