December 9, 2018 December 8, 2018 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment
Iron Monkey (1993)
Dir. Yuen Woo-Ping
Written by: Tan Cheung, Tai-Muk Lau, Pik-Yin Tang, Tsui Hark
Starring: Rongguang Yu, Donnie Yen, Jean Wang, James Wong
I picked up Iron Monkey on DVD in 2003, sight unseen, at my local Circuit City. I've written my high school interest in kung fu movies to death, but that isn't the only thing that led me to grab a copy of this particular movie that day. The final deciding factor between me grabbing Iron Monkey and yet another bad English transfer of a Bruce Lee classic was the phrase "Quentin Tarantino Presents" above the film's title on the DVD cover. At that time, Tarantino was the major cinematic gatekeeper and influence in my life, and an endorsement from him was enough to get me to plunk down $15 on a random kung fu flick that I didn't even realize was already ten years old. When I got home, I found the movie to be an exciting and delightful addition to my little collection of martial arts movies. It was fresh, and seemed thoroughly modern; in fact, I don't think that I even realized it was made in the early 1990s until after I had watched it several times. Once again, I had trusted QT, the cinephile's director, to lead me to an influential classic, and once again, he had delivered.
Set in Imperial China, Iron Monkey is a sort of Robin Hood tale. The kind Dr. Yang (Yu) and his assistant, Miss Orchid (Wang), care for the poor and sick, while a corrupt provincial governor, Cheng (Wong), hoards both wealth and food, keeping his citizens in poverty and squalor. By night, the governor and his wealthy courtesans are menaced by a masked ninja, known as the Iron Monkey, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Cheng attempts to employ a squad of disgraced Shaolin monks to capture the Iron Monkey, but to no avail. Meanwhile, a stranger, Wong Kei-ying (Yen), arrives in town with his son, Wong Fei-hong (Angie Tsang) in tow. The governor's guards believe him to be the Iron Monkey, so they arrest father and son, but the real Iron Monkey arrives to free them. While Wong Kei-ying initially fights the Iron Monkey to a draw in an attempt to clear his name and prove his devotion to the governor, the two eventually join forces when Wong Fei-hong is captured. When a new governor, the disgraced Shaolin monk, Hin-Hung (Yen Shi-kwan), is sent from the emperor, Iron Monkey and Wong Kei-ying have to fight with all of their strength to defeat him and restore power to the people of the province.
The plot of Iron Monkey is fairly typical, borrowing as it does from traditional Chinese folk history, as well as from the archetypal history of figures in the popular imagination such as Robin Hood. Of course, few viewers are looking for nuanced, layered storytelling when they sit down to enjoy this type of action film. Fans of the kung fu genre will appreciate the film as an origin story for cult hero Wong Fei-hong, as well as for its nods to Chinese folklore and history. Western audiences will likely be attracted to the film's quick pace and light tone, with the American release being edited both for content and for length. Everyone can likely agree that it's a film that delivers on the promise of well-choreographed and well-executed action set pieces, and that it mixes in plenty of comedy and intrigue, which is a signature of the Hong Kong studio style. Though it's obviously stylistically very different that these films, Iron Monkey has the same sort of crossover appeal that Jackie Chan's action movies were experiencing in America in the mid-1990s, although I can understand why it wasn't released domestically until after the kung fu craze of the early-2000s that was kicked off by the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
I think the biggest takeaway I had from watching Iron Monkey again for the first time in many, many years, was how much I enjoyed watching Donnie Yen's fight performance. He's such a versatile and smooth performer, incorporating many different styles of martial arts into his fight scenes. I think that the last thing that I saw Yen in was Star Wars: Rogue One, in which he plays a blind Jedi who is able to move through the world guided by the Force, and this sort of natural flow is on display in Iron Monkey. Yen is also aided by performing in scenes directed by the venerable Hong Kong veteran, and eventual famed Hollywood fight choreographer, Yuen Woo-Ping. The film's final fight scene, in which Iron Monkey and Wong Kei-ying battle Hin-Hung held up perfectly to my memories of it. The final fight takes place atop bamboo poles, which the combatants have climbed to escape a raging fire that has broken out in the town square. Yen and Yu perform acrobatic stunts, lithely leaping from pole to pole, dressed identically, while Yen Shi-kwan appears impossibly big and powerful, stalking across the poles as the battle arena drastically shrinks while the poles are engulfed in flames. It's a study in contrasting styles, as are so many climactic fights in these types of movies, but the setting, the charisma of the performers, and the excellent direction by Yuen add up to make it an all-time classic. It's a fitting ending to for a movie that is the embodiment of a certain brand of Hong Kong studio action films of its period.
I've been looking forward to this post for a while now because Iron Monkey is an old favorite of mine, and, like the majority of the kung fu movies in my collection, I've neglected returning to it for too long. It was just as good as I remembered it being, and there were a handful of elements of the movie I had forgotten that enriched my enjoyment of it. I didn't remember at all that it was a Wong Fei-hong origin story, and I suppose that I wasn't aware of the fact that through its association with Tsui Hark, who is a producer and credited writer on the film, Iron Monkey operates as an adjacent film or even prequel to the Once Upon A Time in China series. I don't know about Iron Monkey's availability in America before its 2001 limited theatrical release and this subsequent DVD release, but I would imagine that it might have been available at some point on premium cable, and almost certainly it was available on a bootleg VHS somewhere. I know that I might not have encountered it were it not for a push from one of my favorite filmmakers at the time, and I'm glad that I did because this is definitely one of the superior martial arts movies of the 1990s.
November 25, 2018 / andrewmisk / 1 Comment
Dir. Quentin Tarantino
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz
Despite him being my favorite filmmaker when I was in high school, and despite the fact that engaging with Tarantino's cinema was one of the most important and influential developments in my early introduction to the movies, I really fell off of Quentin Tarantino almost immediately after high school. The Kill Bill movies were released at the beginning and the end of my senior year of high school, and I remember spending much of the ensuing summer under the thrall of their pastiche of cinematic influences, continuing my love affair with Hong Kong action cinema and getting more seriously interested in Sergio Leone. When I came to Pittsburgh for college, however, I found myself with access to a wealth of movies to explore, and I was eager to explore the texts that had informed the post-modern cinema of my favorite director. Somewhere along the way, revisiting Tarantino's actual films seemed less and less important. Death Proof, released the summer before my senior year of college, didn't move the needle for me, and I don't think I saw Inglourious Basterds until as much as a year after its initial release. Missing it on the big screen is a big regret of mine, since I've seen every other Tarantino since Kill Bill: Vol 1 in the theater, and because after nearly a decade of returning to Inglourious Basterds, I've found it to be my favorite 21st century Tarantino movie. It might be the quintessential Tarantino film, perhaps more so than even Pulp Fiction, and the more I watch it, the closer, and more comfortable, I get to declaring it my favorite Tarantino movie ever.
Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino's revisionist history of World War II, framed through the lens of Italian B- action movies, American Westerns, both classic and revisionist, and the European New Wave cinemas of the 1960s. It finds Tarantino at his most appropriative, and at his most original, weaving a tapestry of these disparate styles to create a pattern that's distinctively unique, while fabricating from whole cloth a compelling narrative worthy of a 1940s dime store pulp serial. Set in and around occupied Paris, Inglourious Basterds introduces the audience to a cast of misfits – American soldiers, defected former-Nazis, English spies, and one vengeful French Jewish cinema owner – who are brought together by their fervor for killing Nazis. The titular Basterds are a renegade squad made up primarily of American Jews and led by Lieutenant Aldo Raines (Pitt), feared throughout Europe for their penchant for ambushing and murdering entire Nazi units. Shoshanna Dreyfus (Laurent), is a French Jew hiding out in Paris and posing as a cinema owner, whose whole family was killed by an infamous Nazi interrogator, Hans Landa, nicknamed The Jew Hunter (Waltz), who also happens to be on the trail of the Basterds. Through a chance meeting with an over-eager Nazi war hero, Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), Shoshanna's cinema is chosen to host the propaganda film that Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) has made about Zoller's military exploits. This screening is to be attended by much of the high brass of the Third Reich, including Hitler (Martin Wuttke) himself, which prompts Shoshanna to launch a plan to burn down the theater with the Nazis inside. All of the involved parties are put on a collision course culminating in the film's literally explosive climax during the film's premiere.
