Tag: kung-fu

Rina Takeda: The Next Action Heroine?

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Last month, we saw MMA star Gina Carano hit the big-screen in Haywire, but she’s not the first genuine female martial-artist to have started a movie career. Most obviously, Cynthia Rothtock was a five-time World Karate Champion in forms and weapons, and has a number of black belts in various disciplines. Similarly, Jeeja Yanin was a third-Dan black belt in Taekwondo, before hitting the silver screen in Chocolat. But here, we’ll be looking at the name that has recently emerged out of Japan, Rina Takeda, holder of a black belt in Ryukyu Shorin-ryu Karate.

Born in 1991, Takeda was reportedly inspired to take up the martial-art at the age of ten, when she saw her father get knocked out of a karate tournament, and was determined to avenge his defeat. [If you’ve seen the “plot” – quotes used advisely – of some of her films, this makes a great deal of sense…] In 2005, she auditioned to become a member in J-pop group Morning Musume, and to date, has appeared in three films, as well as a recurring role on the Japanese comedy-superhero series, The Ancient Dogoo Girls. There’s a certain sense that her talents have not yet been matched by the material provided, but everyone has to start somewhere. Just ask Angelina Jolie, whose career started with Cyborg 2…

[November 2013 update: we can add Dead Sushi to her resume, where she plays the daughter of a famous sushi chef, who has to fight off reanimated… well, sushi. It’s from the director of Machine Girl, but having just watched the trailer, I think a well-stocked fridge will be needed!]

  • High-Kick Girl

    ★★★
    Less a “film” than “fights spliced together, interspersed with cut scenes from a Mortal Kombat knock-off”.

    The entertainment value you get from this may depend on your expectations. It undoubtedly works best as a party-tape, show-casing the “no wires, CGI or stunt doubles” approach, but I have to beg to differ with some of the critical savaging it has received. Even on our forums, it divided opinions, with some posters calling it “moronic and offensive” and “complete TRASH”. While I can see its weaknesses, and it’s no classic, at least in the first half, it does deliver pretty much everything you’d expect in the way of teenage ass-kickery.

    The plot – such as it is, and I wonder what they did with the rest of the postage-stamp – is as follows. Kei Tsuchiya (Takeda) is a student under master Matsumura (Naka), but fed up with training, goes out to “hunt black belts.” This brings her to the attentions of the Destroyers, a gang of mercenary martial-artists called the Destroyers, extend an invitation to her to join them. Turns out it’s a trap, designed to lure in Matsumura, against whom they have a 15-year old grudge, and with the kidnapped Kei as bait, they await her teacher’s arrival. And that’s the main problem. The first half sets up Kei as fearless and tough, but after the chief villain shows up, spends much of the second-half whimpering on the floor: Matsumura does far more of the heavy lifting, despite his claim, rather questionable on the evidence here, that “karate is not for fighting.”

    And that’s a shame, as Kei makes a good impression, right from her first bit of action, which sees her surprise an unsuspecting opponent with a kick to the head from a standing position, as shown on the right. Another standout was the kickfest (below), against another real-life karate star, Yuka Kobayashi. Stylistically, however, the main problem is the director’s repetitive, frequent use of slow-motion: while this is great in the aforementioned “party tape” atmosphere (where, if someone yells, “Wow, look at that,” you can turn around and see it again), it is badly overused and drags the viewer out of the cinematic experience far too often: lob this kind of stuff on as an extra on the DVD, if you must.

    The reviews which aren’t writing this off entirely tend to point out that it works better if you regard it as some kind of martial-arts promotional piece, and that would tie in with the heavy emphasis that “Karate is a martial art for protection.” [Personally, I feel a good pair of running shoes would be just as good there] However, there’s little doubting that Takeda is the real deal in terms of fighting ability, and shows a willingness to take punishment as well as dish it out, that is certainly to her credit. However, the inexperience of both her and the creators in the more traditional aspects of film-making – for the final battle, the location appears to be a school gymnasium, on loan to the Destroyers! – do significantly hamper the overall merit.

