TITLE & REVIEW
This is a Japanese film in the tradition of
Seven Samurai
, or 47 Ronin, directed by
Beat Takeshi
.
In 1844 the Shogun's relative is an evil sonovabitch, and must be stopped before he inherits even greater power. A handful of samurai are hired to assassinate him. The sword-fight that follows is about as long as the climactic gun-battle in John Woo 's Hard Boiled.
This is a classic true-life story from feudal Japan.
Naturally, Hollywood decided this was not good enough
so they decided to spice it up a bit for the American audience.
Despite the cast being ethnic Japanese,
the movie was shot in the English language and filmed on sound stages in the UK.
The bigger problem is with the storyline itself.
The original legend, of a band of disgraced samurai who seek revenge on the evil overlord who murdered their master, is the core of the film. However, this is relegated to something of a subplot.
A mixed-race orphan (Keanu Reeves - John Wick ) was raised in the master's house. Because of his caucasian father, he was a mere servant rather than an elite samurai knight. However, he has magical powers - just what he needs to fight the villain's witch-woman. Basically this gives us two racist tropes for the price of one. White saviour versus the dragon lady.
Anna Leonowens (
Jodie Foster
) takes her son Louis (Tom Felton -
Harry Potter
) when she joins the court of the King of Siam (Chow-Yun Fat -
Pirates of the Carribean
) as English tutor to the Royal children.
A rich merchant's daughter, Tiptim ( Bai Ling ) is given to the King as a new concubine. Unfortunately she already has a boyfriend, who becomes a Buddhist monk in order to be close to her. Yes, they combine adultery and treason with blasphemy. What a way to rack up the felonies! This is never going to end well.
There is a subplot about a gang of bandits raiding the countryside. It seems that they are Burmese, sent by the British Empire. The King delegates the investigation to his brother and the general. This leads up to a violent rebellion, and a climactic third act to the story.
This starts with a historical scene shot in monochrome,
which explains the hero's backstory.
He was the greatest swordsman,
but now he has a lot of competition.
The good news is that he can defeat a small army of opponents.
The bad news is that he dies in the process.
The good news is that an old wise woman infects him
with magic blood-worms that can enable him to heal any wound.
Well, he grows his sever hand back ... but not his missing eyeball.
The bad news is that his mental health
is beyond the healing power of the worms.
Fifty years later, the real story begins. A renegade group of sword-fighters who call themselves Itta-Ryu have begun wiping out all the local dojos in the Edo area. They plan to monopolise the area's martial arts industry, and thus force the Emperor to acknowledge them. A young girl, daughter of a Dojo master who fell to the renegades, hires the immortal samurai to be her instrument of vengeance. Yes, in the spirit of Kurosawa this has stolen from a Western tale - specifically True Grit .
In the spirit of the best Samurai films, the protagonist's storyline is to duel the villains one at a time. Well, in this case - with the specialist weapons and techniques of each opponent - it feels more like Fist of the North Star . It turns out that this is adapted from a Manga of the same name.
The climax is a massive battle scene, reminiscent of 13 Assassins . All in all, quite an impressive piece from director Beat Takeshi .
Tania Raymonde
leads the Greek people to freedom from the Turks in the 1800s.
Dragon (Jackie Chan -
Armour of God
) is a student in a kung fu club.
He spends his time trying to get a girlfriend.
Rivalry with other clubs,
and the presence of a certain criminal element in town,
means he gets to show off his skills a lot.
Not just at fighting,
but at other sports they compete in.
Young Master ) is somewhat lacking in plot, and padded out with extra-long fight scenes. However, this movie is actually worse. In the two years between the movies, Jackie does not seem to have learned any lessons.
The English adventurer James Brooke (Jonathan Rhys Myers -
Ghormenghast
) and his cousin (Dominic Monahan -
Lord of the Rings
) arrive at Sarawak in Borneo to make trade deals with distant countries
before the Dutch or Spanish empires can monopolise everything.
Although the good guys are English adventurers, they are deliberately portrayed as separate from the British Empire itself. When the Royal Navy is called upon to help Brooke, the Captain (Ralph Ineson - Hurricane Heist ) is a stereotypical Imperialist. There is also an aristocratic woman ( Hannah New ) who acts like a stereotypical racist.
The intro exposition sets the time and place.
In the century after the destruction of the city of Kiev by the Mongols,
the Ukrainians fled west into the Carpathian mountains.
