Tag: d

Deliverance Creek

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★★★½
“Once in a Lifetime.”

deliveranceThere’s one thing it’s vitally important to understand before watching this. It’s not a stand-alone Western movie. This is what’s called a “backdoor pilot”: something aired as if it were a discrete entity, with the aim of gauging audience reaction to see if it gets picked up. This matters, because it explains the film’s otherwise inexplicable failure to resolve… Well, just about any of the plot threads it constructs during its 90 minutes. If you expect closure, you’re going to be massively disappointed, and there are other aspects which are similarly out of place, such as Skeet Ultich as a local saloon pimp, who serves absolutely no purpose. However, if you take this for what it is – an introduction to the setting, characters and situations – it’s actually more than serviceable, especially since it’s a product of Lifetime, whose output tends to the bland in the same way as vanilla pudding. Thanks largely to Ambrose, this rises above that, and leaves me definitely interested in seeing more.

She plays Belle Barlow, struggling to keep things going on her farm as the Civil War grinds on; her husband was fighting for the Confederates, but has not been heard from in forever. Things aren’t made easier by the neighbours, the Crawfords, who own the local bank and the loan on which Belle is falling behind. Her sister, Hattie, is also involved in helping the underground railroad, the network which smuggled escaped slaves to freedom: Belle has mixed feelings about this, but finds herself hosting one such refugee as her “slave”, Kessie. Meanwhile, a bunch of renegade soldiers, led by Belle’s brother Jasper (Backus), arrive on the farm, intending to knock off a delivery of army gold that will be held temporarily in the bank. Initially opposed to this, Belle’s opinion is changed after a tragic accident, for which she blames the Crawfords, and it turns out Kessie holds the key (literally) to pulling off a successful robbery.

I can’t stress this enough: do not go in, expecting any one of these threads to reach a satisfactory conclusion. It’s the journey which you need to enjoy instead, because the destination is never reached. Fortunately, I was forewarned, and so didn’t suffer the same sense of “Is that it?” as some reviewers. Instead, I was able to appreciate a heroine that’s a good deal more complex than many, and the film also does a good job in portraying the murky nature of the Civil War, where people from the same town (or even family) would sometimes be on different sides. I particularly liked Belle’s little rant in regard to the Crawfords:

I want revenge too. But a bullet for each of them while they sleep is little comfort. I want them to suffer, as I have suffered. I want them to feel what it’s like to have everything they love stripped away from them, piece by piece.

That speech does a really good job of setting up her character’s direction for the rest of the movie, and providing credible motivation. As yet, I haven’t heard of any series following and that’s a pity, because this has potential and I’d like to know where it might have gone. While it’s obviously much easier to write a film where you don’t have to worry about the ending, don’t let the attached name of Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, and other sappy romances) put you off, for this is better than many TV movies, and definitely better than almost all Lifetime ones.

Dir: Jon Amiel
Star: Lauren Ambrose, Wes Ramsey, Christopher Backus, Riley Smith

Duelist

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★★★
“A triumph of style over content”

DuelistposterNamsoon (Ha) is a hard as nails detective in medieval Korea. While working undercover at a market on a counterfeiting case, she encounters a masked man (Kang), and battles him before he vanishes, though not before she manages to cut away a fragment of his mask revealing his ‘Sad Eyes’ – the name by which he is known for the rest of the film. What is his tie to the forged money? And why has be been seen going into the house of a powerful government Minister Song (Song)? Namsoon and her mentor, Ahn (Ahn) investigate, though the closer they get to the truth, the more perilous things become, not least because she begins to fall for Sad Eyes, especially after infiltrating Song’s mansion as a courtesan – a task for which she is singularly unsuited. After a public incident, while Ahn has to fire Namsoon from the police force, this is merely a ruse, allowing her to go after the final piece of evidence they need to raid Song’s mansion and bring down his operation.