    Dir: Fuyuhiko Nishi
    Star: Rina Takeda, Tatsuya Naka, and a host of faceless minions

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  • Karate Girl (2011)

    ★★★½
    “On the plus-side, this does have a plot. On the other hand, you kinda wish they hadn’t bothered.”

    The film manages to cram just about every cliché of martial-arts films into its 92 minutes, with a plot driven by four major threads:
    a) You killed my father, and must pay.
    b) You run a rival school, and must pay.
    c) You are generally not a nice person, and must pay.
    d) You kidnapped my sibling, raising them as one of your own and training them in your evil techniques, before sending them out to kill me. Oh, and you must pay for this too, naturally.

    Ayaka Kurenai (Takeda) can only watch as her father, a master of karate, is killed in front of her very young eyes, and her sister Sakura (Tobimatsu) is dragged away by the perpetrators. A decade or so later, Ayaka goes viral after using her skills to stop purse-snatchers in the cinema where she works, an event that brings her to the attention of Tagawa Shu (Keisuke), the man behind it all. He still covets the family belt, having apparently missed it when killing the man and kidnapping his daughter. He sends out some minions to verify if she is who she seems – then when that’s done, plays his trump card, revealing he has Sakura, in his evil grasp. Little does he reckon that Sakura’s family loyalties run deeper than all the training the Evil Dojo can drive into her…

    Yeah, the plot is a load of pants, and the acting is nothing to write home about – it’s serviceable enough, in line with what you’d expect from a movie with this title. I did enjoy most of the action, and the relaxed style of editing which lets you see the performers and their skill. It doesn’t always work, but enough of it does to make for a generally-entertaining time. British-born Heselton. who looks like a pissed-off Simon Pegg on steroids, comes across well, but the highlight is probably the scene where a pair of Tagawa’s minions go to Ayaka’s karate school, and take on, first her classmates, then her, in an effort to flush her true talent and ancestry out.

    Both Takeda and Tobimatsu show potential here. The latter is another young discovery – the next next generation of action heroines? – and it’s startling to realize she is just 14. One suspects child-labour laws must be a good deal laxer in Japan than the West. Let’s just hope their next film isn’t plotted out on the back of a beer-mat.

    Dir: Kimura Yoshikatsu
    Star: Rina Takeda, Hina Tobimatsu, Horibe Keisuke, Richard William Heselton

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  • Ninja Girl (Kunoichi)

    ★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

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Haywire

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★★★★½
“First Form at Mallory Towers”

Soderbergh has never shied away from using unconventional cast members in his movies. Bubble was made entirely with non-professional actors, and when he wanted someone to play a high-class call-girl for The Girlfriend Experience, he went with renowned adult actress, Sasha Grey. Continuing this trend, Haywire revolves around MMA star Carano, which I guess means Soderbergh’s recent leading ladies could, in real life, kick your ass or lick your ass. Ok, I’ll stop. Here, Carano plays Mallory Kane – I keep wanting to type Mallory Knox – an employee of a shady private contracting firm with links to the government, who do the dirty jobs for which the feds want plausible deniability.

We first meet her in a diner, where Aaron (Tatum) meets her. It’s clear there’s some tension, with Aaron having been ordered to bring her in. After a brief, brutal brawl, she knocks him out and escapes, in a car belonging to startled patron Scott (Angarano). There she reveals what led up to that day: an operation in Barcelona, supposedly to rescue a hostage, followed by another in Dublin, which turned out to be an attempt to tidy up the loose ends from Barcelona, The plan is to frame Kane for multiple murders and portray her as a rogue operative. Kane needs to get to her boss, Kenneth (McGregor), and expose the truth before she’s gunned down.

It’s a deliberately-vague plot, with the characters speaking in clipped obscurisms, that leave the audience to piece things together. Don’t worry, it all becomes clear by the end, but it is probably fair to say that you have to pay a bit more attention than is usual for this kind of Hollywood thriller, between the fractured timeline and doubtful loyalties of most characters. It’s economical, at a tight 91 minutes (about 22 minutes shorter than the average Jason Bourne movie to date), and much like Carano, there’s not much fat on its bones: every scene serves a distinct purpose, which is definitely the way I like my movies.

