Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (2008)

Sabtu, 11 Oktober 2008

Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (2008)

Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (Daniel Lee, 2008)

The voice of Luo Ping-an (Sammo Hung), a recruiter for the army of Liu, greets us in Daniel Lee's Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon, an imperfectly executed but altogether interesting take on Luo Guanzhong's 14th century The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a revered piece of Chinese literature that details the power struggles between the warring successors of the Han Dynasty. Luo Ping-an recalls the first time he met Zhao Zilong (Andy Lau), an ordinary foot soldier whose only ambition is to provide for his future family, a modest ambition compared to Luo's dreams of returning to his hometown a celebrated city. As Zhao Zilong starts to showcase his fighting prowess rise from the ranks to become one of the Liu army's generals, Luo Ping-an remains a low-ranking soldier.

It is this perspective from Luo Ping-an's forgotten onlooker that makes Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon a worthwhile film. He becomes the film's unsteady heart. As an adaptation of The Romace of the Three Kingdoms, the film feels hurried and truncated. As an ode to heroism and bonds of brotherhood, it is actually quite engaging, if not moving. During one of the film's final moments, Luo Ping-an and Zhao Zilong share a scene where both become defenseless to each other, with Luo Ping-an's admission of his repressed envy and Zhao Zilong's revelation of his weakness. It is a beautifully directed and composed scene, where heroes and icons are unmasked and become human. Ready for their final battle, Luo Ping-an beats the war gong, announcing to the invading forces that Zhao Zilong, the undefeated hero of Liu's army, is ready for his attack. Given that momentary but enduring glint of humanity, Zhao Zilong's final battle, its aftermath we can only guess from the film's end notes, becomes laced with an emotional depth that has been absent in the film's numerous battle scenes.

The film struggles through its initial sequences, accommodated by some stunningly choreographed (by Sammo Hung) although haphazardly shot and edited action sequences, before being fast-forwarded decades past Zhao Zilong's rise to the top, with several other characters (the four other generals and Zhao Zilong's transitory love interest) of little importance to the film's narrative being introduced only to be killed off or totally forgotten in the next ten minutes. The narrative and emotional bulk of the film happens during Zhao Zilong's final expedition. With Luo Ping-an at his side and his favorite lieutenants (all of whom are given little or no characterization) behind him, Zhao Zilong faces the army headed by Cao Ying (Maggie Q), the graceful yet ruthless general of Cao's superior army.

Here, the film starts to take a different cue and becomes a grounded observation of fleeting heroism and both the necessity and expenses of warfare. Lee makes an effort to equalize both factions, characterizing Cao Ying as cunning yet noble, in a careful step to blur the lines between good and evil in the battleground. Lee decreases the tempo, allows his camera to fully linger and capture the vast plains and deserts, and gives ample room for his audience to understand the conflicts boiling within Zhao Zilong's aging hero and Luo Ping-an's pathetic onlooker. Like one of Sergio Leone's grand Westerns where genre conventions and characters are maintained yet enlarged to encapsulate a bevy of themes, Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon almost succeeded in doing the same with the genre, if not for the film's clunky storytelling and its need to placate commercial forces.

While Lee clearly has the vision and the ambition to mount a film adaptation of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the film seems adequately justified as a whole, the film feels problematic on many fronts. The technical aspects of the film mirror Lee's grand ambition: the armies are fortified with thousands of extras, the production is littered with astounding details, the music is reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's memorable melodies for Leone's famous spaghetti westerns, the art direction is both apt and astounding, the cinematography is breathtaking, especially when Lee's camera covers the almost endless expanse of the country that is being fought for. However, amidst the luster of the film's production values, Lee seems unable to cohere the elements into a clearly flowing narrative. The film ultimately suffers from inconsistent plotting and incongruous action filmmaking.

The Warlords (2007)

Sabtu, 06 September 2008

The Warlords (2007)

The Warlords (Peter Chan, 2007)
Mandarin Title: Tau ming chong

The Warlords is something of an anomaly in Peter Chan's career. Chan is most famous for charming romances and comedies like Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), a love story between two Mainlanders (Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung), both of whom migrate to Hong Kong and later to New York, that spans several decades and Perhaps Love (2005), which details a love triangle that arises in the set of a musical film. Going Home, the episode he directed for Pan-Asian horror triptych Three (2002), is about a father (Eric Tsang) and his son who moves in a dilapidated residential building where longtime resident (Lai) keeps a gruesome although ultimately heartbreaking secret. Chan's films have always featured strong female characters (Cheung in Comrades, Zhou Sun as feisty movie star in Perhaps Love, Kate Capshaw as forty something divorcee who gets intimate with a younger man in The Love Letter (1999), or even Eugenia Yuan as Lai's dead wife in Going Home).