Rarely have I seen a more beautifully-shot film. Truly, this picture is as pretty as a… er, picture. The cinematography is top-notch, offering a sumptuous feast of visuals that mixes styles and techniques to great effect, and freeing the movie from bothering with banal chores like dialogue for extended periods. Unfortunately, neither the story nor the characters are a match for the look and feel, leaving the viewer largely to admire the film, rather than being engaged by or liking it. As I recall, the director’s previous film, Nowhere to Hide, had much the same issue, pitting two (male, there) adversaries against each other, in a rain-drenched landscape that was emotionally distant – but, boy, did it look good. Here, the action is extremely stylized, resembling a modern dance routine more than a fight in some cases, or even, as one character puts it, “It was like they were making love under the moonlight.” I also sense there are creative anachronisms at work: did they even have cops, never mind lady ones, at this time? However, the biggest weakness is likely the sudden way Namsoon falls for Sad Eyes; she doesn’t seem at all like the kind of person who would do that, and since this supposed relationship is at the film’s emotional heart, it’s a flaw that may explain why this feels so uninvolving.

Under other circumstances, this could well be a fatal flaw, yet there’s still enough for your enjoyment in the eye candy department to make this worth watching, even at a fairly long 111 minutes. One senses that Lee is much more interested in the technical aspects of cinema, rather than the emotional one of connecting with the audience. I can appreciate that side, certainly, yet for a film to be truly successful, there needs to be some yin to go along with the yang, or what results will seems frustratingly incomplete.

Dir: Lee Myung-se
Star: Ha Ji-won, Kang Dong-won, Ahn Sung-ki, Song Young-chang

Deep Gold

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★★½
“Sea minus.”

deep goldI love reading IMDb reviews where half are “totally brilliant film-making!” [obviously by people related to the production, who have generally reviewed nothing else] and half are “worst movie ever!” More than half the votes here are either 10’s or 1’s: of course, the truth lies in the middle. This is proficient, with occasional aspirations to competence, along with some nice production values and scenery, yet founders mostly on a bad script, partly on a misguided belief that filming underwater is interesting, in and by itself. That probably hasn’t been true since Jacques-Yves Cousteau hung up his Undersea World snorkel at the start of the eighties. Maybe these sequences worked better in 3D, as originally shot?

It’s the story of two sisters, Amy (Pham) and Jess (Ong): the former is a free-diving champion, but the latter refuses to go into the sea [there are reasons for this, explained in flashback; they are, however, irrelevant. Of course, her hydrophobia is an obvious foreshadow of the movie’s climax]. Amy’s boyfriend is in the Air Force, but vanishes along with his plane, transporting a cargo of gold back to Manilla. The Air Force suspect he and Amy may have staged the disappearance to solve their financial problems, and so the sisters head for where reports indicate the aircraft went down. Which isn’t anywhere near where the search is taking place. Hmm. There, they team up with a local businesswoman (Prudent), and also travel journalist, Benny Simpson (director Gleissner pulling double-duty), only to find they are not the only people interested in recovering the golden treasure.

I’m not the only person to have reviewed this and been reminded of the work of Andy Sidaris, with which it shares a tropical location and actresses cast more for their looks than their variable thespian abilities. This does have a glossier sheen; on the other hand, if you’re hoping for any nudity, look elsewhere. I think the main problem is the old “acting in your second language” issue, which appears to be the case for most of the cast. Pham has to do most of the heavy lifting, and nails only about one line in three, with others sounding more as if they are delivered through phonetic translation. When things are in motion and SCUBA-free, the film fares rather better. The action scenes are decently staged, the pick likely being Amy getting chased around a library by a slew of thugs, though the final ship-board encounter is nicely done as well. However, embarrassing sloppiness counters this, such an abduction scene where it looks like the same henchman climbs into the car twice, once in the back and once in the front, while Amy’s hands mysteriously get bound, albeit with the sort of constraint she can literally shake off.

It works mostly as a very nice promotional piece for the local tourist board, and if you’re looking for something pleasant looking and possessing absolutely no depth, you could do a lot worse. However, the more you look at this in detail, the more you will likely find yourself going, “Hang on…”, and that’s even before a final credits sequence where the actual local mayor reveals some kinda important storyline information. It’s just another part of a plot which strains even my credulity, and leaves the movie, if not sunk, certainly holed below the waterline.

