Tai Chi Master

Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh in a wuxia film directed by Yuen Woo-Ping.

If you’re me, those words were all it took to get Tai Chi Master (1993) in your queue.  If you aren’t me and those names don’t ring a bell, let me explain.  Jet Li is a former Chinese national wushu champion and a no-kidding master of two styles of northern Chinese kung fu.  He made his first film in 1982, at the age of 19, and has been working steadily ever since.  His best film, Fearless (2006), combines first-rate action with a retelling of the Buddha’s journey in a manner both ambitious and profoundly successful.  Michelle Yeoh’s background is in ballet and choreography, and she's applied her training to a string of successful martial arts and action films dating from 1984.  While best known in the West for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, she’s best known to me for jumping a motorcycle onto the roof of a moving train in Police Story III (alternately titled Supercop), thus making her the only stuntperson in history to upstage Jackie Chan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTv7HXqqqXA

Yuen Woo-ping, the film’s director, has directed and/or choreographed some of the most memorable martial arts films ever made, including Drunkenmaster, the Kill Bill movies, and Kung Fu Hustle.  Folks, this is the A Team.

And the A Team delivers.  With Tai Chi Master, they create not just an action film, but a testament to the remarkable athletic feats we humans are capable of achieving.  Yes, the film relies on wires and hidden trampolines and creative editing to make its characters appear superhuman, but those wires are attached to real people bouncing off real trampolines and making it all look, if not exactly natural, then credible.  I marveled at these performers’ flexibility, speed, endurance, and grace.  I loved how Yuen shot them, I enjoyed the complexity of their choreographed fights, and I lost track of time for the hour and a half it took for Tai Chi Master to tell its story of medieval China.

Jet Li.  Michelle Yeoh.  Yuen Woo-ping.  They’re as good as human beings can be at what they do, and Tai Chi Master showcases them beautifully.  Enjoy.

Swordsman II

SWORDSMAN II is a milestone in my family. It's the first subtitled film that my 8-yr-old has sat for all the way through. It's also the first film featuring transgendered characters, quasi-lesbian romance, and bondage he's sat through. That wasn't really part of the game plan, but I guess it had to come sooner or later.

An hour after finishing SWORDSMAN II, I'm still not entirely sure what it's about. Jet Li is a Drunken Master -ish leader of a group of wuxia warriors on their way to some holy mountain, where they plan to renounce Kung Fu and live as - I don't know - peaceful mountain people until they run out of food or money or both. One of the warriors, a woman who refers to Li as "brother," is clearly hot for him. I hope he wasn't really her brother, or I'll have even more splainin to do when my wife gets home. Anyway, they're on their way to meet some hot chick whose equally hot henchwoman calls her "chief," and with whom she engages in some amusing tongueplay.

Then ninjas show up. With scorpions. But Hot Chief Chick and her minions unleash their snakes upon them and rocks them like a hurricane.

There's more: soon, a transgendered warlord (warlady?) shows up, back by her band of ronin. That's right: a transgendered warperson with samurai henchmen. "Really," I felt like saying to this movie, "you had me at ninjas and scorpions." But there's a twist (Oh, of course there is!): the warperson is married to a lady who's wondering why her husband hasn't slept with her in six months. And why he's wearing makeup. And taking up embroidery. And having the likes of Jet Li show up at her doorstep, drunk and horny, in the middle of the night.

Wait, what? What's Jet Li doing with this dudelette, when he's got these other two chicks (one with snakes) all over him? Well, it's complicated, but it has to do with the warperson's brother, whom she's been keeping chained in a dungeon for (coincidentally) six months.

Just as SWORDSMAN II really started to creep me out, however, it rolled into a huge wirework battle. While, sadly, the battle lacked scorpions or snakes, it featured plenty of needlepoint, swordplay, and needlepoint swordplay. Not to mention of the winnowing of the love quadrangle (which is always awkward, I don't care who you are) to a more manageable triangle. Bondage guy gets his mitts on warperson, which is satisfying if that's your thing, and Li is left with serious questions about his sexuality, which (it appears) his totally submissive quasi-sister will be more than happy to help him work though.

In other words, SWORDSMAN II makes for lovely family viewing. I'm reasonably confident that my kid didn't catch any of that, but instead saw an entirely different movie, one about a heroic clan fighting an evil warlady and relearning lessons about the futility of the martial life.

Thank God. I don't have time for that much splainin.