Tag: Taiwan

A Daughter’s Vengeance

  By

★★
“S’no good.”

Look, I tried. I really did. When I found my attention had drifted away from watching the film, in good faith, I rewound the film to the point where I’d lost interest, and took up the movie again the following day. After all, maybe it was me. But when I still could barely bring myself to finish this leaden lump of poorly-crafted revenge-fu… No, having gone above and beyond the required effort, it’s really not me. This is lacklustre stuff, to put it mildly, even by the generally low standards of Taiwan.

The heroine (Chen), seems only to be referred to as the Snow Maiden,  and is an orphan, brought up in the mountains by the Snow Woman (Tiu); I kept wanting to call her Mrs. Narwhal, due to her striking snaggletooth, which is remarkably distracting. When the Snow Maiden discovers the truth about her orphanness – namely, that her pregnant mother was betrayed and abandoned by her father – she vows vengeance on the man responsible. While she’s looking, she adopts a “Robin Hood” like persona, rescuing the oppressed and making the oppressors pay for their crimes, in a range of (usually) non-lethal ways.

She eventually finds the family responsible: in about the film’s only interesting twist, her father is old, feeble, and largely filled with regret about having abandoned Maiden’s mom, which does present her with a bit of an ethical dilemma. Complicating matters further, his son (Wu) falls for Ms. Maiden; despite trying to keep herself emotionally distant, so that she can carry out her mission, she begins to have feelings for him too. So, will love triumph over vengeance? And, more importantly, will anyone care? At the risk of spoiling this for anyone, I can reveal the answer to the second question is a fairly conclusive “No”.

Chen isn’t a bad heroine, with a reasonable degree of screen presence – at least when standing still and glowering at people. And she does this a lot – about the only thing there’s more of in this movie is probably maniacal laughter, which appears to sit just behind Mandarin as the preferred method of communication. However, the novelty of this wears off rapidly, and the feeble excuse for martial arts this offers is a long way short of an adequate replacement. Neither the ability nor the quantity of action is acceptable, and any quality there may have been in the performances is destroyed by terrible dubbing, including atrocities such as the son being given a posh British accent. I would have been better off to cut my losses and not bother, after my first attempt to watch this failed.

[Worth noting, there was a movie released the following year, Vengeance of a Snowgirl – a very similar title to the alternate here. Don’t confuse them: while both are about orphans seeking revenge, the other was the last movie Lo Wei directed for Shaw Brothers, and has a crippled heroine who can’t use her legs. Not that this stops her, naturally…]

Dir: Chou Hsu-Chiang
Star: Chen Chen, Wu Chia Chi, Tiu Shut,
a.k.a. Vengeance of Snow Maid

Deadly Silver Angels

  By

★★
“Hong Kong. A paradise of adventures. And a centre of scum…”

That’s the voice-over with which this starts, segueing into a bit of nude interpretive dance – well, semi-nude, the guy keeps his Y-fronts on, for which I am grateful – that has absolutely no relation to the rest of the film. At its core, this is a battle of triad versus triad: one overseen by Lau, the other by Fung. The former is assassinated, and his daughter, Angel (Yeung) takes over – she’s also keen to track down the perpetrators, with the most obvious beneficiary being Fung. But not so sure is Fung’s right-hand man, Jimmy Lee (Lee), who was there for the killing, and helps Angel’s investigation.

She also has her own team of henchwomen. Their numbers are doubled after a training session on the beach – complete with swimming caps, which makes the whole thing impossible to take seriously – intercut with random dirt-bike footage. Their practice (though quite what this is practice for, remains unclear) is interrupted by the five lady venoms, a girl gang who all have tattoos of birds on their backs. This has a bit of a mixed impact: an eagle is one thing, but an owl suggests more you’re a hardcore Harry Potter fan than a lethal lady. Anyway, after Angel takes on their leader in a beach brawl, the gang agree to join forces – though I would presume, the lady venoms draw the line at having to wear those swimming caps.

It’s all extremely fragmented, makes little sense and generates little interest. There are some cheap laughs to be had, such as the trip by Angel and her team to rescue a couple of women from a brothel. I mean, it’s called the Virgins’ Hell whorehouse, what exactly did you think was going on there? Or there’s the (entirely unauthorized, I strongly suspect) cover of Earth, Wind and Fire’s Boogie Wonderland which shows up for no apparent reason, with other music also stolen from better movies. But generally, this is the kind of film where most of the amusement value to be found has to be provided by the viewer, and it’s quite a lot of work.