Dir: Michael Gleissner
Star: Bebe Pham, Jaymee Ong, Michael Gleissner, Laury Prudent

Deaf Mute Heroine

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★★★½
“Silent but deadly.”

deafmuteheroineThe physically disabled hero has long been a staple of martial arts, to the extent that is is sometimes referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as “cripsploitation”. The One-armed Boxer, The Crippled Masters, Zatoichi – it’s a genre that survives more recently than you may think, with Mat Fraser, recently seen in American Horror Story: Freak Show, starring in 2009’s Kung Fu Flid. While this is rarer for heroines, they are not immune, with Japan giving us the Crimson Bat series, reviewed elsewhere on this site. This is another entry, Wong playing the titular heroine, Ya Ba, who is unable to speak or hear, but can still fight a mean battle, assisted by reflective wristbands that let her see who’s sneaking up from behind, in lieu of hearing them.

She comes into possession of a set of pearls, taking them off some robbers with extreme prejudice. However, this brings down the wrath of Miss Liu (Huang), leader of her own gang, and whose brother was one of the robbers. While her first attempt to kill Ya is unsuccessful, Lui’s poisoned flying daggers do injure her. Ya is found and nursed back to health by kindly cloth-dyer Yang Shun (Ching); romance blossoms, and the pair marry, with Ya figuratively hanging up her wristbands;  she actually puts them away in a box. That’s relevant, because her husband ends up entrapped into responsibility for a friend’s gambling debt by Liu, and she demands he steal Ya’s wristbands as payback. That opens the way for Liu and about five billion henchmen (count may be approximate) to launch their attack. But that’s not the only threat she faces, since lurking in the wings is another talented master, with a previously relationship to Ya and who was left with a nasty facial scar for his pains.

The fights are good. Really good. As in, the final battle between Ya and Lui (below) may be the best of the era I’ve seen between two women – like most of the action here, it’s fast, hard-hitting and imaginative, weakened only by some unsubtle wirework. The film is also bloodily messy, to a somewhat surprising extent, and both Wong and Huang make for highly-effective characters, the latter making up for the former’s silence.  However, the movie grinds to a halt in the middle, as the focus shifts off Ya to her husband, who is both a great deal less interesting and almost unlikeable. The film is also hampered by poor availability: while the version I watched was as close to complete as possible, that required a combination from three different sources, including one print dubbed into German(!) and another which was sub-VHS quality with a large logo in one corner. That helps leave this short of getting our “seal of approval,” but if a good copy ever becomes available, we might re-visit it. For as I said to Chris, what’s not to love about a wife who never says a word?

Y’know, our couch really isn’t so bad, when you get used to it. :)

Dir: Wu Ma
Star: Sally Wong (a.k.a. Helen Ma), Shirley Huang, Ching Tang, Wu Ma

The Deed of Paksenarrion, by Elizabeth Moon

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

the deedThis is an omnibus volume containing an entire trilogy of novels: Sheepfarmers Daughter (1988), Divided Allegiance (1988), and Oath of Gold (1989). Together, they tell the story of Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter, a young woman in a fantasy world who, as a tall, strapping farm girl of eighteen years, runs away from home to escape an unwanted forced marriage, and joins a company of mercenary soldiers.

Moon’s literary vision here has both strengths and weaknesses (which are sometimes the converse of each other). Her world-building is very detailed; it brooks comparison with Tolkien’s or, at least, Paolini’s on that score. (I appreciate a fictional world where women can occupy positions of power, and can train and serve as soldiers in full equality with men.) She also brings a high level of realism to the fantasy genre; as a Marine veteran, she knows a great deal about what the experience of initiation and training into a military unit is like. Indeed, other than the fact that Paks trains with a sword rather than a rifle, her life as a recruit is probably much like that of real-life modern “grunts” going through boot camp; and Moon recounts it in great detail.

The realistic note continues through the trilogy. Though magic operates in this world, and magical species like elves, dwarves and orcs exist, this element doesn’t appear much in the first book. (It will come much more to the fore in the later ones.) Realistically as well, Moon is willing to suddenly kill off characters, including characters you’ll have come to like and care about — exactly the way that real-life humans may die suddenly in combat situations, whether everybody likes and cares about them or not. Characterizations here are, not surprisingly, very realistic and vivid, and this is true of many secondary and minor characters too.