I'll be writing about two of the movies that Tarantino directed in between Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds within the next couple of months, so I won't delve into either Jackie Brown or Kill Bill, but after watching Inglourious Basterds for the sixth or seventh time, I feel more assured than I ever have that this is Tarantino's best work post-Pulp Fiction. It's tough for me to take any of the credit away from the latter film, as it has rightly gained a classic status for its role in shaping post-modernism in cinema, its announcement of Tarantino as a major influencer and voice in independent film, and its radical reinvention of visual and narrative cinematic language. That being said, I am really starting to think that Inglourious Basterds does everything that Tarantino's earlier film does while also improving upon some of Pulp Fiction's rougher edges. Simply put, Inglourious Basterds is the work of a more mature filmmaker. By 2009, Tarantino had already fully established his signature style of cinematic collage, wearing his wide set of influences on his sleeve, and often straddling the line between homage and plagiarism, but Inglourious Basterds is the movie that sees him mastering his style and seamlessly meshing his own visual aesthetic with the visual and storytelling styles of his influences in service of a tight narrative, creating a sharp film in which form and content are perfectly complementary. It's a blend of the artistic modernism embodied by the French New Wave and the exciting, slapdash postmodernism of the New Wave of American independent film that established itself in the 1990s.
Inglourious Basterds also features the single best performance in a Tarantino film in Waltz's truly terrifying turn as The Jew Hunter. The film's masterfully suspenseful opening scene is the perfect introduction to Waltz's truly villainous SS Col. Hans Landa. He plays the Nazi interrogator with equal parts sophisticated charm, savage brutality, and ruthless cunning, creating a layered villain who is as fearsome for his silver tongue as he is for his abject viciousness. In the scene, Landa is interrogating a French farmer, M. LaPadite (Denis Ménochet), who is suspected of hiding a Jewish family in his home. The Jew Hunter begins his investigation by complementing and cajoling with the farmer, but of course this is a pretense, as both parties are well aware of the deadly consequences that will befall LaPadite and his family should his wards be discovered, or if he resists the line of questioning in any way. The two actors circle around one another verbally as Tarantino allows the scene to play out languorously, tension building by the second. There's no doubt as to the outcome of the scene, but this doesn't make the moment when Landa calls in his goons to machine gun the poor family hiding beneath the floor boards any less shocking or viscerally horrible. The violence isn't what makes the scene so particularly horrifying, but rather the fact that Landa has been building to this particular climax with a smile pasted to his face, relishing the discomfort he is causing in LaPadite. The character's erudition and charm are insufficient to mask his inner monstrosity, and Waltz is perfectly cast as an actor who at once can embody the exterior of societal niceties, as well as the flinty interior of a cold-hearted, remorseless killer.
Inglourious Basterds also finds Tarantino drawing from a broader set of influences than in many of his earlier films. While Jackie Brown drew its inspiration solely from the world of Blacksploitation films and Kill Bill operates in a Western milieu, with dashes of Hong Kong action and Wuxia thrown in for good measure, Inglorious Basterds is a beautiful pastiche, borrowing liberally from the works of John Ford, Sergio Leone, Leni Riefenstahl, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Howard Hawks, as well as featuring homages to famous films such as The Wizard of Oz, The Dirty Dozen, and Unforgiven, among others. The film is a love letter to classic cinema, and it's the Tarantino film which most explicitly highlights his cinephilia, placing films and their exhibition at the core of its narrative. I've heard a criticism of Tarantino and of post-modernist filmmaking in general that it offers up great style with little substance, essentially functioning as a checklist of "in" references to be discovered by fellow movie nerds, but I've always felt that that criticism is hollow and really doesn't stand up to the actual experience of watching a Tarantino film. The director might bear his influences proudly and obviously, but his frequent liberal borrowing from film texts always serves as a complement to original and engaging narratives, and this is truer than ever in Inglourious Basterds. Certainly Tarantino has lifted some settings and motifs from earlier films, but they serve as the window dressing for a revisionist history fable that is thoroughly modern and original and that, at the same time, couldn't exist without being informed and influenced by its predecessors. In this way Inglourious Basterds forms a feedback loop, or an Ouroboros, a B-movie that achieves actual prestige, propped up by a host of earlier texts while also informing those texts and imbuing them with new meaning and life. It's the perfect Quentin Tarantino movie.
I reserve the right to reevaluate this judgment when I soon write about Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction, but I don't expect that I will. While those are both movies that I love and that I relish the opportunity to engage with in a more critical manner, I think that I am familiar enough with them all that at this point my mind is made up. Inglourious Basterds achieves levels of meaning and critical engagement with its influences that those movies fail to, and it's a better movie for that reason. It lacks the shock factor that must have accompanied Pulp Fiction's initial release in 1994, but only because it takes a similar, and already accepted, template and perfects it. Tarantino followed up Inglourious Basterds with two films that I enjoyed, but that I felt were more style than substance and which I haven't had a lot of interest in going back to in the way that I have with all of his other films. As a fan for life, I'll turn up with interest for any new Tarantino project, but it will difficult to top the high water mark that Inglourious Basterds holds in my mind.
November 11, 2018 November 7, 2018 / andrewmisk / 1 Comment
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Dir. Edgar Wright
Written by: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton
I can remember the anticipation surrounding the second installment in Edgar Wright's "Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy" (though I doubt it was referred to as such at the time) leading up to its release in the spring of 2007. The trilogy's first entry, Shaun of the Dead had been a cult hit upon its release, and it had become a favorite of mine in the few years after its release. Of course my friends and I were eagerly awaiting the sequel, and Hot Fuzz definitely did not disappoint. The comedic team of Wright, Pegg, and Frost shift their sense of humor and aesthetic from the horror genre to the action blockbuster and they don't miss a beat in the process. I don't think I felt this way at the time, but I think that they managed to improve upon Shaun of the Dead in every way with Hot Fuzz. The film is bigger in every way, and Wright starts to really come into his own as a visual filmmaker as he attempts to ape the style of Michael Mann and Michael Bay. I love all three movies that make up this oddly-named trilogy, but Hot Fuzz has always been the standout for me. Despite that fact, it's the entry in the trilogy that I had watched least recently, probably not having watched it since shortly after I purchased The World's End. As always, it didn't disappoint.
In Hot Fuzz, hotshot cop Nicholas Angel (Pegg) finds himself transferred from the London police department to Sandford, a sleepy, rural town in the English countryside. Upon arrival, Angel has trouble adjusting to the slower pace and lack of crime in Sandford, as well as to his slovenly, unskilled partner, Danny (Frost). The town elders, however, including Danny's father, Frank (Broadbent), who is the chief of police, and the local grocer, Simon Skinner (Dalton), hope to keep Sandford quiet and crime free to boost their image in the upcoming Village of the Year competition. When villagers start dying in a series of unlikely freak accidents, Angel begins an investigation that threatens to damage Sandford's reputation and standing in the competition. He and Danny continue their inquest into the deaths, despite the protestations of the village elders, and discover a secret that Sandford has been keeping under wraps for generations.
