Tag: kung-fu

Dreaming the Reality

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★★★
“Taking the red pill”

Dreaming the RealityThere’s half a good movie here, albeit one which treads some rather familiar territory. It might seem hard to go wrong, with three of the most-renowned Hong Kong action actresses in one place, but as we saw with Avenging Quartet, quantity does not guarantee quality. The main issue is two separate plots, which appear to have strayed in from entirely different movies, and which don’t even cross paths for about an hour.

In one corner, we have Kat (Oshima) and Silver Fox (Lee), who have been raised by their foster father as assassins. But after one hit results in collateral damage to an unfortunately-timed school bus, Fox starts to have doubts about her career path. They’re dispatched to Thailand to recover a floppy disk containing damaging evidence [Older readers: it wasn’t even one of the little ones, but a full-on 5 1/4″ disk! Younger readers: look “floppy disk” up.]. Fox gets their target, but in the ensuing chase suffers a bout of cinematic amnesia. And that’s where the other plot kicks in. Lan (Hu) is an ex-HK cop who has been trying to keep her brother, Rocky (Lam), out of trouble, despite his ambitions to be a champion kick-boxer. This leads to all kinds of goofy and entirely uninteresting shenanigans, with Lan having to sub for Rocky in one fight, fend off an evil manager, etc.

It’s only after Fox stumbles into Lan’s bar, that things gel, and from then on, it’s an almost ceaseless barrage of gunfire and punches, with some surprising deaths, and all three heroines on top form, particularly Lee and Hu. This makes up for the opening hour, which largely alternates between the “tortured killer” cliché and excruciating comic mugging. The former is preferable, not just because the action is better-staged, but also because Lee and Oshima do get to deliver some interesting lines, which succeed in giving their characters a bit more depth than you’d imagine. When Fox asks Kat, “What would you do if I died?”, her answer is a straightforward yet poignant, “I’d die with you.” But this darkness jars badly with the slapstick elements, and Liu has no idea how to combine them into anything like a coherent whole.

Dir: Tony Liu
Star: Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima, Sibelle Hu, Ben Lam

Here’s the end fight, with Lee going up against Eddie Ko, who plays her foster father.

A Girl Fighter

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★★★
“…and lots of boy fighters.”

girlfighterSuma Moyung (Kwan) rides into town, offering to rid the locals of a pesky warlord’s son, who is making a nuisance of himself, not least by being a bit rapey. After proving herself by slicing off the shoe-tips of the local police force (!), Suma is given the job, and proceeds to deliver, capturing the scion and bringing him back to face justice. Except, that’s only the start of the problem, because his father is none too happy with Suma, and unleashes his forces to rescue his son, by any means necessary. That covers bribery, threats and then full-on violence as it becomes clear Suma will not be easily cowed. Fortunately, she has help, in the shape of a man (Tien) who lost his entire family to the man she is now guarding. And she’ll need all the assistance she can get, if she’s successfully to transport her captive through the countryside to the state capitol, under siege from the warlord’s forces just about every step of the way.

As that summary perhaps implies, there’s certainly no shortage of action here, with a new fight sequence popping up almost every five minutes. The main problem is that titling your film A Girl Fighter does create certain expectations in your audience – among which would be, that your heroine will be depicted as the most prolific and/or the best martial artist in the movie. Neither are true, with Tien doing most of the heavy lifting for the good guys, against an apparently endless stream of minions in small groups (if the warlord ever actually committed to rescuing his son, he’d easily have the numbers to overpower the hero and heroine!). While not exactly missing in action, too often Suma is reduced to a supporting role, or worse still, left in a situation where she needs the help of her colleague. That’s a shame: while Kwan’s style is a little too theatrical for my tastes (all her punches and kicks appear to start from the next time-zone over), it’s also graceful and flowing, especially impressive when the moves are combined into an extended sequence.

However, the overall sense is of a film more interested in the volume of action, than doing anything particularly new or interesting with it. It seems particularly old-fashioned, considering that this came out the same year (1972) as Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury. As a taste from the tail end of what that hard-hitting style was about to replace, this isn’t bad, and it certainly doesn’t dawdle. But it feels about a decade older than it actually is.