Some fantasy fans may want a higher level of magical content in their reads than the first book offers, and find it too much on the “mundane” side, though I don’t have a problem with this myself. Some readers won’t be happy to have characters they like, and expect to play more prominent roles, killed off. A bigger problem, though, is pacing. Usually, I have a pretty high tolerance for a slow narrative pace. Even so, I found this one glacially slow. Moon takes us through every aspect of “boot camp” life, every stage of every journey, every part of a siege, etc. You learn a lot about the world and the characters this way, but some scenes don’t add anything along that line. There are exciting, action-filled scenes, too; but many readers would find this narrative draggy in quite a few places. But the pace picks up somewhat in the later books (or perhaps we just get more used to it). And while characters who model responsible sexual behavior are refreshing, Paks’ total disinterest in sex seems at odds with the author’s usual realism. However, that trait will fit in with the future the author has in mind for her heroine.

Paks’ character grows considerably over the course of the trilogy. At the beginning, she’s a good-natured but simple young girl, who’s likeable enough as a person, and who does have a moral code; but she doesn’t think about the ethics of taking human life on the battlefield in wars over things like trade or border disputes, where her company happens to be on whichever side hired them first. To her, that’s just what mercenary soldiers do; it’s simply a morally neutral job that she likes and is pretty good at –though, to her credit, it’s important to her that she’s part of an “honorable company” that doesn’t murder noncombatants or rob innocent peasants.

sheepfarmerBut the first book ends with a crisis of genuine moral decision, in the tradition of serious fiction that aspires to do more than just entertain; and our heroine’s ethical sensibilities are in for real growth and development in the succeeding books. And this comes about as believable personal maturation of who she’s always essentially been, not as an artificial change tacked on by the author. This is one of the great strengths of the trilogy. (For fans who don’t like the military-centric type of fantasy, Paks is taken out of the mercenary company context fairly soon in the second book.)

While the first novel introduces us to the seemingly polytheistic religions and cults of Moon’s fantasy world, the later volumes take us behind the scenes to see more of a unifying pattern in apparent diversity. The human cultures of Pak’s world recognize a righteous Creator, the High Lord; and it’s explicitly suggested that the elven and dwarven concepts of the Creator are the same God, just with a different name and different stressed aspects. Other, lesser “gods” are spiritual entities that either serve the Creator, or in the case of the evil ones (and some are radically evil) oppose him, much like Satan opposes God; while human saints like Gird and Falk are separately venerated by distinct groups of followers, but each are recognized as servants of the common High Lord. In other words, religion in that world is much more monotheistic in essence than it initially appears; and it’s a strongly moral monotheism. (And as in our world, believers have to struggle with challenges to faith and problems of theodicy.) These religious themes play a key part in the last two novels.

There’s plenty of sword-fighting and other action here, quests and intrigue, magical perils, hidden identity, and a plot that’s suspenseful right up almost to the last page. But it’s also a work of rare psychological and spiritual depth, with the kind of serious dimension that marks it as truly great fiction, fiction of lasting literary significance, not just entertainment value. It’s also fiction that will break your heart in places, because there are points where Paks practically goes through hell –and some scenes here are not for the squeamish. But light is only recognizable against darkness; and out of great darkness here comes great light. One of the most powerful scenes in English-language literature that I’ve ever read in a lifetime of reading occurs here (you’ll know it when you read it). It’s a real shame that this trilogy isn’t more widely known by fantasy fans; but more than that, it’s a shame that it’s not recognized as one of the crown jewels of the American literary canon from the late 20th century. I’d like to hope that someday it will be!