I find it hard to criticize Carano’s acting, because it’s not clear how much acting is involved. Mallory Kane does not just possess physical prowess, but one who is also extremely comfortable with using it, and has a quiet confidence in her abilities. Any similarity to Carano is clearly not coincidental, and there isn’t much more required of her, in terms of emotion or depth. Unlike most action heroines there is no “personal” agenda e.g. Sarah Connor in T2, Ellen Ripley in Aliens, or The Bride in Kill Bill, it’s simply a case that her enemies are out to get her. In that aspect, Knox is not a particularly-“feminine” character. Just as Salt was originally envisaged as a male role, it’s easy to imagine someone like Jason Statham playing this part; hardly any plot changes would be needed.

And then there’s the ass-kicking, of various kinds. It’s good, Carano demonstrating a no-nonsense style that’s highly-effective. Perhaps too effective, in fact, since it seems that hardly any of the fights last longer than about 30 seconds – even the hotel bedroom one, which is certainly one of the roughest male/female brawls seen this side of Terminator 3, feels like it ends, just about when it should be getting going. While it’s nice to be left wanting more, rather than less, it’s still not quite the all-you-can-eat buffet of action I wanted. There also is no real sense of escalation; her final battle isn’t particularly different from the one which opens the film, in the diner; it has another location, and that’s about it, there’s no indication her adversary is any more of a challenge.

While the battles are well crafted – I note that the fight co-ordinator was J.J. Perry, who worked on Sunland Heat back in 2005 – perhaps my favorite scene was not actually one of them, but an extended scene where Mallory has to shake off her pursuers in Dublin. It is adequately extended, contains a number of twists and turns over its length, and showcases Carano’s physical prowess in more than just brutality, as she glides through and over buildings. I also enjoyed a snowy car-chase, which ends in a way which, I’m prepared to bet, you haven’t seen in a movie before. One senses Soderbergh and writer Lem Dobbs enjoyed playing with the usual expectations of the genre.

It’s certainly shot in typical Soderbergh style. He throws all manner of styles in there, from black-and-white through hand-held to the heavy use of colour filters. Mostly, these flourishes enhance the film, rather than distracting from it, and a billion nods of approval are due for avoiding the rapid-cut style of editing, which is the bane of modern action cinema (except for the rare cases where it’s done properly). Still, there’s no question it’s obvious who made it, to the point that I actually laughed when a shot of Kenneth appeared in sepia – having seen Traffic, I knew, before it was explained, that he had to be in Mexico.

All told, if not quite an all-time classic, this is more than acceptable, upper-tier work. Carano is by no means out of her depth, despite a heavyweight supporting cast including the likes of Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas, and has an understated charisma which works in her favour. I don’t know if her future plans involving returning to the octagon, or sticking with the acting, but if it’s the latter, she’d certainly be a welcome addition to the (fairly short) roster of credible action-heroines from which Hollywood can draw.

Dir: Steven Soderbergh
Star: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Angarano

Angel

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★★★★
“Is for girls with guns, what Night of the Living Dead is for zombies.”

This and Yes, Madam were basically the Genesis and Exodus of the genre as we know it. Sure, there had been action heroines before, but never with quite the heft of their male counterparts. Madam showed they could kick ass with the best of them; Angel took this, and added about a billion bullets to the mix. Sure, it’s rough around the edges, with scenes that appear randomly inserted and characters so shallow they resemble a puddle. But its influence was massive, and if you can watch the final battle without wincing, as Lee and Oshima kick the utter crap out of each other, you’re made of tougher stuff than I [It’s the December 2011 video of the month].

The plot sees the ‘Angels’ – a mercenary, extra-governmental group – called in to take on a drug-smuggling cartel which is killing off cops following success against their heroin operation. It’s led by the amazingly evil Madame Yeoung (Oshima, turned up to 11), who is planning something to recoup the lost income; what that is, is up to the Angels to find out. Of particular interest, the Angels include Moon and Elaine (Lee and Lui), the former sober, the latter flighty and apparently incompetent; they and their much less-interesting male counterparts have to uncover Yeoung’s plan, rescue captured colleagues from her HQ, in a blaze of gunfire, and then go to the factory that’s at the heart of the villainess’s operations, for the final battle.