There’s some slight interest in Angel being a gangster of honour e.g. a main bone of contention with the Fungs is their willingness to go into the burgeoning drug trade. But nicking plot elements from The Godfather does not make you a good film. Indeed, in this case, it’s likely more of an unwanted diversion from what you want to see, which is Angel and her crew kicking ass. The same goes for the “long-lost siblings” subplot, which comes out of nowhere near the end. Yeung carved herself a niche in the fairly esoteric “female group kung-fu” sub-genre of production during the first half of the eighties (this one dates from 1984), most notably Golden Queen’s Commando and Pink Force Commando. Those were, at least, mad enough to be entertaining. This? Not so much.

Dir: Cheung Chi Chiu
Star: Elsa Yeung, Eagle Lee, Ma Sha, Kong Do
a.k.a. 5 Lady Venoms a.k.a. Virago

Revengeful Swordswoman

  By

★★½
“Can’t argue with the title, certainly.”

There’s no hanging around here. Virtually as we meet our heroine, Hsiang Ying (Lee), she’s getting tossed off a cliff by her kung-fu teacher, into a pack of wolves. Having survived that and made her way back – perhaps assuming this was all some terrible misunderstanding – her master then disavows her, announces he was the man responsible for killing her father, and locks her up in a cage. This all happens within, literally, three minutes of the film starting. Fortunately, a passing stranger sees fit to free her from the cage, and the ‘Heartless Lady’, as she becomes known, can go on her way, with the eventual aim of being exactly what the title suggests: revengeful.

Not much in the way of surprises either, although there’s no shortage of action, some of which might possibly be quite good. I am, unfortunately, not able to speak with authority, as there does not appear to be any version of this available which comes close to approximating the correct aspect ratio. This is “pan and scan” at its most annoying – and making matters worse, there’s no panning. You simply get the middle chunk of the screen, regardless of relevance. Which leads to a surreal moment later on, where there’s a discussion between two characters, both of whom have managed to be cropped out of the picture, leaving an entirely unoccupied frame. Antique still life: Chinese room, with conversation.

I might be inclined to give the film the benefit of the doubt, except for the hideous attempts at “comedy” – and, please, take the quotes there as necessary. For some reason, the script decides to give Hsiang a buffoon for a side-kick: he’s named “Clown” in the English dub, more in hope than an accurate reflection of any amusement gained from his presence. For virtually any scene in which he appears, will have you wishing the cropping of the print had been even more extreme. This reaches the pits in a scene at a brothel, where he and Hsiang are seeking information about their target, and is so painfully unfunny as to be borderline offensive. When one aspect of a film sucks so badly, it’s harder to believe it’s good anywhere else.

Yet, there are occasional moments – maybe no more than three or four consecutive seconds, when Lee is shot from far enough way that she fits completely on the screen – which are almost impressive enough to make you go. “I should try and track a good-quality copy of this.” Lee is fluid and graceful in motion, not dissimilar from her Hong Kong contemporary, Angela Mao, although the supporting cast here is more knock-off, and fails to make anything of an impression. In the end, this is all just too generic, from the title through the environment to, pretty much, the entire plot. As noted elsewhere, I watched this the same day as another film made in approximately the same time and place: the two have already merged into one Taiwanese blob of fu.

Dir: Artis Chow
Star: Judy Lee, Wen Chiang-lung, Man Kong Lung, Li Tung

No One Can Touch Her

  By

★★★½
“Don’t drink and fu.”

In this late era Judy Lee film, she stars as the confusingly-named Brother Blind, a name which scores only 50% for accuracy. She is indeed, largely unable to see, the result of a confrontation with the motley group of bandits who killed her father (Sit). Though even here, there is some confusion as to whether there are 13 of them, as an alternate title suggest, or 14 as the English dub mentions on several occasions. They’re certainly a random bunch, some of who are missing limbs or fingers, as well as two “giants” who aren’t very tall, and a “poison dwarf” who wields a blow-gun, responsible for Brother Blind losing her sight.

She becomes a nomadic alcoholic, roaming the country with her kid brother and stealing wine wherever she can – not that this impacts her kung-fu skills [the most common date for this, 1979, would put it one year after Jackie Chan’s classic Drunken Master, which inspired a host of imitators]. It turns out she’s not the only one to have suffered at the hands of the gang, who are out for revenge on Wang, the official who jailed their leader, Wolf Fang. To cut a long story short – and the film certainly doesn’t – Brother Blind teams up with Wang’s daughter, Mei Gwan (Sun), his long-lost son, Brother Mallet (Kam), who works as a carpenter, and a imperial bureaucrat with a fondness for pipe-fu, to stop the bandits after they have infiltrated a wedding.