Two young men live in a Carpathian village with their father (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2 ) and mother ( Alison Doody ). Since the villagers have had problems with their landlord (Tommy Flanagan - Smoking Aces ), the two brothers are sent to negotiate with him while hunting a rogue bear.
The high point of the bear-hunt is meeting the lord's daughter ( Poppy Drayton ). She is an expert archer, and pretty much kills the bear by herself - she is basically Merida from Brave . In fact, if the elder brother's wife was not a redhead then Drayton would probably be wearing a ginger wig.
A Mongol patrol abducts some peasants, so the heroes try to rescue the hostages. They end up losing someone, while the Khan's son is also killed. This gives both sides a grudge, so the conflict will continue forever.
The Khan leads his entire army against the villagers, which leads up to a big climax. Naturally, Princess Merida kicks a lot of ass. Well, this movie does not exactly follow the laws of physics. For example, rather than use some horses to pull over a massive megalith the peasants just use the village idiot instead.
This is a Hong Kong film from the 1970s
which depicts China's troubled relationship with Japan in the 1930s
(well, as the Japanese invaded and colonised Manchuria) ...
Chen (Bruce Lee - ) returns home from abroad. His teacher has died in mysterious circumstances, and some suspect that he was poisoned. To make things worse, the local Japanese martial arts school turn up after the funeral to taunt Chen and the Chinese students. Of course, he decides to retaliate. Once humiliated, the Japanese turn their fury on the Chinese martial arts school.
Chen suspects that his teacher was poisoned, so he hunts down and murders anyone he suspects was involved. In order to make it seem like a fair fight, the victims are allowed to put up a show of resistance while they fight for their lives. Of course, they are against Bruce Lee so they never have a chance.
So what is the point of such a film? Since the protagonist is two-dimensional, he never learns anything or improves in any way, why does the audience find it so entertaining? The answer is spectacle - we get to see a series of impressive martial arts moves.
The Japanese villains seem to be using Chinese martial arts techniques, so it is not the classic clash-of-styles it could have been. However, the Japanese play host to a Russian giant named Petrov. This allows a bit of diversity - although nowhere near as much as the far superior Game of Death .
We meet a heroic cartographer (Jason Flemying -
Primeval
), whose maps will link the East and the West.
A young American Karate Kid falls in with a gang of bullies
and ends up seriously injured.
He wakes up in Medieval China, in the
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
era.
A drunken Immortal (Jackie Chan - Shanghai Noon (2000) ) takes him on a quest to save the Monkey King (yes, Monkey himself - Great Sage, Equal of Heaven)! They are joined by a beautiful young girl on a vengeance quest, and a mysterious warrior monk (Jet Li - Hero (2002) ).
This is an impressive film, made for an American audience with a budget to match, but with the casting and locations of a top-class China production.
This is an Israeli movie, about the historical Jewish community of the Russian borderlands.
An American Pickle
takes a more comedic approach to relations between the Jews and Cossacks in that area.
The Cossacks are hit with a plague, while their Jewish neighbours have remained untouched due to their segregation and isolation. Naturally the Cossacks blame the Jews, and abduct the Jewish village's healer.
A Jewish woman steals the secrets of the Rabbi, and uses them to create a Golem. Instead of a massive man, this Golem is a little boy. It turns out the woman is a grieving mother who lost her seven-year-old son. Not only is the Golem supposed to be the village's protector, it is also a substitute child for the woman. Unfortunately it is a bloodthirsty monster, which leaves the woman in a difficult position.
William (Matt Damon -
The Martian
) and his sidekick Tovar (Pedro Pascal -
The Mandalorian
) have ridden all the way across Asia.
Their goal is to steal some gunpowder and sell in in Europe.
Not the formula, which would be easy to memorise,
but just as much of the powder as their horses can carry.
The dynamic duo reach the Great Wall, where they get captured by the Chinese. They meet another westerner, Ballard (Willem Dafoe - Spider-Man ), who was captured decades earlier and taught the locals how to speak English. He has a cunning plan to steal the gunpowder. All they have to do is escape from the Chinese army, fight their way through the monster army, somehow evade the hill-tribes on Mongolia and ride thousands of miles through hostile territory to Europe. What could possibly go wrong?
The wall was built to defend China from giant fast-moving CGI lizard creatures. The monsters are very hard to kill, but are telepathically controlled by a Queen. If our heroes somehow kill the Queen, all the drones will be about as useful as the robots in Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace .
This is set in historical China.
A new Imperial dynasty has come to power, and outlawed the Shaolin temple.
A former monk has turned against the temple,
and leads the forces of oppression.
He has trained eight warriors, the Tiger Generals, as his disciples.
A Shaolin monk is sent to assassinate the turncoat. First he must recruit a team of rebels to defeat the Tiger Generals. For example, he meets a friendly wood-cutter (Jackie Chan - Shanghai Noon (2000) ) and they share some incredibly homoerotic glances. A pity this subplot is never followed up on.
In a small role is Philip Kwok, best known as Mad Dog in Hard Boiled . This is not really a coincidence, because this movie was also directed by John Woo himself!
This is set in a medieval fantasy setting.
The protagonist is a knight who lives in a shack in the woods,
and specialises in killing supernatural creatures.
He gets missions sent to him by means of a scroll wrapped around an arrow,
which must be a bit expensive because the arrows are hand-made and individually fletched.
Maybe he subsidises it with the royalties from his mechanical pencil-sharpener,
which he invented to sharpen wooden stakes because pencils have not been invented yet.
The missions are monster-hunts, against a series of different creatures. They are portrayed with practical effects rather than CGI, insofar as the knight sticks the severed head of each monster on a wall in his shack. There is a lot of suspense and build-up, but the fights themselves are off-screen. Yes, the battles are not actually shown!
The knight's special secret of his success is not his fighting skills, but a big jar of magic ooze that can cure any injury. Of course, this is even powerful enough to re-animate a severed head.
The head-hunter must now take on his deadliest foe - a head that he has not just hunted, but caught and severed.
The title cards explain the backstory.
The king of Qin wants to conquer six neighbouring kingdoms,
and create an Empire that will - two thousand yeare later -
be known as the dictatorship of Red China.
His justification is that assimilation will end border-wars.
He is fighting for peace, as it were.
Resistance is futile.
A swordsman called Nameless (Jet Li - Forbidden Kingdom ) is summoned to meet the King, and recount the tale of how he defeated the King's three greatest enemies. As a result, the main story is told in a series of flashbacks.
The first assassin, a spearman named Sky (Donnie Yen - Highlander: Endgame ), had an affair with the second - Flying Snow ( Maggie Cheung ). Her lover Broken Sword (Tony Leung - Hard Boiled ) then shifted his affections to his minion, Moon ( Zhang Ziyi ).
The King is paranoid, and suspects that Nameless is an untruthful narrator. The movie takes a Rashomon type twist, with different versions of the story being unfolded.
The fight scenes are an excellent series of Wuxia battles, so much better than the westernised wire-fu that is shown in other films. What lets the movie down is the moral of the story, which makes this basically propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party. The Emperor's actions are whitewashed by the idea that he is merely a slave to his followers, and he must be seen to crush all dissent. The destruction of all freedom is thus deemed necessary.
The introductory info-dump explains that tea was a gift to the Chinese from a magical dragon.
We then meet a heroic cartographer (Jason Flemying -
Primeval
), whose maps will link the East and the West.
He was first introduced in the previous movie in the series,
The Forbidden Empire (2014)
.
Our hero (Jackie Chan - Shanghai Noon ) is imprisoned in the Tower of London. To escape, he must out-fight a bunch of red-coated guards led by the prison governor (Arnold Schwartzenegger - The Terminator ).
The action moves to the court of Peter the Great. The cast seem to be Russian performers, over-dubbed into English.
The main storylines meet up in China, where the Princess discovers that her Kingdom has been usurped by a witch with a face-changing spell.
Iron Monkey is a Robin Hood figure,
who steals from the rich and gives to the destitute.
He dresses in black like a ninja,
jumps from rooftop to rooftop,
and uses martial arts to defeat his enemies.
Instead of batarangs or shuriken,
he throws fist-fulls of caltrops to defeat his enemies.
The villains are cartoonish, but not two-dimensional. The Governor is greedy and corrupt, but he needs the money to please his nine mistresses. The Captain of the Guard, Master Fox, is fat and lazy but also has a sense of honour.
A new Kung Fu master named Wong (Donnie Yen - ) comes to town with his young son in tow. As a former Shaolin master, he alone has the skill to match Iron Monkey. However, although he is ordered to catch the thief - with his son used as a hostage by the Governor -
In the Third Act, a new antagonist arrives. He is the Emperor's investigator, a former Shaolin master known as the Flying Monk. Since his abilities match those of the heroes, and his attitude makes him a true villain, this makes for an action-packed conclusion.