Like Living Dead, it’s certainly something which has been done a good deal better since, with the non-action elements clunky to the point of occasionally cringe-inducing, especially during a first half that does take some time to get going – though spontaneously combusts whenever Oshima is on-screen. However, once it does, this is packed with meaty goodness, and a take no prisoners approach from both sides that makes for an all-out war. There’s some confusion over the directors: the DVD box gives it as Teresa Woo, the IMDB lists Woo and Leung, but I’ve gone with the names listed on the actual movie credits. Whoever it was, certainly had a great handle on the action, and time has not dulled that aspect of the film whatsoever.

Dir: Raymond Leung, Leung Siu Hung, Ivan Lai
Star: Moon Lee, Hideki Saijo, Elaine Lui, Yukari Oshima
a.k.a. Iron Angels

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

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★½
“Street-fighting Tears”

I usually have no problem going on about GWG movies at some length. Hell, I even managed 750 words on DOA: Dead or Alive, and for that one, I had to re-read my review to remember what it was about. But when I got to the end of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, my first thought was, “What the hell am I going to write about this?” It seemed likely the only way I’d get to 750 words, would be by repeating the title one hundred and twenty-five times. For the film is ill-conceived, poorly cast, badly written and directed by the man who managed to make Jet Li look bad, not once but twice, in Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 the Grave.

I am not a difficult man to satisfy, especially in the area of Hollywood action heroine flicks. I’m so pleased they are making the effort at all, that as long as it is in focus, and the dialogue largely audible, I am generally a happy camper. Not so here, because SF:TLoC-L [I trust you appreciate how I am not gratuitously padding my word-count?] commits the cardinal sin for the genre. It’s boring – to the extent that I actually dozed off for a bit about two-thirds of the way in. So, full disclosure: this review is based on only about 90% of the movie. It’s possible the ten minutes I missed were sublimely good, so amazing they redeemed the entire rest of the movie. However, I would be inclined to bet against that outcome, as somewhat unlikely.

I think my major issue is that the movie seems to be aimed at a mentally-challenged eight-year old. There’s way too much voiceover, which is usually the sign of a director who can’t trust the script or his skills to put over the necessary content or emotion. And it also insists on Spelling Out Everything For The Audience, which is equally irritating. Case in point. Chun-Li (Kreuk) helps a guy being beaten up on the subway: he has a mysterious cobweb tattoo. Then, later, when she’s going through Chinatown searching for someone to translate a scroll, she encounters a man in the street with the same tattoo. Not two minutes later, the same design shows up on the scroll, but Bartkowiak insists on flashing back to both the subway and street guys and their tattoos. Well, duh…

The plot starts with Chun-Li growing up, and her father is abducted by Bison (McDonough) to help with his plans for… whatever. World domination, prob’ly. As an adult, Chun-Li is now a pianist, though the scenes of her in concert are incredibly badly-faked. The arrival of the mysterious scroll has her heading off to Bangkok, where she links up with Gen (Shou), who completes her training. Conveniently, Bison has just returned to Bangkok, where he grew up, and is now planning to take over a large swathe of the city, regardless of the views of the inhabitants. Interpol agent Nash (Klein) and local cop Maya (Moon Bloodgood) are out to stop him, and find Chun-Li’s presence as much a distraction as a help.

And I believed Street Fighter II was a fighting game. Silly me. It’s far too talky: all mouth and no trousers, to borrow a good ol’ British phrase. The fights themselves, choreographed by Dion Lam, aren’t bad, though the welding of some of the Street Fighter moves into the game doesn’t work – Chun-Li’s Spinning Bird Kick, for example, just looks silly. But otherwise, they aren’t awful; there’s a nice brawl in a bathroom between our heroine and Bison’s henchwomen. However, particularly in the first hour, there just aren’t enough of them, and what should be a fast-paced slugfest becomes bogged down as Chun-Li meanders her way, with a somewhat concerned expression, around the slums of Bangkok [which actually look surprisingly liveable. You want real slums, try Mumbai].