As I mentioned earlier, it's difficult to pick a favorite out of the three films that make up Wright, Pegg, and Frost's feature film collaborations. All three films feature a perfect blend of cheeky parody and reverent homage to the genres that they're working in. All three films feature perfect casting, with a collection of characters that are both outlandish and utterly relatable. And, finally, all three films use the shield of adherence to genre sensibilities as a Trojan Horse for a heartfelt story about the development of a relationship, whether it be romantic or platonic. Shaun of the Dead laid out the template for the Cornetto Trilogy, and established its creative brain trust to worldwide audiences. The World's End felt like something of a victory lap, with the whole gang getting back together for one last romp through the familiar landscape that had been established in the first two films. Hot Fuzz, the second entry in the trilogy, stands head and shoulders above those two as the crystallization of the Cornetto aesthetic and as Wright's ultimate parodic achievement. It broadens the scope of Shaun of the Dead while maintaining its independent feel, and stops short of pulling out all of the narrative stops that The World's End is determined to barrel right through. It introduces a more complex story with better and more interesting supporting characters that Shaun of the Dead, and the blockbuster milieu in which the film operates gives Wright full license to start branching out and developing as a visual filmmaker.
When I first saw Shaun of the Dead in 2005, it seemed like a perfect answer to the glut of studio comedies that had been clogging American theaters during the beginning of that decade. While I enjoyed, and still rather do enjoy, the comedic stylings of Judd Apatow, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, and Will Ferrell, I was quickly starting to age out of their more sophomoric movies, and discovering the offbeat humor of Pegg, Frost, and Wright felt like a breath of fresh air. That sense was only expanded upon when I saw Hot Fuzz, with the film packing in more memorable supporting roles for great British character actors, more reverent, humorous genre send ups, and more perfectly-timed asides and one-liners. Pegg playing against type as the uber-competent Nick Angel is a great wrinkle in Hot Fuzz that adds to its comedy quotient. Frost expands on his fairly dim everyman best friend character from Shaun of the Dead, ably providing both physical comedy and a broad foil for Pegg's frustrated cop. The scenario that the three dreamed up for Hot Fuzz, involving a shadowy cabal of village elders who have been engaging in a decades-long covert war against petty crime in Sandford, is more involved and audacious than the simplistic narrative pleasures afforded by Shaun of the Dead. It's a sublimely absurd conspiracy that's played totally straight throughout the film, and the principal antagonists being a malicious group of Boomers dead set on maintaining their own standards of proper decorum rather than a gang or a drug cartel is a perfect send up that turns a foundational trope of the action genre on its head.
November will have to be a month of shorter posts by necessity for me, so I won't get too much more involved with Hot Fuzz. It's a movie that I think most people should have seen by this point because, while it hasn't necessarily gained the cult following of its predecessor, it was more widely successful upon its release than the other two entries in the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy. That success is well deserved and reflective of Hot Fuzz's impact on a big screen. It deserves a spot in the canon of early 21st century comedies, but it is every bit as entertaining and valuable as a meta-action movie. Wright, Frost, and Pegg have created a love letter to the genre more compelling, more thoughtful, and more nuanced than any Expendables sequel could hope to be. Though I haven't had a cable subscription in about five years, I wonder if Hot Fuzz has ascended to the once-vaunted status of TBS weekend afternoon movie. I've written before about the existence of these movies in the 1990s and early 2000s, when I was a pre-teen and teen, that aired on cable on the weekends and gained an iconic, populist-classic status, despite, or perhaps because of, their lack of prestige trappings. Popcorn fare like Point Break, Con Air, Bad Boys, movies that if they were on, I'd more than likely just stop and watch through until the end if I didn't have anything else to do. I think that Hot Fuzz is a better movie than all of those, but it would be in perfect company among their ilk, because those are exactly the movies that Hot Fuzz is celebrating. It's a perfect, fun, funny, movie that can be just as satisfying for a mid-afternoon partial watch as it is to dissect for a tenth time, picking up on clues to the film's central mystery and sly jokes along the way.
Fists of Fury (The Big Boss)
May 20, 2018 May 17, 2018 / andrewmisk / 1 Comment
Fists of Fury AKA The Big Boss (1971)
Dir. Lo Wei
Written by: Lo Wei, Bruce Lee
Starring: Bruce Lee, Maria Yi, James Tien
Bruce Lee's first major film, The Big Boss (mistakenly released in America as Fists of Fury), is far from the best showcase of Lee's star power and his physical prowess, but it does hint at some of the exciting things to come. The film was initially written as a vehicle for James Tien, but when a change in director was made, Lee was given the role of the main character, Cheng, and the film went on to become a massive success, turning Lee into the most famous martial artist in Asia. The Big Boss was the first step in relaunching Lee's career in Hong Kong, as he had left America following the cancellation of the cult TV show Green Hornet, on which he played the sidekick, Cato. It was the first in a pair of films Lee would star in, and serve as the driving creative force behind, for upstart film studio Golden Harvest. Lee's presence helped to give the new production studio credibility, while Golden Harvest offered Lee the creative control that he was unable to achieve while working in Hollywood. The Big Boss would be the worse of the two films that Lee would complete for Golden Harvest, but the partnership helped to break him into the Hong Kong cinema world in a big way. However, Lee's earliest Hong Kong films only scratch the surface of the potential that he would later fulfill as an action star when given a proper budget and the opportunity to work with a more competent film crew.
In the film, Lee plays Cheng Chao-an, who leaves mainland China to live with his cousin, Hsu Chien (Tien) in Thailand. Hsu Chien has secured Cheng a job working with the rest of his family at an ice factory, but when Cheng starts working at the factory, he realizes that the boss is using the ice blocks to smuggle drugs. Shortly after this discovery, Cheng's cousins begin disappearing one by one, which leads Cheng and the rest of the workers at the factory to go on strike, demanding to know the whereabouts of Hsu Chien and the rest of their coworkers. When the boss's thugs try to break up the strike, Cheng jumps into the fray to defend his friends, breaking a vow made to his mother before leaving China that he would not get into any fights or trouble in Thailand. In an effort to reconcile with his workers, the big boss makes Cheng the factory foreman, but this only leads to him getting closer to discovering the true nature of the factory's business and putting him into direct conflict with the big boss and his cronies.
The Big Boss isn't a bad movie, but, as I alluded to, it definitely suffers from low production values and a lack of focus. It is obvious that the film had a somewhat fraught production. On-set injuries, poor shooting conditions, a revolving door of crew members, including the director, and, at times, disagreements between Lee and Wei on the vision of the film all added up to make the end result a bit of a mess. The film's first half gets started much too slowly, with the focus primarily on Hsu Chien rather than Cheng, perhaps a holdover from the original intention for the film to be a vehicle to escalate Tien's existing popularity in Hong Kong. Using the narrative excuse that Cheng promised his mother that he would avoid violence, Lee's character is largely brushed to the side while Tien gets all of the fighting scenes. While Tien grabs the spotlight, Lee plays out a mildly incestuous and totally unnecessary romantic hero side plot with his only female cousin, Chiao Mei (Yi). When Cheng finally breaks his vow to his mother and Lee gets to showcase some of his fighting skills, it's very obvious that he is a much better martial artist than Tien, and it's hard for me to accept not having enjoyed the clinic that Lee puts on in the film's second half for the full runtime.