This movie is a Chinese historical effort, set sometime in the 1800s. The guards use muskets, while the citizens have umbrellas and pocket-watches. Their town even turns out to have a train station. However, despite the movie being made in Hong Kong it seems to have a Communist agenda that would be more fitting for Red China.
Edward Zwick
made this film the same year as the US Empire,
under the command of George W. Bush,
staged its invasion of Iraq.
Presumably Zwick and his backers intended it
as part of a backlash against American Imperialism.
However, it shows incredible naiveity.
The story is a big-budget White Saviour narrative,
later copied by
Avatar
, and the only thing original is the setting.
In the year 1876, Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise - Mission Impossible ) is an alcoholic ex-soldier selling rifles for a Winchester Rep (William Atherton - ). His old sergeant, Zebulon Gant (Billy Connolly - ), recognises him and gets him signed up to serve as a mercenary training new recruits in Japan.
Once in Japan, Algren is introduced to Simon Graham (Timothy Spall - ) - the nearest thing this movie has to a comic relief. Before long, Algren and his makeshift army are sent into battle against the title character - a rebellious warlord, Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe - ). The army has muskets, while the rebels use a smokescreen to nullify this advantage.
Algren gets captured by the rebels, and starts to go native. This all seems a bit reminiscent of Dances With Wolves, and not just because of the storyline. Algren's driving motivation is his White Liberal Guilt at being on the winning side in the war against Native Americans. Shades of Soldier Blue, the 1970s Vietnam allegory starring Candice Bergen . The rebellious warlord seeks to defeat the ruler's pro-Western advisors, which makes him a version of the Rasouli in The Wind And the Lion ... starring Candice Bergen .
Despite Algren's avowed hatred of war, he agrees with the samurai belief that Might Makes Right. This leads on to a massive and bloody but pointless battle. The ending shows Algren disrupt a peace treaty between the Japanese Emperor and the US Ambassador (Scott Wilson - The Walking Dead ). Yes, this film has a sequel - Pearl Harbour !
This was written, produced and directed by
James Clavell
. As a novellist he is perhaps not the best person for such an undertaking -
film-making is a visual medium,
and someone who specialises in word-crafting can end up telling rather than showing.
That said, the cinematography really shows off the landscape.
The story is set during the Thirty Years War, a Seventeenth Century conflict that tore central Europe apart. A deserter named Vogel (Omar Sharif - ) flees from war, famine, pestillence and death. He finds himself in an idyllic alpine village, but it is quickly captured by the Captain (Michael Caine - The Dark Knight ) and his gang of mercenaries - a foraging party for a larger army. The valley is an oasis of peace amid the chaos of a world gone insane. Despite the mutinous rumblings of Gorski (Brian Blessed - Flash Gordon (1980) ), the Captain decides his unit should winter in the village and abandon the rest of the army to its fate.
The main body of the film is an interwoven series of episodes that span the few months from autumn until spring.
A merchant named Marius (Vladek Sheybal - UFO ) brings news of the outside world. This takes the story out of the ethereal and into a specific time and place.
This starts with a massacre that establishes one of the characters,
a Scythian warrior who has ninja skills.
He and his band then raid a Russian village,
and abduct the wife of the greatest warrior in the Kingdom.
Now the warrior and the assassin must track down the Scythian band.
The movie is in Russian with English subtitles, but the storyline is basically a Western. One of the characters literally uses the old cut them off at the pass cliche!
The ill-matched protagonists follow their quest across a pre-Christian landscape, which makes it like something out of the Fantasy genre. They even meet a tribe of whitewashed primitives from Your Highness (2011) , who throw them in the fighting pit and make them battle to the death.
This film includes outdated attitudes, language and/or cultural
depictions that viewers may find inconsistent with contemporary values.
Well, it is a Chinese film from the 1980s
which depicts China's troubled relationship with Japan in the 1930s
(well, as the Japanese invaded and colonised Manchuria) ...
One has to ask, does the Sky Network show such a disclaimer
when broadcasting Mel Gibson movies like The Patriot or
Braveheart
?
The film starts by introducing a biplane pilot, Ming-Ming ( Michelle Yeoh ). She works for an arms dealer who sells weapons to regional warlords. This allows her to show off her fighting skills, including skill with a bullwhip - clearly a reference to Indiana Jones .