Dir: Yeung Sai Hing
Star: Polly Shang-Kwan, Tien Peng, Law Bun, Cho Kin

The Black Butterfly

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★★½
“Given she wears purple, wouldn’t a better title be The Mauve Moth?”

short0448Someone is robbing the rich, and using the proceeds to buy rice for the poor. Could it be the drunken beggar (Yeung) in charge of rice distribution, who is cagey about where his new-found wealth comes from? Or the local inn-owner and former martial arts master (Tien), whose efforts at fund-raising have been rudely rebuffed? Closer. It’s actually his daughter (Chiao), whom no-one knows has any skills at all, but has apparently learned them in secret, and goes out at night, stealing valuables in order to fund the charity operations of her beggar pal. Needless to say, their previous owners are less than happy with this, and are seeking the culprit, led by policeman Xi Lang (Yueh). Things are muddied further when a group of bandits, the engagingly-named Five Devil Rock gang (I think I just found my band name!), steal an imperial seal, forcing the Butterfly’s father out of retirement, and her to reveal herself to save him.

There’s really two halves to this film. The first is, for me, more interesting, though it’s rarely less than obvious Chiao is doubled for any acrobatic work: shot of her jumping, cut to stuntman flying through air, cut to Chiao bending her legs slightly on landing. The style is also defiantly old-school and Peking Opera based, which will come across as stagily artificial to modern eyes, and you do have to remember this was made 45 years ago. However, I did appreciate the long-duration takes, and even though the action quotient was lower, the characters, performances and plot were enough to keep me interested: it plays a little like Iron Monkey, one of my all-time favourite martial arts films, and the idea of a female Robin Hood certainly has enough potential.

Unfortunately, the second half, when the bandits show up and dominate things, is rather less succesful, falling back on a number of old clichés of kung-fu cinema, such as the battle between schools. Until the finale, the heroine is largely reduced to a supporting role, ministering to her poor father, for whom the stress has become too much. While she is more active in said climax, it had me rolling my eyes at its extreme example of the trope where the villains have the good guys outnumbered – literally here, a hundred to one – but attack in ones and twos rather than rushing en masse. Here, it’s even more ridiculous, because the good guy minions beg their leaders to go in first (inevitably, getting their asses kicked), so neither side appear interested in using all their forces. While spectacular enough, I suppose, the end result just doesn’t live up to the early potential.

Dir: Lo Wei
Star: Lisa Chiao Chiao, Yueh Hua, Tien Feng, Yeung Chi Hing

Challenge of the Lady Ninja

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★★★
“Well, it’s never dull, at least…”

short0447Chinese woman Wong Siu-Wai (Yeung) is training in the secret arts of ninjitsu, and passes her final test, much to the chagrin of her master’s other star pupil. Immediately afterward, she gets news of her father’s death at the hands of evil collaborator and former fiance Lee Tong (Chen), who works with the Japanese occupying forces. Oh, yeah: did I forget to mention this takes place in World War 2? Because the movie did as well. Anyway, she returns to China and sets about recruiting other, similarly-skilled women, who will be able to help her take revenge. Only, her nemesis has his own minions, who aren’t short on martial arts abilities either, and it’s only through the mysterious help of a masked ally that she is able to avoid an early defeat. Of course, she perseveres, and along the way there are shocking revelations, gratuitous mud-wrestling and a few bars of music apparently lifted directly from Star Wars.

The film can’t decide whether it was to be empowering or exploitative. For every scene of the heroines standing up for themselves and making their own way in the world, there’s one where they are stripped down to their underwear for the flimsiest of reasons. This starts early on, when it appears one of Wong’s ninja skills is to transform from her standard red jump-suit (as shown on the right) into something which looks like a stripper version of Tinkerbell, resulting in all the men around her collapsing with lust. Or there’s the sequence where she fights Lee’s only female bodyguard, who evens the playing-field by emptying an industrial-sized vat of baby oil on it. Or that one of her recruits is a prostitute, whose sole skill is apparently turning men into drooling imbeciles, at the frequent drop of her dress. The virulent anti-Japanese/pro-Chinese tone also gets old, and is kinda odd, since this was a Taiwanese production, so I wouldn’t expect them to be quite so pro-mainland.