Unfortunately, even when Lee is allowed to fully showcase his kung fu, his skills are undercut by the film's persistently bad editing. During fight scenes, Lee is rarely shot in full shot, instead his movements are implied by a series of quick cuts from insert shots and close-ups. The shooting angles are often disorienting, and the camera movements lack any fluidity making many of the fights featuring Lee difficult to really follow and enjoy. I'm sure that most of the jarring cuts in the film's fight scenes were efforts to hide the fact that during production Lee was shooting through both illness and injury, but that doesn't make the lack of any coherent flow or rhythm to the fight scenes any less obtrusive. Add to this the fact that the beginning of the film hardly features Lee in an action role, and The Big Boss is rather disappointing as a martial arts film, on the whole. Lee and Wei would correct some of these mistakes and turn out a much more enjoyable and consistent effort with their next film, but The Big Boss still has the marks of a partnership that is being felt out, and a star persona that is just beginning to emerge.
One of the factors contributing to my disappointment in rewatching The Big Boss might be the absolute terrible quality of the transfer on the DVD that I have in my collection. I can remember purchasing this DVD, which is essentially a decently-packaged bootleg from a foreign distributor, when I was about 19. Around that time, I started finding and purchasing very inexpensive copies of kung fu movies online, but the quality of the image and the presentation, in general, was highly variable. This movie is packaged as Fists of Fury, which was the incorrect title that The Big Boss was released under in America, hence its position here in the alphabetical list of my collection, and the disc contains no special features or booklet, just a poor quality copy of the official theatrical release cut of the film. It's only audio track is the poorly dubbed English-language version, which I actually prefer for these types of old school kung fu movies, but it would be interesting to watch the film in its native language. I understand that by now there have been several remastered official home video releases of The Big Boss and Lee's other Hong Kong films, so I would be interested to check out a better looking copy of the movie and see if it changes my opinion of it at all.
I don't mean to paint The Big Boss in too negative a light, because it is still a pretty fun kung fu movie in its own right. Despite its shortcomings, fans of the genre will absolutely find plenty to enjoy about the movie. It checks off all of the correct campy boxes, features a few fun fights, and, obviously, it's still a Bruce Lee movie. Lee's relatively small body of major work remains the gold standard in martial arts films for many people, and it would be hard to argue with that sentiment. Lee was the perfect combination of skill, athleticism, and charisma to break martial arts into the mainstream in the West, and the building blocks of his style are on display here. One thing that I did think about when I was watching The Big Boss was how remarkable Lee's progression as an actor and star was from this first feature to his later films, Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon. There are less than two years separating the Hong Kong release of The Big Boss and Lee's untimely death, and to think that his career had progressed so quickly and positively in that time is incredible to me, especially having recently watched Enter the Dragon for this project. It's hard to predict where Lee's career would have gone after the success of that film, but his rise to fame started with The Big Boss, and even if it doesn't feature Lee at the height of his powers, it's worth at least a watch.
May 6, 2018 May 1, 2018 / andrewmisk / 4 Comments
Fight Club (1999)
Dir. David Fincher
Written by: Jim Uhls (from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk)
Starring: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham-Carter
Over the years, media collections have always served as markers of an individual's personal tastes. An album collection, a bookshelf, or a list of favorite movies can be a representation of one's personality and interests that they can cultivate and put on display for the world to see, a Rosetta stone to unlock the mystery of someone's cultural affinities. The media that we choose to collect and value can make an important statement about our personal identities. While much of my collection is probably a testament to my overall movie snobbery, there are certain movies in it that are so culturally universal and so definitive of a time and a place in American cinematic cultural history that they fail to reveal much about my actual personal tastes. Just like "Rubber Soul" or "Four Way Street" in my mother's album collection, there are simply certain movies that it seems like everyone who was alive and consuming mass culture during a certain time can agree upon, and seems to have a copy of floating around in their collection somewhere. Fight Club is one of these universal movies for people, such as myself, who came of age in the late 1990s.
Despite being only a modest box office success, Fight Club is the movie that helped put both David Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk on the cultural map in a big way. Fincher already had a few features under his belt, including his helming of a major misstep in the Alien franchise, and his redemptive efforts in directing the cult hits The Game and Se7en. Palahniuk became a household name after the film adaptation of his first novel became a cult hit and a cultural touchstone. Fight Club's story of disaffected, displaced masculinity, embodied by the Narrator (Norton), came to resonate with a generation of young men who identified with the film's anti-corporate message and with its ultraviolent content. The film sees the Narrator leave a comfortable white collar job after a chance meeting with Tyler Durden (Pitt), a misanthrope and social provocateur who comes up with the idea for a secret club that can help men struggling with a perceived loss of agency in the face of societal change. Tyler and the narrator found Fight Club, a secret underground fighting league in which men can vent the frustrations of existing in a post-Industrialist, post-Feminist world through brutal fist fights. The fights help these aimless men feel alive and vital, giving them a sense of belonging and purpose, and Fight Club begins to spread across the country, with its adherents praising Tyler like a cult leader. Eventually, Fight Club begins to change into a more organized and militant force, Project Mayhem, as Tyler's devotees begin to engage in more bombastic, socially motivated acts of vandalism and anti-corporate mischief. The Narrator starts to worry that Project Mayhem has gotten out of control, but there doesn't seem to be much he can do to stop the momentum that Tyler has built in creating an army.
I can remember watching Fight Club for the first time with one of my best friends when we were sophomores in high school, a year or two after it had been out in theaters. We watched the movie on VHS and I was taken in by its highly stylized visuals and its hip, sardonic take on modern workplace culture. I clung to Tyler Durden's sloganeering in the film, taking phrases like "How can you know anything about yourself if you've never been in a fight," and "You are not your fucking khakis," to heart and starting to turn them into the building blocks of my nascent teenaged personality. I found Fight Club's anti-corporate, anarchic sensibilities to be mature and enlightened viewpoints, and the film's overall theme of rejecting societal expectations in favor of a return to a primal sort of self-exploration truly resonated with my developing worldview. Eventually, I bought the movie on DVD, and I became totally obsessed with it. I watched it over and over again, listening to various commentary tracks, watching deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes vignettes. Even though I already knew the outcome of Fight Club's famous twist ending, I didn't care, and I reaped just as much enjoyment from my tenth viewing of the film as I had from that first time watching it. Fight Club was exactly the sort of smart, stylish, edgy movie that boosted my credentials as a fan of "important" movies, and when I moved to Pittsburgh for college, I chose to display my tastes for the world to see by purchasing a Fight Club poster and tacking it to the wall of my first dorm room.
It's easy to see why Fight Club became such a hit with a generation of movie watchers. The movie is perfect for the DVD era, with its dense and twisting narrative rewarding repeat views. Its cutting edge visuals, for the time, were eye-popping in the relative high fidelity that DVD offered, and lent themselves well to the types of supplemental material that were popular on the prestige DVD releases of the early 21st century. These qualities, and the increasing affordability of collecting DVDs, led to Fight Club's ubiquity in millennials' movie collections and helped turn a box office disappointment into a run-away cult success that has garnered praise as one of the best films of its period. Though it tells the story of disaffected members of Generation X, who came of age in a rapidly changing world where the workplace success and stable domestic life that seemed to be enjoyed by their predecessors was rapidly eroding, Fight Club's sloganeering and paint-by-numbers approach to societal discord and extreme civil disobedience made it a perfect movie to be adopted by the next generation of young people who were actually coming of age upon the film's release. These teens and preteens took the movie's simplistic politics to heart and many started to form an identity based around the primal, uber-macho points of view that are embraced in Fight Club. Just like the members of Project Mayhem who mindlessly parrot Tyler's screeds and credos back to him and to each other, Fight Club's fans were having the film's messages drilled into their heads through repetitious viewing at home.