Secret Agent 001 is in Bhutan, in the Himalayas to the south of China. He has secret information about the Japanese plans to build a poison gas factory. Ming-Ming is hired to find him and transport him to China. She will identify him by a wrist-watch sent by carrier pigeon. Unfortunately the watch is stolen by a con-man, who becomes the comic relief in the ensuing comedy of mistaken identity.
The goal of the protagonists shifts. They cannot simply escape from Japanese-occupied Bhutan: they must stage an uprising. The Japanese infantry, armed with bayonets and samurai swords, attack the city's medieval fortifications which are guarded by peasants with improvised weapons.
This is produced by
Eli Roth
and presented by
Quentin Tarantino
. It is an homage to the Chinese historical action flicks of the 1970s.
However, it is filmed in English, and the cast are heavily Eurasian (mixed race)
rather than pure-blooded ethnic Chinese.
In other words, it is a Hollywood version of what a classic Chinese movie should be.
The narrator is a blacksmith (RZA - ), who reluctantly makes and sells weapons to the highest bidder. He needs the money to buy the contract of his girlfriend ( Jamie Chung ), who is a concubine. Unfortunately the highest bidder is usually a criminal.
As befits the Western (as in wild west) genre feel, an American named Jack Knife (Russell Crowe - Gladiator ) rides into town. He visits a high class whore-house run by Lucy Liu , and noses about in the local underworld..
Rick Yune ( Die Another Day ) is on a quest to avenge his dead father. The villains hire another Bond villain (Dave Bautista - Spectre ) to take him out.
The local bandits want to steal the Emperor's shipment of gold. In revenge, the Emperor sends his soldiers with a gatling gun to wipe out the town. The good guys arm up with anachronistic weapons in order to defeat the villains and save the day before the soldiers arrive.
This starts with some exposition,
shared through dialogue rather than on-screen text.
The only scroll shown is one that contains an international trade agreement,
which the Chinese characters refer to as an Unequal Treaty.
While the Chinese government has allowed foreign ships into harbour,
the Chinese navy has been disbanded.
The Admiral asks his friend, Wong (Jet Li -
Forbidden Kingdom
) the local Kung Fu teacher,
to train the ex-sailors as a local militia.
Yes, this is the Chinese version about some of the events
that led up to what was later called the Boxer Rebellion.
Director Tsui Hark delivers a historical action movie so successful that it spawned multiple sequels. The ultimate villains are Western Imperialists, but since they rely on muskets they would be no match for the brave Chinese Kung Fu experts in a fair fight. As a result, most of the fights are between Wong's side and the local Chinese bullies who hire themselves out to the American merchant. The stand-out is the climactic ladder-fight scene that was paid homage in the Xena: Warrior Princess episode Callisto.
Wong is a traditionalist who resents Western ways. His 13th Aunt ( Rosamund Kwan ) has learned the art of photography, which he forbids her from practicing. When he is offered a Western-style suit of clothes, he refuses until all Chinese men dress that way. In other words, he simply copies fashion rather than setting trends himself. However, while the Western reliance on muskets is frowned upon nobody even mentions the fact that the Chinese invented gunpowder first.
Wong (Jet Li -
Forbidden Kingdom
) the Kung Fu teacher, takes his apprentice and his 13th Aunt (
Rosamund Kwan
) to Beijing by steam-train.
Unfortunately the city is full of thugs,
the White Lotus Society -
an ultra-nationalist group centred around the Chaotian monastery.
It seems the Buddhists have decided to war against the Christians.
In the first movie, Wong led Nationalists against Europeans. Now he must defend the British Embassy from the Nationalists.
The Chinese government is cracking down on rebels. They target a doctor that Wong befriends, rather than go after the real trouble-maker - the prophet who has taken over the Chaotian monastery.
When last we saw Wong (Jet Li -
Forbidden Kingdom
) the Kung Fu teacher and his 13th Aunt (
Rosamund Kwan
), they were leaving Beijing aboard different boats,
seperated by cruel happenstance.
Now they are back together again,
arriving by steam-train in Beijing once more.
To impress the European ambassadors, the Dowager Empress has decreed a martial arts tournament known as the Lion King competition. Unfortunately, as all the rival martial arts societies flock to Beijing they do not restrict their rivalries to the contest. Instead they start brawling in the streets, and even adopting more underhanded tactics.