This is almost completely mad, right from the opening credits which tells us the martial arts director was “King Kong.” Yet there’s a lot here to admire, with both Lee and Sun kicking butt in a variety of styles, for a director who knows how to show off the talents of everyone involved. The characterizations here are interesting too, with Brother Blind largely grumpy and irascible, rather than being heroic. The bureaucrat (who is never named) is worse still: basically an entitled and arrogant dick. Yet, when the chips are down, he doesn’t back off, and demonstrates his arrogance is not unjustified.

The film does contain the typical unfortunate stabs at comedy, which would have been much better left to Jackie Chan. Even if we allow for everything amusing in the dialogue having been lost in the dubbing, the physical stuff is no more entertaining. Fortunately, the martial arts on view, more than makes up for it. There are a huge range of different styles, courtesy of the dozen or more bandits and their various abilities, and the same goes on the side of the good guys, whose varying talents all get showcased. It even does an unexpectedly good job of dealing with firearms, their firing pins being surreptitiously removed by the bureaucrat. The prints floating round are desperately in need of restoration, however: a letterboxed and subtitled version might merit our seal of approval, especially if the plot then made more sense. This pan ‘n’ scanned, dubbed atrocity? Not so much.

Dir: Ting Shan-Hsi
Star: Judy Lee, Sun Chia-Lin, Kam Kong, Sit Hon
a.k.a. Against the Drunken Cat’s Paws, 13 Evil Bandits, Revenge of the Lady Warrior or Flying Claw Fights 14 Demons

One Armed Swordswoman

  By

★★★
“Mostly armless…”

Official disclaimer. I watched two seventies Taiwanese kung-fu flicks the past weekend, this one and Revengeful Swordswoman, and I’m having serious difficulty keeping them separated. You are therefore warned that some plot elements discussed here, may actually have seeped over from Revengeful, or vice-versa…

When we first meet heroine Li Feng (Chang), her count of functioning limbs does actually surpass one – it’s after she is poisoned by a blade wielded by one of her numerous bandit enemies, that the title comes true. She’s rescued from death by the mysterious, masked Black Dragon, albeit at the cost of her infected arm, before he leaves. Li wants to locate both the Dragon, to thank him, and the bandit responsible for her limb-deficiency. She manages the former first, eventually having a one-night stand with him, only to be callously dumped the next day (he more or less insinuates she’s a whore, giving her a pearl which she crushes, bare-handed).

She vows revenge on the man who took her chastity, and to this end, begins going after anyone wandering the countryside in his trademark hat and cape (looking like a sword-wielding beekeeper). Which, it turns out, is a surprisingly large number of people, only adding to the number of those who hold a grudge against Li. Admittedly, in this case, I can see their grounds for grievance, since they were guilty of not much more than an unlucky choice of couture. It turns out, too, that Li’s desire for vengeance is greatly misplaced, with her seducer only having been pretending to be the Black Dragon, in order to gain her confidence.

This 1972 film comes five years after Jimmy Wang Yu played the male predecessor to Li Feng in Chang Cheh’s seminal Hong Kong film, One-Armed Swordsman, which created a new bloody genre of martial arts movies, populated by anti-heroes. However, a more direct ancestor here is probably the Japanese series which included 1969’s Lady Sazen and the Drenched Shallow Sword; the protagonist there was also 50% short in the ocular department. [Though the character of the disabled female warrior dates back even earlier, perhaps to 1937 and Onna Sazen, played by Hara Komako] As such, there isn’t much new, but I did like the idea that the heroine spends much of the film looking for revenge on an innocent party.

Chang does a decent job of fending for herself, despite the arm shortage, even if the surfeit of trampoline work in the action scenes is disappointing, especially given her occasionally impressive skills. At one point, it looked as though the Black Dragon was going to end up saving the day. Doesn’t quite happen like that, and Li ends up by a river, having to fight solo against, not only the main villain, but also his sidekicks and their spears that spray acid. This isn’t exactly what you’d call a traditional martial-arts weapon – indeed, it appears more likely to have strayed in from a sixties 007 knock-off – yet we’ll just about give it a pass. The same goes for this overall.