Of course, Fight Club is a work of satire and its politics and social commentary should be taken with a grain of salt. I recognized the film as such, and while I never espoused the macho posturing in the film, I was taken in by many of its more pointed social critiques, particularly its examination of the inability of the modern American worker to exist as anything other than an undifferentiated cog in a heartless, brutal corporate machine. I took to heart Tyler Durden's warning that "the things we own end up owning us," and tried to eschew materialist or corporatist urges, but I didn't need a movie to tell me that big businesses and corporations were bad for individuals, and that working people are endlessly exploited by a profit-hungry system of Capitalism that values them only for their productive capacity and not for their creative or humanistic qualities. Watching a movie like Fight Club helped to crystallize some of my beliefs, but as I got older, I started to see the fallacy in living your life by movie quotes or by letting a piece of pop culture become a guiding or defining part of your life and personality. I still enjoyed Fight Club as a movie, but eventually the poster came off of my wall, and my viewings of the film became fewer and more far between. Changing tastes and a broadening world view shifted my interests towards more intellectually rigorous and nuanced films, but Fight Club still existed in the background of my cinematic excursions, an old favorite waiting to be rediscovered in a new light, or simply to be returned to as a form of filmic comfort food.
While I have watched Fight Club a handful of times since it ceased to be a very important movie to me in my late teens and early twenties, I think that watching it for this project must have been my first time really sitting down and engaging with the movie in a deep and relevant way in close to a decade. The experience didn't disappoint, and, if anything, I found Fight Club to perhaps be more relevant today than it was when I first saw it almost twenty years ago. Watching a movie that attempts to explore the fragility of modern, white-collar, White American masculinity in the age of the Me Too movement and the resultant backlash from so-called "Men's Rights" advocates was an interesting experience, to say the least. It was difficult for me to watch Fight Club without coming to the realization that perhaps this ubiquitous movie could be, at least partially, to blame for a subset of the male population in my age group who seem bent on creating grievances and blaming the world, and particularly women, for their own shortcomings or disappointments in life. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these Men's Rights types held Fight Club in high esteem, while certainly missing the movie's satirical critique of the macho culture that it depicts. Tyler Durden, and the club that he creates, are responses to the perceived marginalization of the White American male, in the face of increased visibilities and opportunities for women, people of color, and other traditionally marginalized groups. In the film, the formation of a heterosocial group, in which physical assault is the only outlet for these men to feel alive or to come into contact with their own conflicted, and conflicting, emotional centers, is celebrated as a return to some sort of male primacy. However, as the film shows, embracing that vicious, violent form of machismo has deadly consequences for many of the characters, and leads to a series of counterproductive and empty revolutionary gestures. Fight Club should be read as a cautionary tale for men against letting too much of the Id control our behaviors, but instead I think that there is a large portion of the movie's fandom that sees it as a primer and a call to arms against societal strictures that are "emasculating" a generation of men.
I guess the question that I was left with after rewatching Fight Club and thinking about the movie in the context of its potential role in creating, or at the very least reaffirming the beliefs of, a group of vile, hateful men, was whether or not the film's positive qualities outweigh the connection that I've now made between the movie and a real world ethos that I find incompatible with my own point of view. In the end, I think that I still enjoy Fight Club. Although I've found Palahniuk to be something of a provocateur in his own right, I find it hard to believe that either he or Fincher would support the reading of this text that I'm imagining some fans clinging to. Perhaps because the film isn't ostensibly branded as a comedy, its satirical point of view is easier to lose, but I think that most viewers will very easily realize that Tyler is the film's antagonist, rather than an idol to be worshipped. As a movie, Fight Club still holds up visually in spite of two decades of technical progression since its release. The film's gritty, grimy visual aesthetic is perfect, and finds Fincher expanding on the visual aesthetic of his earlier films to incorporate limited CGI, and employing some flashier camera work and editing than he had previously in his feature films. Its twisting, non-linear narrative is still a joy to unpack, and the film's pacing is spot on, with its lengthy runtime seeming to fly by. Fight Club is a movie that is indelibly of its time, both in terms of its larger context and its role in my own personal development as a film viewer, but like other great movies it remains culturally and cinematically relevant. Great art should be a mirror for the society that produces it, and Fight Club uses its violent, satirical narrative to great critical effect, but there's often no accounting for the ways that an audience will warp and distort that reflection based on their own prejudices and predilections.
March 18, 2018 March 15, 2018 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment
Enter the Dragon (1973)
Dir. Robert Clouse
Written by: Michael Allin
Starring: Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Jim Kelly, Shih Kien
I'm not sure exactly when I first saw Enter the Dragon. It wasn't the first movie starring Bruce Lee that I ever saw, nor was it my first foray into the kung-fu genre, but I do know that it made quite an impact on me at a fairly young age. For many people, Enter the Dragon stands as the high water mark of the classic era of kung-fu movies, and I don't think that it's a stretch to call it the most well-known mainstream martial arts film of all time. Lee's star appeal was just beginning to break through in the United States, and Enter the Dragon was set to be his triumphant entryway into mainstream action filmmaking. However, Lee tragically passed away shortly before the film's release, making Enter the Dragon the last film that he would live to complete. Though he left behind a relatively scant filmography, only starring in a handful of films, Lee has become synonymous with martial arts cinema, and is still one of the most widely recognized and celebrated martial artists to ever grace the screen. Instead of serving as a launching point into greater stardom, Enter the Dragon now serves as a reminder of Lee's athletic ability, charisma, and viability as an action star.
Enter the Dragon marks a diversion from traditional kung-fu narratives of the time, including significant Western influences and playing out something like a blend of a James Bond spy thriller and a traditional martial arts film. In the film, Lee (Lee) is approached by a British intelligence agency and is encouraged to enter into a martial arts tournament held on a mysterious island owned by Mr. Han (Kien), a suspected crime lord. While attending the tournament, Lee is to investigate Han's compound and find evidence of his involvement with prostitution and drug trafficking. Lee agrees to attend the tournament after learning of his sister's death at the hands of one of Han's bodyguards, O'Hara (Bob Wall), and vows to avenge her death, as well as bring down Han's crime syndicate. When he arrives on Han's island, Lee meets Roper (Saxon), a gambling addict on the run from the mob, and Williams (Kelly), a Vietnam veteran on the run from the police. The three men are obviously the most skilled fighters in the tournament, and they quickly dispatch of their opponents, although each of them runs afoul of Han in some way for disobeying the rules of his island. By night, Lee infiltrates Han's compound and discovers the extent of his smuggling operations, although he is captured by Han's guards. Meanwhile, Han has tried to recruit Roper to his syndicate, but Roper refuses when he realizes that Han has murdered his friend Williams. The next day, Han orders Roper and Lee to fight each other, and when Roper again refuses to be used as Han's pawn, a melee breaks out which leads to Lee pursuing and eventually killing Han in an epic fight. With Han defeated, Lee and Roper await the arrival of the British helicopters on their way to recover Han's prisoners and clean up the last of his criminal operations.
The influence of Enter the Dragon can't be understated. The film was a box office and critical success, earning $25 million in American box office receipts alone, against a shoestring budget of less than $1 million. As I mentioned, the film marked the real introduction of Western audiences to Hong Kong cinema and martial arts cinema, in general. Far from being just a martial artist, Lee served as a cultural ambassador and representative of Chinese philosophy for many American audiences who were unfamiliar with the tenets of martial arts. Without the success of Enter the Dragon, I really doubt that American audiences would have ever experienced the films of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, or scores of other martial artists who would emerge as key action stars both in Asia and in America in the years to come. The popularity of Enter the Dragon also kicked off a fervid interest in martial arts in America, with kids all over starting to take kung-fu and karate lessons, emulating their onscreen hero, and embracing the strength, hard work, and discipline that martial arts training instills in its adherents. Simply put, Enter the Dragon was one of the most culturally significant films of the 1970s.