13th Aunt meets an old friend, Tomsky. He is interpreter for the Russian Ambassador. This leads to a love triangle of sorts, as Tomsky wants 13th Aunt for himself. He points out that she is not yet married - and since the actress was in her early thirties, this is a useful thing to point out. She decides to force Wong to make a commitment to her.
Russia's imperialist foreign policy demands it secure the port of Vladivistok. If China gives land to Japan that endangers Russian control of the port, Russia will be forced to go to war to protect their city. The Russians want to prevent the terrible bloodshed of a war, and choose assassination as a preferable alternative.
To prevent the assassination, Wong and his friends must attend the Lion King finals.
This starts with a white man named Billy riding through Monument Valley, USA.
His horse dies, and he is left alone in the desert.
Luckily a train of stagecoaches passes, with Wong (Jet Li -
Forbidden Kingdom
) the Kung Fu teacher and his friends aboard.
The Chinese passengers insist the driver stops for the dying man,
saving his life while his fellow Whites left him for dead.
Billy spends the rest of the movie as the token good white man.
The stagecoaches camp for lunch, and are attacked by a Native American war-party. The group get split up, with most of the survivors reaching the local town. Unfortunately the locals are pretty racist, with the Chinese people banned from the main town areas and Billy not treated much better.
Meanwhile, Wong winds up at a Native American village. He has amnesia from a blow to the head, and has no idea who he really is. Thus he has no reason to object when he is welcomed into the tribe - a scene that seems to have inspired Shanghai Noon . This section of the storyline, which spends time among the Native people, may be the reason for the cultural sensitivity disclaimer that has been attached to the start of the film. However, the Native people are portrayed as noble while the Whites are generally unpleasant, so this Chinese-made film is not exactly an example of White supremacism.
A gang of bandits robs the town bank, and the racist Mayor blames the Chinese community. Wong must catch the real bandits in order to prove his innocence. This leads to a climactic shootout which has six-shooters against Kung Fu, and is reminiscent of the gun-fu style that John Woo used in his Hong Kong neo-noir action thrillers.
This was directed by Tsui Hark , co-written by Philip Kwok ( Hand of Death (1976) ) and martial arts choreography by Sammo Hung ( Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain ). Yes, a few stand-out veterans of the industry.
This is a period piece, set in the 1500s and filmed in Italian.
The use of subtitles instead of English dubbing
means it retains a certain sense of authenticity.
Gepetto (Roberto Benigni - Life Is Beautiful) makes a puppet and names him Pinocchio. The puppet gets abducted and enslaved, then ends up on a series of adventures. The result is reminiscent of Adventures of Baron Muchausen by Monty Python alum, Terry Gilliam .
This is set in Hong Kong in the latter days of the 19th Century.
It is still the reign of Queen Victoria,
but some characters use mauser pistols and stick-grenades.
Unlike the later movie
Once Upon A Time In China
, this actually shows British involvement as a good thing.
Hong Kong's sea trade is under threat from pirates, and the Royal Navy is too far away to help. The local coastguard has been ineffective, so it gets shut down and its resources transferred to the police. Coastguard Sergeant Dragon Ma (Jackie Chan - Shanghai Noon (2000) ) gets fired from the police, so he teams up with his crooked buddy (Sammo Hung - Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain ). Unfortunately the pirates have accomplices in the port. Luckily, Jackie and Sammo fight crime using their super-power ... kung-fu comedy!
Jackie is famous for doing his own stunts, and this is no exception. The real question is, what is more terrifying: the fact that Jackie and his crew perform without apparent safety gear, or that they do multiple takes on their stunts? For example, the movie shows the clock-tower fall twice, using two different takes ... and then shows it again in the credits, with what looks like a third take. It is a mystery how nobody got killed doing that stunt.
In the aftermath of the first movie,
Coastguard Sergeant Dragon Ma (Jackie Chan -
Shanghai Noon (2000)
) gets promoted to run a new police precinct.
The top brass know that the previous commander there,
Inspector Three Rings Chun, was corrupt.
The plan is for Dragon's arrival to smoke him out.
Of course, they are on a need-to-know basis
and Dragon does not need to know ...
Dragon starts by taking on the local gangsters, who are bribing the corrupt cops. Things get more complicated when a group of revolutionaries, including Rosamund Kwan , arrive in town. They have been organising against the Manchu Empire of mainland China, and they have been pursued by the Manchu Secret Police. Meanwhile, some of the pirates who survived the first film have followed Dragon in the hope of getting revenge.