That said, the more traditional action is certainly copious and generally fairly well-staged: Yeung is doubled for the more acrobatic elements, but it’s not made hideously obvious, and is helped by the fact that she is doing the rest of the fighting herself, and decently too. The opponents provide an interesting selection, notably the Japanese guy (Robert Tai) with a scorpion tattooed on his head. The revelations mentioned above, do come out of nowhere, and things end so suddenly I had to rewind to try and figure out what the hell just happened: this resulted from the combination of crappy print quality, making the final fight look as if it takes place underground, and the final fight actually taking place underground. Incoherent, surreal and nonsensical? Guilty as charged, m’lud. I probably wouldn’t have it any other way.

Dir: Lee Tso Nam
Star: Elsa Yeung, Kam Yin Fie, Peng Kong, and Chen Kuan-Tai
a.k.a Never Kiss a Ninja, Chinese Super Ninjas 2

Ambitious Kung Fu Girl

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★★½
“More ambitious than kung fu”

Tian Si Si (Yim) is a spoiled rich girl, whose doting daddy pays kung fu fighters to give the illusion that she can beat them up. Despite his desire to wed her off in an arranged marriage to Yang Fan (Tak), Si Si runs off to meet her idol, Qing Ge (Chen), a true master of the martial arts, whom she knows only through the fictional tales of derring-do, told by her maid. Susequently, Si Si becomes the target first of con-men, then is sold to a brother, and when they realize who she is, becomes the centre of a scheme to force her into marriage, so her husband can inherit her father’s fortune. Throughout it all, Yang is about the only loyal friend, though when she meets her idol, she discovers that, while if he isn’t as depicted, he still has a courageous streak of his own.

This is clearly intended as a light and frothy confection, not to be taken seriously – witness the gambling contest between Qing Ge and his rival, which has much more in common with a modern game-show than anything from the period. However, the plot is actually smartly written, with enough angles and schemes to keep your head spinning, as you try to figure out who actually wants to help our heroine, and who is against her. I’m not normally a fan of this era of martial arts, often finding the action too obviously-staged. However, this is quite well put together, and I do appreciate camerawork which lets you appreciate the performers’ skills.

Indeed, as a film in general, this would probably rate a star or so higher, and is a fun 90 minutes: my main disappointment is that the heroine is really not the kung fu girl of the title. Apart from the initial encounter with the paid opponents, her “Sloppy Blind Man’s Sword” technique is hardly used. Though there are some other strong female characters – most notably brothel owner Madame Mei (Wong Mei-Mei), who clearly has physical skills beyond what you’d expect from her job – they are largely secondary and/or subservient to the male ones, with the possible exception of courtesan Zhang Hao Er (Choh Seung-Wan), who is certainly her own woman. But overall, entertaining fluff though this is, it only barely qualifies for inclusion here, rather than in the Hall of Misleading Advertising.

Karate Girl (1974)

  By

★★★
“Definitely not to be confused with the Rina Takeda film of the same name.”

This movie acquired some notoriety last year when a clip of a villain’s death went viral as “Worst death scene ever”, even though it had been edited and had extra audio added for “humourous” effect. Certainly, there’s plenty to mock in this 1974 Turkish revenge flick, which plays like someone heard second-hand descriptions of Thriller: A Cruel Picture and decided the world needed a PG remake. However, while aspects of the execution are without a question shoddy and laughable, it has an interesting story, briskly told, and with a good central character.

That heroine is Zeynep (Akin), a mute flower-seller who roams the streets of Istanbul with an apparently endless selection of cue cards through which she converses with customers. Her happy life is disrupted when five escaped convicts invade the home where she lives with her father, killing him and pawing her about, before stealing the money they have saved for a medical operation to return her speech. However, the trauma apparently had the same effect, Zeynep now being able to talk. She vows to track down those responsible and make them pay, with the help of a convenient passing transient, Murat (Hun, who’d go on to become an member of the Turkish parliament), who happens to be well skilled in shooting and martial arts, for reasons that do actually make sense eventually. Zeynap ends up joining the local police force to further her mission, which climaxes on a roof-top where the last member takes a baby hostage.