As a film, Enter the Dragon is a joy to watch. Though it was shot on a limited budget and under unique constraints due to language barriers between the American and Chinese crews, as well as creative disagreements between Lee and screenwriter Michael Allin, the finished film is a thing of beauty. The setting of Han's island is lush and vibrant, and his compound is a visually rich location that hints at the opulence that a life of crime can afford him. The film is perfectly paced, and though it is light on the exposition, it delivers on the promise of great action. Its espionage scenes are tense and exciting, underscored by a funky jazz score from one of the great film composers of the 1970s, Lalo Schifrin. The fight scenes, all of which were conceived of and choreographed by Lee, are shot impeccably, capturing the aggression and grace of the fighters perfectly. The film's climactic showdown between Lee and Han, in which the pair eventually square off in a hall of mirrors is a stunning cinematic achievement. The precision with which the scene must have been filmed is hard to fathom, and I still don't know how the crew managed to pull it off. It's one of the most memorable fight scenes in the martial arts genre, and the image of hundreds of mirror images of Bruce Lee repeating into the background as he stalks Han through the mirrored room is one of the genres indelible calling cards.
Kelly and Saxon certainly hold their own in their fight scenes, but Lee is the obvious star of the show. His lithe physicality is on display throughout the film, and his fight scenes capture the effortless way in which he cycles through movements, countering and striking with such ease and skill that he seems imbued with an innate sense of placement and momentum that the other martial artists simply don't have. More than his obvious physical prowess, which had been on display in his other films, Enter the Dragon gave Lee the chance to introduce the philosophy behind his martial arts to the Western world. Particularly early in the film, Lee takes the opportunity to expound upon the ways in which his martial arts practice emphasizes living a balanced and harmonious lifestyle. Lee saw his martial arts as a form of self-expression, and his journey in life as one of constant self-improvement and of increasing the knowledge of self. Though much of the content relating to Lee's philosophies and to Chinese philosophy, in general, was excised from the original American theatrical cut of the film, these scenes were reintroduced to later home video releases, and I think that the film is better off for it. If Enter the Dragon is to be seen as Lee's magnum opus, it must contain at least some of the revolutionary thinking that he espoused and that ran as an undercurrent to his martial arts.
Though it isn't my absolute favorite martial arts movie, or my favorite Bruce Lee movie (that's Way of the Dragon, which I no longer own), Enter the Dragon is a classic, and an interesting look at what might have been had Lee lived longer and continued making films in Hollywood. Lee's impact on the action film scene of the 1970s was seismic, launching a kung-fu craze that lasted long after the release of this film and, of course, long after his untimely death. The film is often imitated, but never duplicated, and it serves as a perfect entry point for the uninitiated into classic kung-fu films. It has all the campiness and action that fans of the genre are looking for, but it's also a film that is clearly grounded in Lee's unique philosophical viewpoint. Lee's star burned so brightly and his legend grew so outsize after American audiences got a taste of his prowess in Enter the Dragon that the film's director cobbled together the film Game of Death from outtakes and partial scenes that Lee had filmed before beginning work on Enter the Dragon. Though his image and reputation have often been traded on in the decades since his death, mostly to diminishing returns, such is the quality and intensity of Lee's small filmography that he will be forever seen as an action film legend. Lee was already a star by 1973, but when Enter the Dragon was released, he became an icon.
February 25, 2018 February 16, 2018 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment
Duck You Sucker (1971)
Dir. Sergio Leone
Written by: Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Donati, Sergio Leone
Starring: Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Romolo Valli
I can't believe I hadn't watched this great Western until today. I've been a big fan of Sergio Leone since I was a teen, but his final Western, Duck You Sucker, had eluded me until a few years ago. I fell in love with Leone when I was 17 and I saw The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for the first time. I was taken by the grandiosity of the film, its famous, epic Ennio Morricone score, Leone's unique approach to montage and framing, and the performances of its titular trio as three outlaws whose paths are set on a collision course. I instantly wanted more films like this one, and I sought out the rest of Leone's "Dollars trilogy," Leone's first three films which all starred Clint Eastwood in one of his early signature roles. I eventually tracked down Leone's last two films, as well, Once Upon A Time in the West and Once Upon A Time in America, with the former becoming another of my very favorite films of all time, along with The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Duck You Sucker, however, was a film that I didn't even know existed until I was in my early twenties, and it was introduced to me as a somewhat "lost" Leone classic. Unlike Leone's other films, this film was not as well received outside of his native Italy, so it didn't gain wide distribution, and was difficult to screen until a series of remasters of Leone's catalog in the 2000s led to its restoration and re-release on home video. I picked up a copy of the film on DVD at an FYE store that was going out of business in 2014 and it sat on my shelf, unwatched, for the next few years. When I conceived of the idea for this project, I just decided to wait until Duck You Sucker's time came up for my initial screening. I'm glad to have finally gotten around to it, because this is a movie that I'd been anticipating for a long time, and I wish that I wouldn't have waited so long to watch it because it is every bit as entertaining as any of Leone's other masterful films.
Duck You Sucker, or A Fistful of Dynamite or Once Upon A Time in the Revolution, depending on which version of the film you've seen and where, is set in the 1910s during the Mexican Revolution. It opens with Juan Miranda (Steiger), the head of a family of bandits, waylaying a stage coach and robbing its wealthy, Anglo occupants of their belongings and money. While the family are counting their spoils, they hear a series of explosions in a nearby canyon, and a masked rider on a motorcycle emerges from the smoke and rubble. The rider is John Mallory (Coburn), a former bomb maker for the IRA, who has fled his home country and sought refuge in Mexico. Seeing John's proficiency with explosives and noting the similarity of their names, Juan suggests that their meeting must be destiny, and attempts to convince the Irishman to help him and his family break into the National Bank in Mesa Verde. John is committed to the revolutionary cause in Mexico, and sees an opportunity to use Juan in service to the revolution, so he allows him to believe that he is on board with the robbery. When the unlikely pair of allies arrives in Mesa Verde, they find it occupied by the army and meet with other revolutionaries, led by Dr. Villega (Valli), who is orchestrating a coordinated attack in the town. Juan and John hit the bank, along with Juan's family, as a part of this attack, but when they start blowing open vaults, they find them stuffed with political prisoners instead of cash and jewels. Juan is incensed at being tricked, but finds himself lauded as a hero of the revolution when the attack is over for his role in freeing hundreds of prisoners. With the revolutionaries on the run after the attack, Juan and his family stay with John, although the former expresses some distaste for revolutions in general, noting that though it is academics who theorize social revolution, it is the poor who are actually called to enact it with violence and loss of life. Despite these reservations, Juan helps John to destroy an army detachment by blowing up a bridge, but while Juan is away from his family, they and dozens of other revolutionaries are slaughtered by the army. Juan is heartbroken, and strikes out on his own, though he is quickly captured and is facing a firing squad. John arrives just in time to save his friend, with a well-placed stick of dynamite, and his trademark cry of, "Duck, you sucker," and the two escape on John's motorcycle, recommitting themselves to the revolution, and to vengeance for Juan's murdered family.