Thus, The Warlords, which Chan claims as his attempt to bring back themes of male camaraderie and loyalty of 80's and 90's Hong Kong cinema, is a totally different creature in Chan's growing filmography. In fact, The Warlords features no strong female character. Lian (Xu Jinglei), the object of desire of both General Pang Qingyun (Jet Li) and Zhao Erhu (Andy Lau), is treated more as a plot device rather than a definite character. She indistinctly beds with both men, with her motives and aspirations conveniently overshadowed by the men who dominate the picture.

Notwithstanding this evident departure in themes, Chan succeeds in crafting a genuinely engaging picture. Inspired by Cheng Cheh's The Blood Brothers (1973) which is based on a historical event wherein a governor was assassinated in the late nineteenth century, The Warlords is about three men, Pang, Zhao and Jiang Wuyang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) whose fraternal pledge is tested under the pressures of surviving starvation and violence dealt upon by the Taiping Rebellion (whose death count supposedly outnumbers that of the second World War) and later on, the political ambitions and intrigues that accompany their wartime successes. Chan indulges in detailing the three men's intricate relationship, starting from explicating their personalities, differentiating their goals and motivations, inevitably leading to a clash of gargantuan egos, especially of Pang and Zhao's, who nearing the end of the film have come into a deadlock in their objectives.

More gargantuan than the clashing egos of the film's main characters are the battle scenes, choreographed, directed and shot with masterful precision and an exquisite attention to detail by Chan and his crew. The battle scenes do not have the operatic flourish of Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002) and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) or the theatrical affluence of Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet (2006). Chan approaches the battles with a grittier and more realistic tone, with dust and grime filling up the frames and severed limbs and fallen bodies punctuating the action. The battle scenes are simply spectacular. There's an undeniable visual splendor and energy beneath the pandemonium and violence that Chan adeptly orchestrates.

The Warlords also features one of Li's best performances. His embattled general, the lone survivor of a failed campaign where all his soldiers died, is vulnerable and emotional, traits that Li's usual cinematic personalities hardly possess. He performs alongside Lau and Kaneshiro, actors who have earned acclaim from more dramatic roles, and gives the most memorable performance of the three. Above everything, The Warlords, proves that Chan is a formidable filmmaker, with the ability to stage stunning and sweeping battle scenes without sacrificing characterization and storytelling.

CJ7 (2008)

Jumat, 09 Mei 2008

CJ7 (2008)

CJ7 (Stephen Chow, 2008)
Cantonese Title: Cheung Gong 7 hou

There's an almost unanimous assessment among most Western viewers and critics that Stephen Chow's CJ7 is substantially inferior to his last two successes, Shaolin Soccer (2001) and Kung Fu Hustle (2004). I would tend to agree. CJ7, predominantly a reworking of the formula popularized by Steven Spielberg's tearjerking classic E. T. (1982), and regurgitated in the eighties through the early nineties with several immemorable children's fare (does anybody remember Mac and Me?), is about a boy named Dicky (Xu Jiao, who is actually a girl) who discovers the titular dog-like alien creature that eventually teaches him a thing or two about life and growing up.

Ti (Chow), Dicky's father works as a casual employee in one of the city's many construction sites. Despite his serious financial struggle, he maintains that Dicky be provided quality good education by sending him to an expensive exclusive school. Naturally, Dicky becomes the center of attention of his teachers and bullying classmates, especially with his dirty uniform and sewn-and-resewn shoes. He imagines that his newfound pet, named CJ7 following the popular robot toy dogs, would help him get better grades but as it turns out, the alien pet is actually useless in that department, causing Dicky's grades to plummet.

What essentially separates CJ7 from the numerous similar films that were made before it is the fact that it is written, directed, and produced by Chow, whose unique brand of comedy has survived through the digital age by utilizing digital effects for brashly outrageous comic effect. Chow uses the same technique here. By mixing digital effects (including the completely digitized alien pet which looks like a cross between a Pokemon and a gummy bear) and his traditional comedy, Chow was able to rise a little bit higher than his meager material, creating a film that may not be as hilarious as his last two efforts but is at least very watchable.

Chow has always made frankly sentimental films, although usually blanketed by his boisterous comic sensibilities. For example, that middling love angle between Chow's character and the psoriasis-infected lady in Shaolin Soccer was conveniently draped by the out-of-this-world soccer battles; or the melodramatic linkage between the good-for-nothing bum and the deaf ice cream vendor was made a mere sideplot in Kung Fu Hustle. Despite the consistent proliferation of what is essentially kitschy and corny in his films, Chow seems always able to balance slapstick and sentiment, creating films that are oddly effective as creative outputs and products for mass consumption. CJ7 is designed similarly, although this time, Chow's sentimentality overtook his clever humor, for better or for worse. The imbalance is at first off-putting, but after a while, it gets reasonable and rather enjoyable.