Dir: Sheng-En Chin
Star: Ching Ching Chang, Ming Chiang, Ming Tien, Ming Lei

Tiger Angels

  By

★½
“Toothless tigers.”

It is pretty close to an article of faith that no movie starring Yukari Oshima and Cynthia Khan can ever be entirely worthless. This film, however, shakes that belief to its very foundation. Not least because despite the cover and credits, found just about everywhere (including here), it barely stars them – indeed, Khan doesn’t even show up for the finale, with absolutely no explanation provided. This is included here, mostly as a warning, and because I’m a stickler for completeness with regard to their filmographies. Though in this case, I suspect, I’m less a stickler and more the sucker.

The plotline is…obscure. There’s a gloriously fractured English synopsis here, with sentences such as “Nga Wah finds her husband fevering with a girl.” This includes some information I would never have guessed, such as Khan’s character (Sally in this synopsis, Rose in the film I watched) being the daughter of the department store owner. I figured she was just a hired bodyguard like Oshima/Butterfly (Oshima), with the general manager of the store actually being the owner’s son. So, everything which follows should be taken as less than gospel. Or as gospel, if you’re of an atheist persuasion, I guess.

The plot concerns a department store CEO who is being threatened by the son (Chow) of a former business partner, over a debt supposedly incurred by the father. Rose & Butterfly are brought in to protect him. The store’s manager is also being threatened: he has a wife who is more interested in material goods and their acquistion, than anything else. There’s also a computer salesman who is a dead-ringer for the businessman, and so is hired to take over the business for five days. At first, I thought this was going to end up tying together with the debt, and the look-alike would end up being kidnapped, with Rose & Butterfly going in to rescue him. Never happens: those two angles completely fails to go anywhere near each other.

Indeed, the film has, at most, ten minutes of action. It is, admittedly, not bad action, with both ladies delivering at the level to which we’ve become accustomed. Khan has a particularly good battle around a playground, and Oshima gets her chance to shine in the (inexplicably solo!) finale. However, the rest of the running-time is occupied by crappy attempts at comedy, with hints of romance. This likely reaches its nadir in a sped-up shopping scene, which appears to have strayed in from the reject pile of Benny Hill.

Taiwanese film has long had a bad rep for churning out poorly-made knockoffs of Hong Kong products. Previously, I’ve sometimes wondered where that came from, as I’ve seen a number of entries which, if admittedly cheap, were little if any less entertaining, e.g. The Top Lady of Sword. However, there have been cases where its poor reputation has been entirely justified – Super Cops comes to mind. Largely through being guilty of wanton, wholesale misdirection, this is likely the worst offender I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying quite a lot.

Dir: Sek Bing-Chan
Star: Yukari Oshima, Cynthia Khan, Billy Chow, Chung Kai Cheung

Iron Swallow

  By

★★
“A bit hard to swallow.”

ironswallowGenerally, if someone is roaming the country, carrying out brutal attacks on apparently innocent citizens, blinding and disfiguring them, they’d be the villain of the piece, right? Not so here. For despite such distinctly non-heroic actions, Iron Swallow (Lee) is the heroine, disabling the men she holds responsible for killing her father years earlier. Needless to say, they’re not exactly impressed with the situation. To make matters worse, someone is flat-out killing her targets, intent on covering up something or other, and is trying to make it look like Swallow is responsible, by leaving her trademark darts behind at the scene. There are also two friends (Tao and Chung) rattling around, the son and pupil respectively of the region’s leading martial arts master Chu Hsiao Tien (Yuen), who get involved in the murky situation because Chu is one of Swallow’s targets and has hired a particularly loathsome assassin to bury the case.

Murky is, to be honest, putting it mildly, and the plot here appears to have been constructed from finest quality raw ore, taken from the Kung Fu Cliché mine. And I stress the word “raw”, since there doesn’t appear to have been much processing, in the way of logical thought, given to those ideas between their conception and the screen. It’s the kind of kung-fu film where you can’t be sure whether they made the story up as they went along – however, if they had, it would explain a lot of the tedious incoherence. I read another review which called this a martial arts version of I Know What You Did Last Summer, and that’s a decent enough summary. At one point, Chris meandered in and wondered whether this was the source film for Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, based mostly on Swallow’s hair-style. Though she says that for about 40% of period kung-fu films, so it probably doesn’t mean much.