For fans of Leone's films, Duck You Sucker should feel familiar, as it borrows elements from his previous Westerns, and is dripping with Leone's unmistakable directorial aesthetic. Leone's unique vision of the American West (primarily captured through substituting Italian and Spanish locales), is evident from the first shots of the film. The sun-drenched landscape, and the sunbaked people who exist within it are similar to the ones we've seen in Spaghetti Westerns before. Juan and John form the same sort of unlikely duo that we've seen in For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, teaming up to achieve a certain goal despite their differences in motive, and their initial distrust. Leone's films are often peopled by outlaws, grifters, and malcontents, and these two feel right at home in that world. Juan is essentially a stock Leone character, one that would often by played by Eli Wallach, and John is a variation on the Man With No Name character made famous by Eastwood, although Coburn does put a unique spin on the trope. I don't say all this to make Duck You Sucker seem derivative, because it takes these familiar elements and uses them in service of a narrative that is more nuanced and cynical than those of Leone's earlier films, but to say that it is yet another example of a masterful filmmaker having established, and honed, his cinematic voice. Where Leone's famous close ups and quick zooms were once mere stylistic tricks, highlighting the grimy, gritty nature of his version of the West and helping to create kinetic effects within his often still visual compositions, here they are often used in ironic counterpoint. Leone is retaining his visual style, but flipping its intended meaning on its head in service of a larger narrative argument that he's making throughout the film.
Though he claims that he did not intend to make a political film, I don't see any other way of reading Duck You Sucker. From the outset, the film asks its audience to consider issues of race and class, as they pertain to political revolution. Even setting aside the film's epigraph, a quote from Mao about the necessity of violence in revolution, which was, predictably, excised from the film's U.S. release, Duck You Sucker is still the most overtly political of all of Leone's films. The opening stage coach scene, in which Juan is racially abused and mocked by a coach full of well-to-do Anglos, including a priest, is a perfect example of Leone using his trademark style in the service of this politically motivated criticism. The scene is shot in typical Leone fashion, utilizes a lot of quick cuts and eyeline matches, and a camera framing that is steadily bringing us closer and closer to the subjects. As the racial animus that the wealthy passengers are directing towards Juan starts to reach a head, Leone opts to cut to close ups of their mouths, gorging on food, spitting flecks of it from their lips with each invective. Leone visually links the ugliness of their attitudes and speech to their disgusting manners, undercutting the veneer of polite society that they pretend to live within. Also, in predictably Leone-ian fashion, Juan gets the better of his fellow passengers through some underhanded trickery. He allows them to hurl their insults, and plays the role of the stupid Mexican well, knowing that just around the bend, his sons are waiting to ambush the coach and turn the power dynamic on its head. After being called an animal and a brute by the racist travelers, Juan is happy to oblige their stereotypes as he callously robs, beats, and strips them, leaving them for dead in the desert.
While the film, and by extension the filmmaker, doesn't make an overt political statement, there are more than enough indications throughout as to where the audience's sympathies are intended to lie. We are repeatedly shown the suffering of the individual and of the oppressed at the hands of the wealthy and those in positions of state-sanctioned power. Though I do believe that Juan's rejection of revolutionary action, which convinces the intellectual revolutionary John to throw away his Bakunin, should be taken as the sentiment closest to Leone's own feelings about war and revolution, I think that in this narrative the film is clearly favoring one side of the conflict over the other. The film has the highest body count of any Leone film, by far, and it depicts scores of both soldiers and citizens being killed, but only affords opportunities for pathos in the killings of citizens and revolutionaries. When an entire army battalion is dispatched of in the bridge explosion, they are as ants, crushed underfoot and easily forgotten about, but when Juan's family and the rest of the rebels are murdered in their beds, the camera makes it a point to linger on their faces, humanizing the dead and evoking strong pathos and sympathy within the audience. Leone said that he didn't intend anyone to read the film literally, and that the Mexican Revolution should be considered allegorically, but the repeated evocations of revolutionary conflicts across the globe doesn't really allow for any reading of the film aside from a political/social one.
But, even if one chooses not to consider the film's larger arguments and political implications, it's a masterful Western in the Italian style. Though he certainly wasn't the first Italian filmmaker to evoke the American West, Leone firmly established the Spaghetti Western aesthetic, and the genre found its Platonic ideal in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Once again, Leone perfectly captures the Spanish countryside, filming breathtaking vistas and deserts that stand in for Mexico. His images are, as usual, underscored by Ennio Morricone's breathtaking music, providing perfect accompaniment and counterpoint to the images. Morricone has scored some of my favorite films, and the themes in Duck You Sucker rank among his finest work. And, of course, the film features some strong performances from its leads. Despite not always seeing eye-to-eye with Leone, Steiger turns in a great performance as Juan Miranda, allowing an intellectualism and cunning to shine through the character's motivating greed and avarice. Coburn plays John Mallory as a world-weary, but not resigned, intellectual. He often seems bemused at the circumstances that have led him halfway around the world, but he rarely wanes in his principled dedication to revolutionary action. The two actors play off of one another well and make the unlikely bond between Juan and John feel not just realistic, but deep and true. By the film's end, it's clear that these characters have grown not just to respect one another, but to feel a close affinity and kinship with one another, despite their differences. Leone has maintained that the film is ultimately about their unlikely friendship, and that the revolution is just the setting that allows that story to take place, and if one wants to read the film that way, he or she certainly wouldn't be disappointed, either.
I really can't say enough good things about this movie. I'm kicking myself for not watching it sooner, because I think that I would have more insightful criticism to provide if I had a couple more screenings under my belt. I'm still trying to figure out exactly where Duck You Sucker should fit in the larger context of Leone's filmography, and of the Western genre, as a whole. It's a film that sees a legendary director starting to expand his palette while truly refining his signature style. Once Upon A Time in the West, the film that directly precedes this one in Leone's body of work, is truly an elegy for the American Western, and felt like it was closing a chapter on the director's career. So what, then, is Duck You Sucker? I think that it's an example of Leone trying to work out other artistic and narrative concerns within a familiar milieu. If the West of his earlier films represented a filter through which to understand Americanism from the perspective of an outsider, then should we read Mexico and the Revolution in Duck You Sucker as a filter through which to explore and understand human relations and power dynamics, generally? I'll need a few more viewings to truly settle my own thoughts on this movie, and I'm sure that I'll take that opportunity as soon as I'm able, which makes me really happy. Part of what I was hoping to do in this project was to potentially reassess my relationship and understanding of movies with which I was intimately familiar, through unfamiliar juxtapositions, or meeting a film text at a totally different point in my life. In this case, watching a new movie has helped me to reexamine my thoughts in regards to a filmmaker that I felt I was already intimately familiar with. Finally introducing myself to Duck You Sucker was a real pleasure, but the most fun thing about it was how it started the process of helping me rethink my own understanding of Leone's cinema. It felt like putting in a final puzzle piece and completing a picture. Of course, now I have the inspiring challenge of making sense of what that overall picture means to me.
February 18, 2018 February 15, 2018 / andrewmisk / 1 Comment
Drunken Master (1978)
Written by: Lung Hsiao, Ng See-yuen, Yuen Woo-ping
Starring: Jackie Chan, Yuen Siu-tien, Hwang Jang-lee
Drunken Master is one of the seminal classics of the kung fu genre. I didn't see the movie until after I had already become enamored with Hong Kong martial arts films and decided to trace the lineage back to some of the great films of the early period of the genre, but it's still a favorite of mine. Like many Americans getting into kung fu movies, my journey began with the films of Bruce Lee, and then jumped forward to the modern kung fu films of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, whose American films were becoming very popular around the time that I started high school. After I tired of their late 1990s and early 2000s era Americanized martial arts films, I started seeking out Chan's earliest work, and discovered a treasure trove of classic Hong Kong cinema. Jackie Chan has become a household name, and in many ways has come to signify a certain type of martial arts cinema. The roots of his particular blend of slapstick comedy and martial arts can be found on full display in Drunken Master.