However, the casting executive who thought a member of the Black-Eyed Peas was suitable to play Vega should be taken out and flogged mercilessly. This is not sarcasm. It’s not someone who looks like a member of the Black-Eyed Peas. It is a member of the Black-Eyed Peas. His martial arts skills are almost as unconvincing as Chun-Li’s piano-playing. Almost. Klein is equally inept as Nash – the witty banter between he and Maya hits the floor with a resounding clunk, due to the complete lack of chemistry between the two actors. Similarly, McDonough has none of the charisma necessary for Bison. Say what you like about the Van Damme Street Fighter movie, and the venom is probably dripping from your lips there, it did at least have Raul Julia.

In fact, this movie pretty much makes the original look Oscar-worthy in most ways. The best depiction of the game still remains the manic sequence in Jackie Chan’s City Hunter where he and Gary Daniels went toe-to-toe in a variety of epically-silly costumes. Chan made a much better Chun-Li than Kreuk could ever hope to, and any future list of “10 Crappiest Video-game Adaptations of All Time” (admittedly, the main issue here is stopping after just ten) will be judged largely on how highly this ranks. Is that 750 words yet?

Dir: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Star: Kristin Kreuk, Chris Klein, Neal McDonough, Robin Shou

CoWeb

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★★★½
“Solid action, hampered by limited acting and particularly poor storyline.”

It’s nice to see Hong Kong making a decent action heroine film: that’s really where the genre started off, and it’s been responsible for some of the best entries in the field. That said, this doesn’t quite deserve to be placed on the same level, but star Jiang Lui Xia certainly has her potential – my immediate thought is to put her in the same film as Jeeja Yanin, and we might really have something. [Sidenote: Jiang got her big break as the result of a couple of unusual ways. Viral videos she posted on the Internet, which in turn got her a slot on a reality show called The Disciple in Hong Kong, produced by Jackie Chan. The winner – not her – got to star in a feature.] Much like her Thai colleague, Jiang is clearly a martial artist first, and actress…well, probably fifth or sixth, despite her resemblance to Shin Eun Kyung from My Wife is Gangster. She seems to have three expressions, used in strict rotation, and the plot is frankly implausible nonsense too.

She plays Yi-Yi, the bodyguard of a gangster’s wife; when her charge is kidnapped, Yi-yi starts getting phone messages leading her to various locations. Hoping to redeem herself by rescuing the wife, she follows along, only to discover she is walking into trouble. Turns out the battles which result are being streamed over the web, with bettors wagering on the results. As Yi-Yi’s reputation rises, the sites become more and more popular, and profitable; can she fight her way through, to discover the truth about what’s going on? Yeah, “total bollocks” would be putting it kindly. It is not much more than a flimsy excuse to move the heroine from level to level, until a final confrontation with tae kwon do fighter Kosugi.

Fortunately, the fights are entirely acceptable, with a range of spectacular, if somewhat contrived confrontations – such as the one in a disco, outfitted with a pit containing a shallow pool of water (maybe it’s a standard accessory for Hong Kong discos?). The best is perhaps a kitchen brawl against German Wanja Götz, where just about everything bar the sink comes into play; there’s also one on a set of bamboo scaffolding, which appears to be the current venue of choice in the same way that car parks or Chinese restaurants were in their time. They were nicely put together, and sufficient to keep us watching, despite subtitles on our copy which were a) ten seconds behind the dialogue, and b) in Lolcat font. That we were willing to struggle past this says a lot about the fights, though even they could do nothing to help a particularly lame plot. Still, we’ll be interested to see where Jiang goes from here.

Dir: Xiong Xin Xin
Star: Jiang Lui Xia, Sam Lee, Eddie Cheung, Kane Kosugi

Fighter

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★★★
“If you see only one Danish/Muslim action-heroine kung-fu film this year… It’ll be this one. Almost for sure.”

Certainly one of a kind, this coming-of-age film tells the story of Aicha (Turan), a Muslim girl born of Turkish parents, who is obsessed with learning martial arts – the last thing her father wants. This thoroughly unfeminine interest, in the eyes of her community, is carried out in secret, but Omar (Banissi), a friend of her brother’s fiancee’s family finds out, and is thoroughly unimpressed. “I don’t fight girls,” he says dismissively, when ordered to spar with Aicha, and this leads to his ejection from the club by their teacher (Xian). When he confronts Aicha at the engagement party, the resulting argument becomes a brawl, and leads to the breaking off of the engagement – which is doubly unfortunate, as the bride-to-be is discovered to be pregnant. Meanwhile, Aicha has to prepare for an upcoming tournament, alongside her training partner, Emil (Melville) – and for which Omar has also signed up as a contestant.