Author: Elizabeth Moon
Publisher: Baen Books. Available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

DC Showcase: Catwoman

Video

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catwomanThe character of Catwoman has had a mixed history over the years in other media than the printed page. TV has had the Julie Newmar & Eartha Kitt versions, a nod in Birds of Prey, and a teenage version of the character can be seen in the Gotham series which premiered last month. In film, we had Lee Meriwether in the sixties incarnation then, perhaps most famously of all, Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns [albeit only after Annette Bening, Nicole Kidman and Demi Moore all were linked to the part]. Then, there was Halle Berry’s Catwoman, still talked about in hushed tones as perhaps the worst comic-book adaptation of all time, and which arguably did more damage to action heroines than any other big-budget movie in history. Despite the massive success of the Batman reboot, it took eight years before the character would appear in another film, Anne Hathaway playing Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises.

However, it’s the animated versions – perhaps the nearest medium to the comic book – which are of most interest here. That dates back as far as 1968, when she appeared, voiced by Jane Webb (who also played Batgirl in the show), as part of The Batman/Superman Hour on CBS. A decade later, Melendy Britt pulled the same double-duty as Webb, playing both the heroic Batgirl and villainous Catwoman, in The New Adventures of Batman, another CBS show that began in 1977 and also used the voices of Burt Ward and Adam West, start of the original TV show. But it was the nineties when the form really took off. Batman: The Animated Series was ranked last year by TV Guide as among the top 10 cartoons of all time, and its style was clearly influential on the cinematic reboot of the franchise under Christopher Nolan.

Adrienne Barbeau voiced the character of Catwoman here and in The New Batman Adventures, later in the decade. This marked a shift, with the actresses being used for the role, even if never seen, becoming increasingly high-profile. 2004’s The Batman had Gina Gershon as Catwoman in five episodes, and the feature Batman: Year One had Eliza Dushku, With the third anniversary of the latter’s release this week, what better time to showcase the Catwoman-focused short below, which was originally included as a bonus feature on the Year One DVD. In it, Selena Kyle/Catwoman attempts to bring both a Gotham City crime boss called Rough Cut and his smuggling ring to an end, but stumbles upon a mysterious cargo shipment far worse than just smuggled diamonds…

The Dalton Girls

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★★★½
“How the West was wo(ma)n.”

dalton-girls-os1“Oh, you can’t trust a man, ‘cos a man will lie,
But a gun stays beside you till the day you die.
A man is a cheater, with his triflin’ ways,
But a gun’s always faithful, ‘cos a gun never strays.”
   — Holly Dalton (Merry Anders)

The above comes from a rather strange musical number, injected into the middle of this B-Western for no particular purpose. It’s sung by Holly, the leader of the titular gang, consisting of four sisters: the older pair Holly and Columbine (Edwards), are forced on the lam after a sleazy funeral director tries to force himself on Holly, resulting in his encounter with the business end of a spade. Six years later, they have been joined by younger siblings Rose (Davis) and Marigold (Sue George). and are raiding stage coaches around the West.

Things are derailed when one of their targets is carrying W.T. “Illinois” Grey (Russell), a gambler on his way to the Colorado boom town of Dry Creek. Columbine falls for him, and casually suggests Dry Creek as the location for the gang’s next raid. They raid the bank, and get away with $6,000 – which was supposed to go to Grey, and he is shot in the process. He trails them to Tombstone where, rather than tell the sheriff, he blackmails the gang to get the money back, and Holly decides to get revenge by raiding the high-stakes poker game where he is wagering the cash.

It’s a wonderfully grey film, morally speaking: unlike many Westerns of the era (1957), it isn’t black-hatted villains metaphorically twirling their wax moustaches, as they go up against square-jawed good guys in their white hats. Here, there isn’t anyone whom you could truly place at either end of the moral spectrum. The Daltons, Holly in particular, are victims of their family reputation – the film opens with their brothers being hunted by a posse, and gunned down in the desert. [The funeral director who assaults her is displaying the corpses for a 25-cent admission fee, which appears based on the fate of the real Dalton Gang].

On the other hand, Grey is certainly no hero either, a pragmatist whose main focus is looking out for #1. Naturally, crime can’t be allowed to pay, and the ending reflects that. However, the journey is a surprisingly forward-thinking one, with only the doomed Grey-Columbine romance counting as an expected element. There is probably one sister too many, since they do blur together, and absolutely nothing like the tagline on the poster happens [“snared them in their love traps at night”? Really?], though that may not be a bad thing. Apart from the fact that the outlaws are women, the story doesn’t have much new to offer. However, considering the era, that alone is still borderline radical, and plays a good two decades ahead of its time, if not more.