Thus, there is no surprise that Chow made this film. It is only a matter of time. It is inaccurate to say that CJ7 is a cop-out for the always-reliable Chow since there is still a bit of irreverence and wickedness underneath all of Chow's syrupy storytelling (seriously, no other filmmaker, apart from Dolphy, a revered Filipino comedian, who can portray the poor this comically (where cockroach-killing is family bonding time) and still come out as respectful and more importantly, funny). As I've said, CJ7 is definitely not as good as Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle or many of Chow's less known movies from the nineties, but it is most certainly miles better than the lifeless, tepid, and uninspired children's fare Hollywood has been producing through the years.

Triangle (2007)

Senin, 19 November 2007

Triangle (2007)

Triangle (Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam & Johnnie To, 2007)
Cantonese Title: Tie saam gok

The concept is to die for. Three of Hong Kong's best directors (Tsui Hark, prime mover of the Hong Kong new wave; Ringo Lam, whose City on Fire (1987) practically initiated the overrated career of Quentin Tarantino with his American version, Reservoir Dogs (1992); and Johnnie To, one of the most consistent and most exciting genre directors around) agree to make one feature film but unlike the usual triptychs (like Three (Kim Ji-woon, Nonzee Nimibutr, and Peter Chan, 2002), Three: Extremes (Park Chan-wook, Takashi Miike, and Fruit Chan, 2004) and Eros (Michaelangelo Antonioni, Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar-wai, 2004)) where the helmers would create short films merely connected by a thematic or some other flimsier thread, the trio would make one continuous narrative laid down by Tsui, pumped up by Lam, and wrapped up by To.

Aptly titled Triangle, the film starts off with three friends: blond-haired mama's boy and taxi driver Fai (Louis Koo), antiques dealer Mok (Sun Honglei), and nearly bankrupt husband Bo (Simon Yam) to an unfaithful psychotic wife Ling (Kelly Lin). The three, while discussing a possible heist that would instantly give them much-needed big bucks, is given a tip by a mysterious man of a treasure hidden inside the legislative building. The three head off to retrieve the treasure as the triad members they conned and the renegade cop (Lam Ka-tung), who is having an affair with Ling, hunt them down.

Despite all the contrivances, the inconsistencies, and the confusion, everything works. The film isn't divided into portions but it's quite obvious who directs which part. The frenetically edited first third of the film, where the characters are introduced and the basic conceit of the narrative is put into the table (quite delirious in the amount of information that is let out of the pandora's box), is obviously Tsui's doing (the same director of manic fantasy fests Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), its disappointing sequel Zu Warriors (2001), and Seven Swords (2005), and riveting actioner Time and Tide (2000)). The madness is then grounded by Lam, putting some teeth and psychology to Tsui's hard lucked protagonists, while setting up connections that would lead to To's grand finale, where the director merges his knack for comedy and his exquisite eye for bullet ballets in a near-operatic shootout in a grass and scarecrow covered field.

There's a consonant flow to the trio directors' predicated chaos. Each director is responsible for his segment in the film, with only the previous director's final output as guidance and cue for their part. Despite the freedom, the film didn't end up as a flagrant mess, which is not very surprising. Tsui, Lam and To, along with Hong Kong's other legendary directors (like John Woo, Wilson Yip, even Wong Kar-wai), have established the running themes, the prominent styles, and the basic narrative framework that define the former British colony's mainstream cinema. The three directors have decades of films and common experiences to make sure that Triangle falls within the borders of convention (and thus, render it commercially viable and extremely watchable). At most, it is To who takes the most risks, and comes out contributing the most to the narrative, without sacrificing his trademark quips. He basically uses every bit of conceit initiated by Tsui, incorporates the surfacing themes by Lam, and completes the picture with a surprising turn and a loud and flaunting bang, thus, turning Triangle into one memorable romp.

You'd think that with the differing productions (separated by months, depending on the actors' schedules) and directing styles, Triangle will end up as a merely entertaining experiment without any real depth to chew on. Actually, the film pretty much rehashes the well-entrenched theme of honor and loyalty in Hong Kong cinema. In the midst of the clinging temptations of a multimillion-dollar treasure, three men with varying motivations (the final goal is the big bucks but: Fai is trapped in the middle of various obligations from his dissonant relationships with the cops, the gangsters, and his two partners in crime; Bo is struggling with his wife's love affair with a cop dealt upon by his insolvency while reminiscing his abruptly ended marriage with his first wife; Mok is contemplating between his financial crisis and his precious moral stance) manage to overcome the hindrances and the odds that differentiate them, and retain or salvage what they value the most.

It also doesn't hurt that the oft-told parable, which the film really is, is overflowing with the three directors' distinct styles. Triangle leaves you throbbing and satisfied, hooked by the idiosyncratic small time would-be crooks Tsui introduces and weaves together, moved by the romantic dance inside an abandoned factory provided for by Lam's instinctive designs, and finally swept by hilariously extended switch-ups and the over-the-top moonlit gun play To gambled around with.