There’s a good deal of this which feels borrowed from The Next Karate Kid, and if you can not predict how the tournament unfolds, you definitely need to watch more movies. However, the cultural backdrop gives this a freshness not found in the actual storyline. While women may have made huge strides in many parts of the world, it’s clear that there are still societies where subjugation is almost a norm, and female members of such societies have to struggle to obtain rights and freedoms taken for granted in many places. Here, Aicha’s fondness for martial arts is bad enough; but her presence in a mixed class, in close contact with those of the opposite sex, is enough to get her labelled a cheap slut. This is not an exaggeration: recently, here in Arizona, an Iraqi immigrant ran over and killed his daughter, allegedly because she was becoming “too Westernized.” In the light of incidents such as this, the film seems almost to understate the situation if anything.

Turan is a martial-arts expert with no professional acting experience and that’s occasionally apparent. While the fight sequences are put together and executed with grace and power, she does seem to struggle when asked to deliver more than the shallower emotions. The rest of the cast are up to their tasks, even if the roles are perhaps not much more than broad stereotypes. Still, it’s different from the norm, and is definitely worth a look, as a reminder that action heroines are not only found in the most obvious of locations or cultures.

Dir: Natasha Arthy
Star: Semra Turan, Cyron Bjørn Melville, Behruz Banissi, Xian Gao

Raging Phoenix

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★★★★
“Want another piece of Chocolate?”

If you’ve seen Chocolate – starring the same lead actress, though confusingly billed under a different name here – you’ll know what to expect, and the film delivers much of the same. Which would be stunning, brutal fight scenes combined with moments of mind-numbing tedium. The plan for Yanin’s career seems to be to contrive methods by which she can avoid acting: last time it was autism; here, it’s a drunken style of kung-fu which helps mitigate a voice that might charitably be compared to broken nails on glass. She plays former rock-star(!) Deu, who is on the edge of being kidnapped, when she’s rescued by Sanim (Tang). He and his fellow masters of alcohol-fu have all lost ladies in their life to the kidnappers – who, it turns out, are doing this because… No. You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you – and are trying to locate their lair. Deu joins the team, and agrees to act as bait, to see if the kidnappers will go after her again.

After a brisk and entertaining start, this drags badly in the middle. At 111 minutes, it is simply too long, and needs to lose at least a quarter of an hour. However, as with Chocolate, the action makes up for any such deficiencies, with the final reel featuring an escalating trio of fights, any of which would be entirely credible climaxes for any other movie. This culminates in a battle against female body-building champion Roongtawan Jindasing, the leader of the kidnappers, which is the most savage, knockdown, heroine vs. villainess brawl I’ve seen in… Ever? I can’t think of anything to match it immediately. Jindasing’s raw power pitted against Yanin’s devastating flexibility makes for a fabulous contest, and this is preceded by some great “pairs martial-arts” [when you see it, you’ll understand], when Deu and Sanim try to take out the villainess.

A fractional complaint is that the spotlight, action-wise, is not solely on Yanin, especially in the first two-thirds of the film. While the co-stars are by no means incompetent, it’s a step down from Chocolate, where the focus was squarely on her, and going into the last turn, this one getting a seal of approval seemed unlikely. However, the movie found an entirely new gear – one apparently just not available to other film-makers – and surged over the finish line. Just as Chocolate was the best action-heroine film of 2008, it looks like Raging Phoenix will be right up there in the 2009 contest.

Dir: Rashane Limtrakul
Star: Jeeja Yanin, Kazu Patrick Tang, Nui Sandang, Sompong Lertwimonkasem

Lethal Panther 2

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★½
“If I could somehow peel off the half of the disc this is on and dispose of it, I would.”