It’s certainly one of those cases where you might as well bring a book, and forget about trying to follow the indigestible lumps of plot between the action scenes. Fortunately, those are decent enough to sustain interest, and relatively copious, particularly in a final third which more or less abandons the plot, replacing it with multiple varieties of fisticuffs. Swallow’s skills are obvious, and given multiple opportunities to shine. It’s a shame that Lee was never allowed to showcase her own identity, in the way Angela Mao received, instead being the victim of a highly dubious marketing campaign which alleged she was Bruce Lee’s sister. Whatever the short-term benefit that brought, it did her career no good in the longer term, and she was all but gone from the screen by the end of the seventies. I have to wonder if whoever came up with that genius idea, was also responsible for the script here…

Dir: Judy Lee, Don Wong Tao, Ting Wa Chung, Yee Yuen
Star: Chang Pei-Cheng
a.k.a. Shaolin Iron Eagle

Wolf Devil Woman

  By

★★★
“No rabbits were har… Er, never mind.”

wolfdevilwomanThis 1982 Taiwanese flick proves that, if you can’t afford to go big, you might as well go… Actually, you might as well go on regardless, because with enough enthusiasm, the surreal results can sometimes be thoroughly entertaining, albeit certainly not in a way any normal viewer would call “good”. I was still thoroughly amused, albeit more often at the film than with it, for this is sheer lunacy – yet lunacy of a fascinatingly off the wall kind. It begins with a couple suddenly deciding that they don’t want anything to do with their erstwhile master, the Blue Devil. Maybe the human sacrifice was the giveaway. They head off, with their newborn baby, only to be caught by his minions. Everyone gets buried in an avalanche and killed, except the baby, who is brought up by wolves (!) in an ice-cave, and fed a magical ginseng root by them (!!) that gives her amazing superpowers (!!!).

20 years later, the Blue Devil has become a bigger problem, so Lee (Fung) and his comic-relief sidekick Wong (Pa Gwoh) have headed up the mountain in search of the only thing capable of defeating the Blue Devil. Which just happens to be the magical ginseng root eaten by our heroine. She is now bouncing round the mountain in her fur costumes, rending innocent bunny rabbits and chickens limb from limb. And, as the tagline above makes clear, I’m pretty sure those weren’t stunt bunnies. Lee fixes her busted spine with a bit of impromptu chiropractic care, befriends her and teaches her to speak. They then go their separate ways. Lee turning to the dark side and becoming a minion of the Red Devil, while Snowflower (as she has been named) swings around from trees for a bit – as wolves apparently do in Taiwan – then gets drunk in a village tavern and is thrown into a well by irate locals.

This is part of her heroic journey, with the eventual goal of taking revenge on the man who killed her parents. To get there, she’ll also have to go through a number of battles, get some semi-useful information from a white-haired guy with really long eyebrows, and there will be a not-very stunning revelation about who the Blue Devil actually is. Let’s just say, I think Ling might have been a fan of the original Star Wars movies. One of her preferred tactics for dealing with opponents is to grab them firmly, then yank off their heads or tear them in half, so it appears those animals did not die in vain, and were simply practice. But perhaps the maddest moment is when one of her allies is set on fire: Snowflower tears into her own arm and uses the arterial spray to put the flames out. That’s hardcore.

wdw00Dull, it ain’t, and was clearly a work of love for Ling, who wrote, directed and starred in the movie, playing the heroine as well as her mother. Which is quite surprisingly, since women are generally more… sensible than this. It’s quite possibly one of the most insane films ever created by a female director. The luridly cheap execution, for example on the visual effects, only enhances the feeling you’ve wandered into someone else’s drug-propelled nightmare. This, mind you, was all based on a viewing of the subtitled version. There’s a dubbed one which adds an extra level of surrealness, if Wikipedia is to be believed, calling it “notable for its bizarre vocal performances,” and saying the Blue Devil “speaks like American cartoon character Yosemite Sam.” It’s almost enough to make me wish I’d seen that version.