This is a fitting follow-up to the original. It does not even suffer too much from the absence of Sammo Hung ( Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain ).
Three men shelter from the rain in a Buddhist temple.
While waiting, they discuss a trial that they just attended.
The trial is shown in flashback, as are the testimonies of the witnesses.
This film is famous for inventing a new form of storytelling. Not only do the flashbacks show the events from different perspectives, but each contradicts the other. The accused man, a bandit (Toshiro Mifune - Hidden Fortress ), boasts that he killed the deceased in an honorable duel. However, the dead man's widow also confesses. The deceased also testifies, through a spiritual medium.
The climax involves the discovery of an abandoned baby at the temple. The three men's discussion over the trial now becomes an argument over the baby. This was not in the American remake, The Outrage (1963). Another difference from the American version is that this does not get happily tied up in a definitive ending. The baby scene seems a poor substitute.
This starts with exposition,
mixing a voice-over with comic-book style visuals.
The McGuffin is the remains of a Buddhist monk named Bodhi
who invented the ultimate form of Kung Fu.
The legend states that whoever has his remains
will rule the world of Kung Fu.
A gang of assassins, the Dark Stone,
try to steal the remains.
One of them, a girl named Shi Yu,
takes them for herself.
Before the others can catch her,
she uses her savings to pay a doctor to change her face.
Some years later, Zeng Jing ( Michelle Yeoh ) rents a house in the city.
The British Governor (Ray Stevenson -
Punisher: War Journal
) and his wife (
Alison Doody
) are the villains.
Chon Wang (Jackie Chan -
Forbidden Kingdom, The (2008)
) is a Royal Guard to the Chinese Emperor in Peking.
When Princess Pei Pei (
Lucy Liu
) is kidnapped and held for ransom in Nevada
he takes it upon himself to travel to the USA to save her.
Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson - The Haunting (1999) ), nice-guy outlaw, discovers that the new man in his gang (Walton Goggins - Django Unchained (2012) ) is a trigger-happy Texan. They try to rob the train carrying the Chinese ransom, and Roy ends up joining forces with Chon Wang. Together they must save the Princess while avoiding Marshal Nathan Van Cleef (Xander Berkley - Barb Wire (1996) ).
The comedy mixes parodying classic western movies with the kung-fu comedy that Jackie Chan is famous for.
Winter 1887, and the Forbidden City in China is attacked by Lord Rathbone (Aidan Gillen -
Game of Thrones
) in a scene reminiscent of
The Golden Child
. The villain steals the Imperial seal, and kills its keeper.
The keeper's son, Chon Wang (Jackie Chan - Shanghai Noon (2000) ), is happy as a lawman in Carson City, Nevada. He awaits the return of his Princess, who is now working in San Francisco. Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson - The Haunting (1999) ) lives in New York City where he has become the star of a series of paperback novels. All in all, not a bad way to write off the happy ending from the first movie.
Our heroes go to London, where Chon Wang's sister has tracked the murderer. Roy forgets about his former relationship with his own wife, or Chon's ex-wife, and sets his eyes on the sister. When Chon and his sister first meet up together, they talk in Chinese until Roy reminds them he does not speak the language. Later, when they are alone together, the two Chinese talk in English - presumably so that Roy will understand when they talk about him behind his back.
As in the previous film, there is yet another Chinese villain who was banned from the Forbidden City for treason. This time it is Wu Chow (Donnie Yen - Highlander: Endgame ), the Emperor's bastard brother. He wants the seal so he can become Emperor of China. In return, he will wipe out Queen Victoria and the British royalty so that Lord Rathbone will become the Emperor of Britain.
The climax is one of those steampunk extravaganzas where the fate of the world is at stake. Lots of explosions and daring deeds, everything the audience expects.
Basically, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson -
Star Wars 1: The Phantom Menace
) has gone missing, and his spiritual grandson Kylo Ren (Adam Driver -
Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens
) goes looking for him. The girl from
Rogue One
does not appear in this film - but she played Qui-Gonn's daughter in
A Monster Calls
which was released the same year.
Actually, there is quite a lot more to the story than that. The Spanish Inquisition spent the 1400s persecuting Jews and the 1500s persecuting Muslims. By the 1600s they have run out of people of colour in the Iberian peninsula, so they send Portuguese Jesuits as missionaries to Japan. The peaceful Buddhist people are unhappy at these Imperialists who were linked to a peasant revolt in Japan in the 1630s. Finally, the Jesuits are on the receiving end of an Inquisition.