Dir: Reginald Le Borg
Star: Merry Anders, John Russell, Penny Edwards, Lisa Davis

Dangerous Lady

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★★★★
“No luck of the Irish to be found here.”

dangerousladyBased on the debut novel by British crime writer Martina Cole, this depicts the life of Maura Ryan (Lynch), the only daughter in her family, whose brothers are making a push for increased power in the underworld of 1960’s London, much to the disapproval of the Ryan’s matriarch (Hancock). Leading the push is Michael (Isaacs), who has more than a touch of Ronnie Kray about him, being both homosexual and a borderline psychotic. Maura falls in love with Terry Patterson (Teale), and is shocked to discover he’s a policeman. When he comes under pressure from colleagues to use their relationship, he ends it – unaware that Maura has just become pregnant. She is forced to have an abortion, which leaves her insides looking like they’ve been weed-whacked, and vows she’s going to show him, by becoming every bit the gangster peer of her brothers. But the path to the top is littered with dead bodies, of foes, friends and family.

There’s not a great deal here which you haven’t seen in a million other dramas about organized crime, be they set in America with the mafia, or Hong Kong and the triads. The whole “trying to go straight and make an honest life” thing is certainly not new, and strapping a skirt on, isn’t enough to make it so. It’s really the performances which make this work, and the acting is top-notch. Among the men, Isaacs is outstanding, going from zero to brutal in the blink of an eye, and you certainly get the notion of someone who was turned into what he became (Cole doesn’t explicitly snort derisively at “born that way”, but it’s certainly implied abuse as a youngster by another mobster is behind many of Michael’s problems). He’s a bundle of conflicting emotions: fiercely loyal to family members, but capable of savage brutality to anyone who betrays him, or whom he considers a threat.

But it’s Lynch and Hancock who are the driving force here, and both are excellent. The latter was a veteran of 40-plus years in plays, films and TV, and portrays Mrs. Ryan as being a loving mother, but one who gradually comes to the conclusion that they are beyond her control, Michael in particular. However, by the time she has realized this, she’s helpless to do anything much about it, except bar Michael from the house, even though that causes her pain, probably only a mother can know. Lynch plays Maura with very much the same streak of stubborn steel. As the show develops over its 50-minutes episodes, she becomes someone who won’t let anyone, least of all her family, tell her what to do, because she has seen the consequences of those bad decisions. She may not be right, but if she isn’t, at least it’s her own choice. You can’t help rooting for Maura, a victim of circumstance, as she negotiates the tricky life of a woman in the era, especially one in an area certainly not exactly female-friendly.

It’s slightly disappointing that we don’t get to see Maura go all Scarface on anyone; despite the cover picture, I’m not certain I recall her pulling the trigger at any point. However, that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm  for a solid slab of television drama, and we were sad to reach the end and realize that there were only four episodes – it’s an idea which could certainly have sustained a full season. I’ve now acquired a few of Cole’s books, and look forward to reading them in due course.

Dir: John Woods
Star: Susan Lynch, Jason Isaacs, Owen Teal, Sheila Hancock

The Devil’s Gravestone

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★★
“Blade-ette, but a good deal more chatty and cheaper.”

devilsgravestoneJaq (LaMont) has devoted her life to hunting and killing the vampires who stalk the night in the metropolis of ‘Roach City’. She became this way after her husband, Cale (Red Star), was turned by one of the most notorious of serial vampires, and the first victim of his blood-lust was their young son. He vanished, and Jaq has spent the years since trying to track him down, taking out any fangster who gets in the way. She is visited by a local detective, Dick (Nemmers), who gives her some surprising news: Cale stabbed himself to death in a local cemetery. However, the body vanishes from the morgue, and it soon becomes clear that that’s not the only strange thing going on, as a woman who was sexually assaulted nearby has gone from zero to heavily pregnant in a few days.