Even without it, this remains jaw-droppingly bizarre, and there’s almost no written description that can possibly hope to do it justice. Fortunately, YouTube exists, and you can now appreciate this cinematic treat directly – complete with the dubbing! – rather than through the poor approximation of my second-hand words. I’d suggest having a few alcoholic beverages to hand, because you’re going to need them. For you will not have seen anything quite like this before…

Dir: Ling Chang
Star: Ling Chang, Sek Fung, Pa Gwoh

Super Cops

  By

★½
“Less a review, more of a warning.”

supercopsNot, in any way, to be confused with Jackie Chan/Michelle Yeoh vehicle Super Cop, this one barely has enough action heroine content to qualify here, despite the presence of both Khan and Oshima, who must have been in Taiwan for the weekend or something, and agreed to take on roles of a local cop and a Japanese Interpol agent respectively. Despite a feisty misunderstanding when they first meet, Khan mistaking Oshima for a thief, this is much more about brother and sister Siu-Tong and Chee-Loy, who head to the big city in search of their uncle. They end up getting work in a restaurant, except this brings them into conflict with the local gangsters – fortunately, the brother is kinda good at kicking ass, and this leads to ever-increasing waves of thugs descending on the eating establishment. Really, you wonder why anyone goes there to eat, since it seems barely five minutes goes by without the need to order replacement glass-topped tables.

Meanwhile, Khan and Oshima are seeking to trap heroine dealer Billy Chow, and the two plot strands, which have been so disparate I was seriously thinking this was a pair of films edited together on Godfrey Ho’s day off, finally converge. This happens at an open-air banquet celebrating Chow’s birthday, to which all the characters are somehow invited. Hey, look! More tables through, over and into which people can be hurled! The action is okay in quality – there’s some scampering around a train at the opening which looks genuinely dangerous – yet severely deficient in quantity. Instead, a lot of the running time consists of more or less blatant padding, such as the brother dressing up in drag to ensnare his boss at the restaurant. It’ll have you yearning for the subtle comedic stylings of Benny Hill.

There’s not much point in saying more: I wasted enough time watching this, and don’t feel you should have to waste time too, as I struggle toward the usual word count. Just know that this one is for Khan and Oshima completists only, and even they will find little here worthy of their attention. There’s certainly absolutely nothing super about it.

Dir: Chiang-Bang Mao
Star: Chia-Hui Liu, Ka-Kui Ho, Cynthia Khan, Yukari Ôshima
a.k.a. Huo tou da jiang jun

The Assassin

  By

★½
“Like watching a Ming vase dry.”

AssassinI have seen worse action heroine films this year. But I certainly haven’t seen any which were more irritating. I confess, this is perhaps partly due to expectations, because all I knew about this one going in, came from the trailer, which made it look like an interesting piece of genre cinema. Well played, trailer: well played. You completely sold me a sow’s ear on that one. If I’d done some research on the director, I might have had a better idea of what to expect, for it turns out just about every frame of action the movie contains, is in the trailer. The rest is a disjointed mess of scenes, characters and plot-lines that seems to insult the audience’s intelligence by its pretense at being a coherent work. Even more irritatingly, the critics are lapping it up, judging by the gushing reviews I saw. Truly, do not believe the hype: neither Chris nor I were at all impressed by this steaming pile of art-wank cinema masquerading as entertainment. Some lush photography is about all this has going for it.

The plot sounds like it might have something going for it. In 9th century China, Yinniang (Shu) is a hitwoman, who hunts down and kills corrupt officials as required by her mistress, Jiaxin, who raised her from a child. After Yinniang fails to carry out a mission, due to the presence of a child, Jiaxin punishes her by making the next job to kill Yinniang’s cousin, Tian Ji’an (Chang), who was once also her fiance, and is now the governor of Weibo province. Needless to say, this does not sit well with Yinniang, and nor is it long before the old flame is (somewhat) rekindled. More than that… Well, I’m not able to say, because the film appears to delight in being obscure for obscurism’s sake. We cut into the middle of a fight scene, which after a few seconds reverts to a long-range shot, and then ends equally abruptly, with no explanation offered of who was doing what, to whom, or why. Call me old-fashioned if you like, both Chris and I still consider story-line at least somewhat important.

Apart from some nice cinematography – Hou goes against the grain, not opting to shoot in widescreen ratio – the only other positive thing I can find to say is Shu’s portrayal of Yinniang. Not so much during the dramatic moments, as during the (rare) action scenes, where her absolutely economy of effort is extremely effective. There’s an air of a Japanese samurai about her; rather than florid aerial battles, she swiftly disposes of most opponents in three or fewer strokes. If only the sequences between these has demonstrated such brevity and directness. Instead, it’s a confusing and unengaging mess, that annoyed me so much, I couldn’t even fall asleep, once I realized this was probably going to be irredeemable. Damn you, Hou. However, damn whoever put the trailer together, even more.

Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Star: Shu Qi,  Chang Chen, Zhou Yun, Satoshi Tsumabuki