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.

Vengeance

Johnnie To walks into a production meeting.

“Guys, here’s the idea: our heroes, triad assassins with hearts of gold, are in a field, hiding behind big bales of scrap paper and surrounded by bad guys hiding behind big bales of scrap paper.  The bad guys roll their bales in front of them, as a moving shield.  The heroes roll their barrels at the bad guys, guns blazing.  Colorful scraps of paper blow in the breeze.  Music plays.  Blood everywhere.  It’s magnificent.”

Kai-fai Wai, To’s collaborator and business partner, is the only man in the room with the courage to question the great Hong Kong director and producer.  He says, “Sounds great, Johnnie.  What’s the story?”

“Story?”  says Johnnie.  “Who cares?  Listen to this: the good guys track the bad guys down to their meeting place in the woods.  They close in for their shootout, O.K. Corral style, when suddenly the bad guys’ families show up.  It’s a picnic!  The good guys keep walking, taking position on a nearby hill and waiting for the picnic to end and the families to go home.  The bad guys enjoy their evening, even sending some food over to the good guys.  When the picnic’s over and the families leave, though, it’s no-kidding, Wild West shootout.  They all have honor, see?”

“I like it,” says Wai.  Is there any kind of narrative through-line you’d like to explore?”

“Pfft.  I’m producing four movies this year and directing one.  I don’t have time to write scripts.”

“Right,” replies Wai.  “Well, those sequences sound great, and I’m sure you have more up your sleeve.  I’ll gin up a revenge thriller around them and whaddaya say we start second unit filming on Monday?”

“Works for me.  Let’s use Vengeance as a working title.  I’m going to go storyboard my shootouts.  Have a good weekend, everybody.”

And so, I like to imagine, Vengeance was born.  The box says it’s about a very serious Frenchman who comes to Macau to wreak, well vengeance.  It’s really about the great Johnnie To creating cool action sequences.  Even better, it’s about the great Johnnie To (Election, The Heroic Trio) creating cool action sequences in Macau and Hong Kong, the Vegas and Manhattan of China.  Simon Yam (Ip Man & Ip Man 2) plays the villain and has great fun with the role.  Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (Infernal Affairs, Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor), Ka Tung Lam (Election, IP Man, Infernal Affairs), and Suet Lam (Shinjuku Incident, Kung Fu Hustle, Election) play the three assassins with hearts of gold and, if you follow Hong Kong cinema, those names are enough to put this movie on your queue right there.  Johnny Hallyday, whom Roger Ebert describes as a French combination of Elvis Presley and Charles Bronson, plays the Frenchman as a dour guy in a black suit, and his plastic surgery gives him an odd enough look to make him an interesting hero.

So what do have, here?  You have a good-enough story, reliable actors and stuntmen, and a string of very cool, very creative shootouts, chases, and action sequences.  In short, you have a terrific Hong Kong action thriller.  Vengeance is a winner.

Dragon Lives Again

DRAGON LIVES AGAIN is a cheap Hong Kong ripoff of Bruce Lee. It's a riot!

Here's the deal. Bruce Lee has returned from the dead to do justice and kick people in the face. My favorite part: the bit of exposition explaining why Bruce Lee looks surprisingly like Bolo Yeung: "Silly girl. Don't you know that people's faces and bodies look diferent in the afterlife?" If you've ever wanted to see a Bruceploitation flick featuring the The Man With No Name, the priest from THE EXORCIST, and Popeye, this is your movie. See it with friends.

Dragons Forever

Man oh man, I love me some old-school Jackie Chan movies.

DRAGONS FOREVER puts Chan, Samo Hung, and Biao Yuen together in a workmanlike story about three bad guys who must find their souls through kicking people in the face. Chan plays a slick defense attorney, Hung and Yuen play his gangster buddies, and that's the last you're going to hear from me about the story.

Because really, when you see that Samo Hung and Corey Yuen co-directed the picture, is your very next thought, "I hope the story is a penetrating exploration of the human condition"? No. It's, "How are the stunts?"

Well, let me tell you: the stunts are awesome, and Hung and Yuen know how to film them. Instead of quick cuts, we get takes that are long enough to confirm that real people are actually doing the things we see onscreen. Jackie does some found stuntwork involving chairs and stairs that will have you rewinding and stepping through in slow motion just so you can dig on it. Hung and Yuen do some slapstick fighting that's actually a marvel of tightly choreographed performance. Innumerable anonymous stuntment pull off falls that'll make you go, "Oof!"

You know what? See DRAGONS FOREVER with one finger on the fast-forward button. The story is disposable and uninteresting, but the stunts make it worth speeding through it. If you enjoy watching top athletes at the top of their game, this movie's for you.

New Police Story

NEW POLICE STORY features all the hallmarks of one of Jackie's Hong Kong pictures. It has ridiculously dangerous stunts, ridiculously beautiful women, and ridiculously ridiculous villains. This is stuff is vintage Jackie the Stuntman stuff - Jackie the Joker is nowhere to be found.

Here's the setup: Jackie's the HKPD's hotshot cop, instructing everything from weapons to martial arts. He leads a crack squad into a bloodbath orchestrated by previously mentioned ridiculous villains, then loses his confidence and descends into alcoholism. Of course, the ridiculous villains are still out there, and eventually Jackie's gonna have to get back on the horse.

NPS surprised me with its depiction of alcoholism. Hey, this is the Drunken Master we're talking about, right? Here, Jackie plays his despair and self-loathing absolutely straight, showing that while a young drunk can be cute, an older drunk is just sad. The guy has some moments of real pathos here, and I bought them; much to my own surprise.

OK, so there isn't much doubt that Jackie will pull himself together and take on the ridiculous villains. What about the stunts? Well, stand by to be dazzled. Though he's clearly using wires now, Jackie's fight choreography and execution are dazzling as always. Additionally, look out for a slide down a burning rope and the first time you've probably ever seen stuntmen ride bikes, rollerblade, or run(!) down the side of a skyscraper. This movie had enough "Wow!" moments to merit repeated replays for family members, nearby friends, and stray dogs.

Of course, it wouldn't be Jackie without ridiculously beautiful -and increasingly age-inappropriate- women. Charlie Yeung, twenty years his junior, plays Chan's fiancee without so much as a nod toward the age difference. Her performance is average, at best, but she sure looks nice.

Finally, there are the ridiculous villains. Seriously, what is it with Chan's Hong Kong ouvre? His villains are all either Australian or Chinese guys with dyed hair and seemingly limitless flows of cash. In this iteration, they happen to be a gang of -get this- XTreme Gamers who rob banks and kills cops for fun. I knew Poochy would turn out to be a malevolent force in the minds of the young. These villains have paper-thin motivations, but they're quite good at things like rollerblading and bicycling, which gives Chan and his choreographers some fun stunt-creation options.

And that's what it's all about, really: finding neat stunts and structuring a movie around them. NEW POLICE STORY does just that, and it does it well. I recommend it to any fan of Jackie's work.