After a brisk and fairly promising start, this becomes increasingly bogged-down in exposition and talk, rather than action. It does have some interesting ideas, putting new twists on old ideas, such as the concept that vampires perpetually need blood, because they “burn” it off constantly, a result of their superhuman strength and speed consuming so much energy. However, there isn’t enough time to do much with these concepts, which are instead espoused – typically by a character I nicknamed Dr. Exposition (James) – then never mentioned or of significance again. If he had been laying the groundwork for a series, it might have made sense, but in a standalone movie like this, it bring things to a grinding halt. It’s the last thing the film needs, because the extremely-low budget approach across the board, from video definition through sound (a lot of the dialogue seems post-synched) to special effects, then becomes all the more obvious.

Once that happens, it becomes a chore to get through. I kept finding my attention drifting elsewhere – checking my email, picking my toenails, the sort of pastimes you do when you’re vaguely bored, yet not disinterested enough to seek out aggressively something more entertaining. More than once, I realized something semi-important had happened while I was distracted, and would have to rewind to the point where I’d lost interest. That’s never a good sign, and the final “apocalyptic” showdown left me thoroughly unimpressed, with all the initial potential having evaporated.

Dir: Jay Mackenzie Roach
Star: Elle LaMont, Joe Nemmers, Grant James, Niko Red Star

Dance of Death

  By

★★★
“Putting the ‘arts’ in martial arts.”

danceofdeathIn the seventies, Angela Mao was the queen of Hong Kong cinema, occupying much the same position as Pam Grier in the blaxploitation films of the decade. Probably best known in the West for her role as Bruce Lee’s sister in Enter the Dragon (for which she was paid the princely sum of $100!), she had much meatier roles in a slew of films. This is my first exposure to her work, albeit in a print which has seen better… well, never mind days, I’m thinking better decades. It was dubbed and had subtitles, though the English track often matched the English subs more in spirit than anything else. And it wasn’t even ranked in her top 25 by IMDB rating. But, whaddya know, it actually wasn’t too bad.

She plays Fei Fei, a nomadic orphan who comes across two fighting masters, that have been battling for years, without being able to decide who is better. She offers them a solution: they can both train her, and she’ll then go off and fight people – whoever’s training is most useful, is clearly superior. [This kind of thing only makes sense in a kung-fu movie. Fortunately, that’s exactly what this is.] In her first encounter, she sees off members of the Bird Gang, rescuing a member of the Five Styles School, which leads her to join the latter group. However, the rest of the Bird Gang continue their mission to wipe out their rivals, with Fei Fei the sole survivor. She returns to her original teachers to learn more and, after picking up a sixth style from a surprising location, is ready to take on Bird Gang leader, Mu Fa Shan, and his “Upside-down Horse” style.

Early on, I was ready to write this off, because Fei Fei’s fighting skills are second-rate at best. However, as things progressed, I realized that was actually the point: she progresses over the course of the film from being an enthusiastic amateur, through study and training, to someone who can credibly take on a top fighter. Her character may not have much of a story arc: instead, it’s her kung-fu that does. By the time of the final battle – which lasts about 15 minutes – she’s graceful and fluid, filmed by Lu in lengthy shots which do Mao justice. Now, it’s still a style of cinema very different to modern action films; but if you can accept the difference (which I’ll admit, takes getting used too, because it’s relatively slow and far more obviously choreographed), you’ll be fine. I kept being reminded of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers – and that might give you a clue as to the source of the sixth style… Oh, never mind: the title gives it away. It probably helps that stunt co-ordinator on this was Chen Yuan-lung – whom you might know a bit better as Jackie Chan.

It does suffer too much from the perpetual bane of the genre – too many comedic elements, and a resulting horrid unevenness of tone: the revenge motif which is crucial to the plot never comes over as having any emotional punch, not least because the members of the Five Styles clan bite the bullet before Fei Fei has apparently done more than be introduced to them. But Mao has enough charisma and presence to stop you, just this side of throwing things through your TV. If this is one of her minor works, I’m looking forward to the better ones.

Dir: Chuan Lu
Star: Angela Mao, Shih Tien, Shiao Bou-Lo, Chin Pey