The protagonist, Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield - Amazing Spider-Man ), gets to play the victim card. The Japanese Inquisitor insists that the Christians obey the ten commandments by treading on graven images of religious figures. For some reason the Japanese believe that Jesus loves idolatry and that he will not forgive anyone - even if they make confession to a priest. How much torture can Rodrigues take before he submits to the Inquisition?
This story is set in Korea in olden times.
A slave-trader is kidnapping young girls.
One girl's father comes along to rescue his daughter - like in Taken . The good news is that he is an expert swordsman. The bad news is that he is going blind. This gives the story shades of Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (2003) , but with one minor difference. In the Japanese film, or even the American adaptation Blind Fury, the protagonist is completely blind and has to adapt his life and fighting style to this fact. In the Korean film, the protagonist is gradually going blind - and the only concessions made to this is constant verbal references so the audience does not forget.
Because this is set in the 1800s, the villains do not just have swords. They also have a supply of single-shot rifles, which certainly increases the threat they pose.
The lead actress, playing the title character, is the Director's wife.
This movie was evidently a labour of love,
rather than a big-budget action movie.
In the 1850s, Lakshmibai is the Queen of an Indian kingdom named Jhansi. When the Indian Mutiny breaks out, she sides with the rebel kings in order to secure her throne.
The British General (Rupert Everett - St Trinians ) is portrayed quite sympathetically. His counterpart in the East India Company, however, is shown as being the real villain of the piece.
The biggest embellishment on the real-life story must be the introduction of a fictional British officer as something bordering on a love interest. This all seems to have been ripped from Flashman and the Great Game.
General Nanisca (
Viola Davis
) leads her all-female army on a slaving raid.
It turns out that their neighbours did a slave raid first,
so any slavery that the Amazons indulge in is simply revenge.
Nothing immoral there, we are meant to believe.
New recruits are trained by Lashana Lynch . They all share tales of woe, with terrible family lives back home. Yes, they joined up not because of poverty but because their families had patriarchal oppression. Since the recruits live like nuns, why do they bother risking their lives in battle to protect a society that is supposedly a toxic patriarchy?
The story follows one of the new recruits through basic training. We see her put in the effort, just like in a story about the real-life military, so we know that the character has put in the effort. That said, she does not seem to have any major flaws. She hates authority figures, but even Nanisca herself is shown as having less wisdom than the youngster!
The King (John Boyega - Star Wars: The Force Awakens ) is happy that his country is a big player in the slave trade. Nanisca is against it, claiming the country can make more money exporting mangos or whatever. Perhaps this would work if they had extra workers to perform unpaid labour on the farmers' fields. Yes, they would export the proceeds of slavery rather than the slaves themselves.
Some European sailors arrive, eager to do some business with the King. One of the sailors is mixed-race, son of a Dohomey woman, so the young Amazon girl is allowed by the story to have a romance with him. Not an actual romance, since she has embraced the Amazon rule of chastity, but a chaste little inter-gender friendship. This means that the man is the one who must make a choice, so ultimately he - the love interest - is the one who shows character development.
Dragon (Jackie Chan -
Armour of God
) is a student in a kung fu club.
When the top student is banished for a petty infraction,
the Sifu relents and sends Dragon out to find the prodigal.
Unfortunately, the top student has fallen in with a gang of bandits.
A family of bounty hunters are after the bandits. Due to a case of mistaken identity, Dragon is assumed to be the new member of the gang.
What this movie lacks in plot complexities, it makes up for in extra-long fight scenes.
This is set in ancient China,
in a time when many different armies fought each other for control of the land.
A young scout cannot obey conflicting orders of his generals,
so becomes an outcast from the Blue army.
He meets Sammo Hung (
Project A
), a deserter from the Red army, and they have an uneasy truce.
All this ends when several different armies all converge on them.
The Blue soldier hides out in a cave, and finds himself dragged into a war between superpowered heroes and demons. One of the heroes is infected with demonic possession, and the others must go on a fetch-quest to save him. However, whenever injured they must go to the magical healing nuns.
There seems to be a strong moral to the story. Both mankind and the heroes are reluctant to work together, and each only looks out for their own faction. The good guys must put aside their differences and learn to work as a team for the common good. This is reminiscent of Hero (2002) , which was all about how economic unity was better than freedom.