Apparently unreleased in the US or UK, this is available from the usual dubious sources, most commonly on a print dubbed into English, with French credits and Greek subtitles. Oddly, this adds to the whole package, which succeeds in being more entertaining than you’d expect, in a way best described as “barking mad.” Akin, who was one of the leading lights of Turkish cinema in the sixties and seventies, gives it her all, and certainly has the screen presence to pull it off, even allowing for some of the worst stunt doubling in cinema history – the wig used by her double is a completely different colour. The film manages to be both chaste and sleazy at the same time, with the latter best represented by the bad guys’ facial hair. No-one will ever mistake this for any kind of classic. However, I’ve been less entertained by many movies, and it’s enjoyable enough, for various reasons, that I found it relatively easy to overlook the undeniable flaws.

Dir: Orhan Aksoy
Star: Filiz Akin, Ediz Hun

Magnificent Warriors

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★★★★
“Raiders of the East Ark.”

Ok, the above is a rabid simplification; there are no artifacts here at all, but there’s no doubt Michelle Yeoh’s adventurer owes more than a touch to the archaeologist we all know and love – not least in the bullwhip she wields in the opening sequence. While for nasty Nazis, read nasty Nips, with the Japanese who are occupying mainland China at the time of this film, so villainous they might as well be twirling wax moustaches and wearing top hats. They’re building a poison gas factory, and it’s up to Yeoh, agent 001 Yee and scoundrel Ng to stop them.

It does live up to the claim of “nonstop action” on the sleeve, certainly, and when Yeoh is in full flow, it’s a joy and absolute delight to see. For example, almost the first fight has her wielding a rope with a blade on the end, and it’s better action than many films have as a climax. There’s plenty of similar scenes, and more than enough moments make you go, “Whoa!”, in your best Keanu voice. Though for my tastes, and especially towards the end, there’s too much running/driving about, firing of weapons, explosions and stuff that doesn’t particularly showcase the skills of those involved. Supporting actress Cindy Lau comes over well as the feisty sidekick of the man they have to rescue.

This was the last action film in the first stage of Yeoh’s career; in 1988, she retired, and married D&B Films owner Dickson Poon, until her return to the screen in Supercop. This is perhaps the least well-known of her early trilogy of starring action roles, behind Yes, Madam! and Royal Warriors; in all honesty, it is probably the slightest, yet is still an impressively insane piece of work.

Dir: David Chung
Star: Michelle Yeoh, Derek Yee, Richard Ng, Lowell Lo

Kill ‘Em All

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★★★
“Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.”

Evil mastermind Snakehead (Liu) kidnaps eight of the world’s top assassins, and transports them to a bunker in his Bangkok lair, where he makes them fight each other to the death, laughing maniaally all the while. Why? Because he’s an evil mastermind, that’s why: it’s what they do for amusement, rather than watch reality shows or potter around in the garden. After the numbers have been whittled down, Som (Siripoing, who played the mother in Chocolate) blocks the gas system used by Snakehead to enforce discipline, and leads an escape from the killing chamber. However, Snakehead had a lot more minions who need to be defeated before she and Gabriel (Messner) finally get to the boss level.

If that plot summary is terser than usual, that’s because there is much less plot than usual, in what is not much more than a thin, if occasionally clever, contrived excuse to slap together a series of fight scenes. As such, logic doesn’t enter in to it much. For example, is there some kind of employment scheme to which evil overlords can subscribe, which provides faceless henchmen willing to go to their deaths in droves? And if so, why not just get them to fight each other for your entertainment? The motive which spurs Snakehead to spend considerable time, effort and money on his scheme – not, it eventually is revealed, for the first time – is completely opaque, and few of the assassins come over any better, with little time or effort put into their characterization. Case in point: Gabriel tries to commit suicide just before his kidnapping, but it comes out of nowhere so has absolutely no emotional impact.

No, this is all about the martial arts, and in this aspect, the film does deliver – albeit more in quantity than quality, without the level of invention seen in, say, The Raid: Redemption. The different styles on view from the participants do give a decent degree of variety, and The Kid (Man, who also did the fight choereography) showcases some impressive moves. There’s certainly no shortage of action, to the extent that this feels more like a video-game with occasional cut scenes to move the plot forward, than an action film with set-pieces of martial arts. However, while tasty enough during consumption, it still ends up being entirely unfilling, and is like a Chinese meal which leaves you hungry, 15 minutes after eating it.