While there’s no denying the quantity of action in this film, the result feels more like an all-you-can-eat ticket to Taco Bell than anything else: you find yourself yearning for some quality rather than the Grade-D battles we get to see here. The bar is set remarkably low after two sentences, literally, of exposition. We are hurled into a long battle between two groups, about whom we know little and care less, running around an abandoned building, firing weapons with complete abandon and engaging in really poorly-staged wirework, in lieu of actual martial-arts. Y’see, the point of using wires in a gritty urban flick like this, is to enhance the impact of the moves, not to turn the players into Peter Pan and Wendy. Having endured a couple of his movies, I am forced to the conclusion that Ko is definitely in the lower tier of action directors in Hong Kong.

And his talents in other cinematic areas seems hugely in doubt too. Shot in the Philippines – where film-stock is cheap – it only marginally qualifies as a girls-with-guns flick, and is largely included here as a warning to anyone who is expecting anything like the original movie. While that was a guilty pleasure, for its “anything can happen” vibe, this one is simply dull. It’s mostly about a local cop, Albert (Del Rosario, I presume), hunting down the criminals responsible for the death of his wife. Oshima plays a Japanese Interpol agent, sent over to target the same gang, but she is sadly wasted: she’s got enough talent that she doesn’t need to fly-by-wire, and there are just enough flashes of her athletic ability to make you wish there were more.

Huge chunks of this don’t make any sense, and you’ll soon find yourself tuning out and not caring as things career from one badly-executed fight or chase to the next. Things blow up, people fight, and large numbers of rounds of ammunition are expended, to little or no actual impact on the viewer. It’s films like this that drove a stake into the heart of the genre as far as Hong Kong was concerned, in the first half of the 1990’s.

Dir: Phillip Ko [as ‘Cindy Wong’ – don’t ask me why]
Star: Monsour Del Rosario, Gabriel Romulo, Yukari Oshima, Sharon Kwok

Lethal Panther

  By

★★★½
“And then there’s the (Godfrey) Ho…”

Things we learned from this movie:

  • Being a prostitute is a healthier career for women than being an assassin – “unless the men have AIDS”.
  • Your neighbours will never call the police, even when a lengthy gun-battle breaks out on your property.
  • The CIA operates openly on American soil, and has apparently replaced the Secret Service in investigating counterfeit money.
  • The best way to give a woman an orgasm, is to fill a condom with milk, prick a hole in the end, and squirt it onto her panties. Who knew.

Any questions? In the loopy world of Category 3 Hong Kong films, which cover pretty much every bizarre scenario imaginable, Lethal Panther remains on the outer edge. I’m not quite sure how the makers got someone with a decent track record like Sibelle Hu to appear: I suspect she was sent a script for a completely different movie, probably entitled Lady Super Cop Goes to Manilla or something, since she only has about two scenes with the other lead actresses. I would imagine that her reaction, on seeing the finished product, must have been something similar to that experienced by Helen Mirren at the premiere of Caligula – and was presumably followed by a stern note to her agent the next morning.

The story centers on two assassins, one from Vietnam (Yuen), the other from Japan (Miyamoto), hired to come to the Phillippines and kill the head of an underworld gang that’s making a killing with counterfeit dollars. They’re employer is the boss’s nephew, who wants to take over operations: when that mission is accomplished, he then turns the two hit-women on each other, to tidy up the loose ends. They end up injured and recuperating at the home of a friendly prostitute, where they discover they are not so different. However, fate intervenes, in the shape of one’s brother, who returns from France. Meanwhile, a CIA agent (Hu) is looking into the funny money, and when her target is gunned down at a wedding, switches her attentions to the killers.

The formula here is straight-forward: an action scene about every ten minutes and some gratuitous nudity every twenty. And when I say ‘gratuitous’, I mean it; the last item listed in the first paragraph counts as the most bizarre use of dairy products Chris or I have seen in a very long time [Chris is floating Carmen Electra’s milk-bath in The Chosen One as a credible contender, but I don’t recall the specifics there]. None of the other sex scenes reach quite the same level of insanity, but they give the film a sleazy quality that it probably would have done better without.