Dir: Raimund Huber
Star: Ammara Siripong, Johnny Messner, Gordon Liu, Tim Man

Salvage Mice

  By

★★½
“Mice-ensed to thrill… Albeit, barely.”

Mai (Tanimura) and her partner (Sato) form a team – the titular rodents – who recover art and artifacts, and return them to their “rightful” owners – quotes used advisedly, it’s vague on the details. However, Mai is betrayed, and framed for the robberies actually being committed by the gang operating under the Evil Western Dude (Heselton, who was also the main villain in Karate Girl). Mai encounters Mio (Nagano), part of ‘Hiroshima Cleans’, a group of volunteers who help keep the city tidy. Initially, Mio thinks Mai is the villain, but is eventually convinced that the real bad guy is elsewhere, and the pair team up to take on the villains, including both Mai’s ex and Evil Western Dude.

The main problem is Tanimura, who is incredibly unconvincing in terms of martial-arts skills. Even though her character is supposedly more thief than fighter, there is much more of the latter than the former, and she simply isn’t up to it. Nagano fares rather better in this regard, and there are a few sequences which are decently put-together and well-executed. However, even here, you still find yourself yearning for a presence like Rina Takeda or Jeeja Yanin, who are capable of really upping the pace and delivering blows that look like they have real impact. Too often, that’s not the case, especially when the heroines team up to take on Evil Western Dude.

What works a little better than expected is the stuff around the edges, like Mai pretending to be a tourist to lure Mio into befriending her, or Mio’s relationship with her non-violent colleague in Hiroshima Cleans. This kind of stuff could be grating, but it’s handled with a light enough touch to pass for frothy entertainment, and fits with what could be a showreel for the Hiroshima Tourist Board. There’s more than a hint of anime series Saint Tail here, and it’s entirely PG-rated. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but here, its more blandly inoffensive than family-friendly, and passes the time acceptably, without being at all memorable.

Dir: Ryuta Tasaki
Star: Mitsuki Tanimura, Julia Nagano, Tomohito Sato, Richard Heselton

Ninja Girl (Kunoichi)

  By

★½
“Save your time, save your money, and go watch Karate Girl instead. Again, if necessary.”

From the director of Alien vs. Ninja, the story here centres on a pair of ninjas, Shimotsuki and Hyotsuki, who are carrying on what appears to be a family tradition, kidnapping women from other clans’ villages, and taking them back to their own for nefarious purposes – let’s just say, the phrase “tools of pleasure” crops up on more than one occasion. They ar returning with their latest batch of four, including Kisaragi (Takeda), who is a ninja in her own right. With the help of a mysterious man (Sato), Kisuragi and her colleagues in imprisonment are released from their bondage – but that is only the first obstacle between them and their freedom. Of course, it turns out the heroine is not quite as innocent as she appears, and has an agenda of her own, because her mother was kidnapped by the same sleazy ninjas, when Kisuragi was just a baby.

Barely an hour long, this still somehow manages to outstay its welcome, managing to spend far more time engaging in borderling misogyny, rather than anything remotely empowering, and a distinctly sleazy tone with plot elements involving castration, venereal disease and a great deal more molestation of helpless women that I generally like (particularly in my ninja flicks). There is really only a single battle of note, when Kisuragi gets to take on one of her captors in a battle that is fairly well-shot and does a good job od showcasing Takeda’s undeniable skills. However, you don’t get the sense that there was more than a couple of days work involved, and even given the short running time, it’s still a negligible amount of what’s on view, and there just isn’t anything like sufficient elsewhere to keep you interested or entertained.

I haven’t seen Chiba’s earlier work, but it seems to be basically the same “head off to a forest for some film-making” approach that we see here. That can work in the right hands – Versus is justly the most well-know example of that genre. However, here, it’s more like a cheap excuse to disguise the obviously limited production values than anything else. Hopefully, Takeda will soon move beyond this kind of Z-grade dreck: I did read rumours of her being in Chocolate 2, which would be nice if said rumours had the slightest grounding in fact, which seems questionable. Hey, we can dream, can’t we?

Dir: Seiji Chiba
Star: Rina Takeda, Yuichi Sato, Masanori Mimoto, Mitsuki Koga