The action is even more copious than the nudity however, and not bad, though one suspects a fair amount of doubling for the main actresses is going on. Despite Ho’s reputation as a complete hack [some of his films consist entirely of footage spliced together from other movies], he knows the right buttons for action heroine fans, and how to push most of them. On what I strongly suspect was a poverty-row budget – you don’t go to the Phillippines for the scenery – the movie delivers an impressive quantity of action, mixing firearm-toting and martial-arts battles to decent enough effect. All of the actresses get their moments to remember: a massacre in a restaurant and a supermarket shoot-out stand out in particular, as well as the roof-top fight between Hu and Yuen.

Y’know I just mentioned the poverty-row budget? Perhaps the area this stands out in most is the soundtrack, which appears to be a combination of stock music, and cues ripped wholesale off from other movies. Ho is far from the first Hong Kong director to do this [I still remember my jaw dropping when a chunk of the Heathers soundtrack showed up in Flying Dagger], but you really wonder, at what point did it seem a good idea to lob John Carpenter’s theme from Halloween into the mix for one scene? And, no, the moment in question does not involve a masked maniac stalking sexually-active teens – albeit probably only because Godfrey Ho didn’t think of the idea. Or, more likely, stored it away for an entire feature on this theme.

It would be easy to dismiss this as exploitative crap. Very easy, and you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, either. But it kept us entertained, even if a good chunk of the amusement was to be found in the steady stream of sarcasm directed at the screen by Chris and I, as the more ludicrous aspects unfolded. Still, Ho clearly possesses absolutely no pretensions to be anything above what he is, and delivers a B-movie experience that we likely will remember for some time, especially when we head past the milk in the supermarket.

Dir: Godfrey Ho
Stars: Yoko Miyamoto, Maria Yuen (as Maria Jo), Sibelle Hu, Alex Fong
a.k.a. Deadly China Dolls

Chocolate

  By

★★★★
“I tried to come up with some cute pun on “chocolate bar” but couldn’t quite work one out.”

We couldn’t wait for this one to get an official American release, so off to Ebay we went for a copy of uncertain origin. This was something of a double-edged sword. It means we get to tell you that this is, hands down, the action heroine film of the year, with fights the like of which I haven’t seen since Yuen Wo Ping was working with Cynthia Khan in Hong Kong. However, it also means that we had to suffer the worst set of English subtitles I think we have ever seen, which appear to have been pushed enthusiastically through Babelfish several times, with feeling; this culminated in a line which will live forever in my memory. It is, and I quote the subtitle in its entirety, “Wang monkeys.” You’ll thus forgive me if the subtleties of the plot were perhaps lost on us, though by most accounts, this likely improved our enjoyment of the endeavour overall.

Zen (Vismistananda) is the autistic daughter of a Japanese gangster and a Thai woman (Siripong), who betrayed her local partner, a rival boss (Wachirabunjong), to be with her lover. When her mother gets cancer, it’s up to Zen and a chubby friend (Phobwandee) to collect on debts owed. Fortunately, Zen has a sponge-like ability to learn martial arts, be it from Tony Jaa movies on TV, or the school next door, and proves herself adept at “encouraging,” shall we say, repayments from those who are reluctant to pony up. The bad news is, this attracts the attention of her mother’s former employer, who has not forgotten the past and is unwilling to let matters lie. Which, inevitably, leads to a showdown where Zen takes on an apparently infinite line of henchmen – it’s somewhat reminiscent of Kill Bill, Volume 1, in the same way an earlier ice-house battle reminded me of The Big Boss, However, the final fight, on a series of balconies, is bone-shatteringly unique.

If Vismistananda isn’t yet quite up to the level of Jaa – there’s nothing quite like the five-minute, single shot fight scene in The Protector – she is amazingly lithe and powerful, quite belying her waif-like physique. There is some use of undercranking and wire-work that occasionally distracts from her natural talent, as much as it enhances it, and I have to wonder if the ‘autism’ plot-device was a cunning plot to cover for lack of actual actimg talent, though this angle is not played anywhere near as exploitatively as it could be. Still, if the dramatic aspects are somewhat perfunctory and uninteresting, the fight scenes more than make up for these shortcomings, and the result is quite the kick-ass action flick.