The film casts Chan as the folk hero Wong Fei-hung, a revolutionary kung fu master who lived at the turn of the 20th century, and a common figure among popular martial arts media. In the film, young Wong is a troublemaker, who is only beginning his journey towards becoming a hero and martial artist. Wong is more interested in causing mischief with his friends and in picking fights than he is in learning the disciplines of kung fu, so his father, Kei-ying (Lam Kau), recruits the feared and legendary master Su Hua-chi (Yuen Siu-tien) to mentor the boy and mold him into a kung fu master. Master Su introduces Wong Fei-hung to a rigorous training regimen, meant to strengthen the pupil's mind and body in preparation for his learning of Master Su's secret style of kung fu, "drunken boxing." Though he initially bristles at the torturous training, Wong eventually falls in line after suffering an embarrassing thrashing from Thunderleg (Hwang Jang-lee), a local contract killer and bully. Wong masters drunken boxing just in time to save his father from Thunderleg, who has been hired to kill him by a business rival to whom the elder Wong will not sell his land.
Drunken Master wasn't Jackie Chan's first hit in Hong Kong, but it, along with its predecessor Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, also directed by Yuen Woo-ping, were Chan's true breakthroughs. The films established the comedic style of kung fu that the actor would become synonymous with, and ushered in a sea change in the genre. The films also helped Chan to step out from Bruce Lee's shadow, as he had been groomed as a potential successor to Lee as the next big star of Hong Kong action cinema. While Chan would go on to experience major success both at home and internationally, likely earning a place on the Mount Rushmore of modern action stars, he would do it through establishing a potent blend of comedy and action. Chan's unique style of martial arts, acrobatic and lithe, is on full display in Drunken Master, and his comedic timing is enhanced by the film's plot device that drunken boxing can only be optimally performed when under the influence of alcohol. Throughout the film, Chan glides through his fight scenes, displaying an oxymoronic graceful clumsiness and the sort of effortless physical timing that denotes a master. He nails his spots and his stunts, while maintaining the engagingly charismatic persona that makes him a star. Though the film doesn't feature the daredevil stunts that would become Chan's calling card later in his career, the seeds of his slapstick style of action comedy are clearly already on display.
Chan isn't the only engaging martial artist in the film, however. Drunken Master is full of great fight scenes that are entertaining, exciting, and funny. Yuen Woo-ping began his career with Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and used that film and this one to cement his style, going on to further his credentials by working with several legendary martial arts actors and further the blend of comedy and martial arts. Though much of his cast in Drunken Master is not as famous or accomplished as the actors who he would make his name with, Yuen helps his performers stand out in unique ways during their fight scenes. Hwang is the perfect villain in the film as Thunderleg, and Yuen uses the actor's physicality perfectly, crafting him as a traditionally one-dimensional, cruel and punishing villain. Though the Korean actor would continue to work in Korea and Hong Kong into the 1990s, Thunderleg is probably his signature role, and his unique fighting style in the film is memorable. Dean Shek, who had already been making films for Shaw Brothers Studios for a decade, stands out as Kai-hsien the assistant instructor at Wong Kei-ying's school, whom Wong Fei-hung and his friends bully early in the film. He provides a lot of comic relief early on and is a good foil for Jackie Chan. Yuen Siu-tien, Woo-ping's father and an established martial arts star, steals several scenes as Master Su. He plays the role of the drunk and the warrior equally well, snapping into action in the film's fight scenes, while he dodders around, casually abusing Wong, during its many training montages. The many different styles of kung fu on display, and Yuen Woo-ping's ability to excellently choreograph fight scenes that highlight those stylistic differences, make for a varied fight-fest that doesn't get bogged down in the repetition that can befall some lesser martial arts films.
The film is, admittedly, fairly light on plot, but I don't think that that is necessarily a bad thing. I don't really watch kung fu movies looking for intricately plotted narratives, and Drunken Master delivers on the promise of a fun, action-packed two hours of entertainment. The film's plot will be familiar to anyone who is familiar with the archetypal narrative of the hero's journey, generally, and intimately familiar to anyone who is familiar with kung fu films. It uses the traditional narrative of some outside force threatening the protagonist's village/family/martial arts school, and the protagonist having to train to defeat that outside force, and becoming a kung fu master in the process. While some of the specifics of this narrative are unique to Asian cultures, the narrative itself is universal and bears a great deal of similarity to the classic American Western. I have always felt that the Western and the Asian action genres of martial arts and samurai films have had a great deal in common and have regularly been in cinematic dialogue with one another. There are obvious examples of crossover with The Magnificent Seven being a direct adaptation of Seven Samurai, and with A Fistful of Dollars being adapted from Yojimbo, but I think that overall the genres are constantly influencing and informing one another. Specifically in Drunken Master, I think that Yuen Woo-ping shows the influence of Sergio Leone early in the film, particularly in the way he has characterized and chooses to frame Thunderleg. The sort of primal, direct narratives that Westerns and martial arts films traffic in are cut from the same cloth, despite cultural specificity, and the focus on "men of action," while perhaps outmoded, is certainly familiar. I guess it isn't surprising that these two genres are among my favorites, and that I'll generally be pretty satisfied to watch any Western or martial arts film.
Drunken Master is the sort of genre cornerstone that anyone who is interested in getting into kung fu movies, or Hong Kong cinema generally, should see. It is an early career classic from some of the central players in the New Hong Kong Cinema that would emerge in the 1980s, and its influence on the modern martial arts genre should not be understated. I don't know that I personally love the slapstick style of Jackie Chan and the extreme emphasis on comedy in his early kung fu films as much as the traditional wu xia inspired kung fu films of the Shaw Brothers, but Drunken Master is too fun not to enjoy. The film's fight choreography stands up to modern films, even 40 years after its release, thanks to the work of Chan and Yuen Woo-ping, both legends in the world of martial arts cinema. The film's injection of humor makes it a perfect starting point for people looking to start watching more kung fu movies, and the presence of a mega-star like Jackie Chan make it fairly easily accessible, as well. Martial arts films had already reached a high level of artistic accomplishment by the release of Drunken Master, but the film's success helped to reinvigorate the genre after the death of Bruce Lee, and helped to keep it relevant, if somewhat disregarded as "low art," with international audiences. The film's innovations wouldn't be fully realized until Chan broke through as a star in Hollywood in the early 1990s, bringing along with him a wave of Hong Kong action stars and American releases of their films, but without Drunken Master, it's arguable that this boom period for martial arts cinema wouldn't have happened. If you're only going to watch one kung fu movie, this might not be the Platonic ideal to choose, but if you want to explore the genre and seek out some of the more unique entries to its canon, Drunken Master can't be missed.
February 11, 2018 February 9, 2018 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment
Drug War (2013)
Dir. Johnnie To
Written by: Ka-Fai Wai and Nai-Hoi Yau
Starring: Honglei Sun and Louis Koo
Drug War is the perfect action thriller to follow up last week's movie, Don't Say A Word, and to help wash that viewing experience out of my consciousness. Drug War is a great action movie, suspenseful, stylish and original, perfectly paced and shot. I've written before about my fondness for Hong Kong action cinema developing early in my teens when my friends and I would borrow tapes from one of their fathers. During those early years, I associated Hong Kong cinema, and Asian action cinema, in general, with the kung fu movies of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li. It wasn't until college that I discovered the wide array of films that were common in Hong Kong cinema tradition, including beautiful ghost stories informed by Chinese mystic traditions, the aforementioned kung fu classics and wuxia epics, and, of course, gritty police procedurals, which became some of my favorites. Over the last decade, or so, my appreciation for Asian action cinema, in general, hasn't waned, with some of my favorite recent action films emerging from Hong Kong and Korea. I've found these imports to routinely be more unique and of a higher quality than the Hollywood action fare that is currently clogging the multiplex from April to October, and Drug War is certainly no exception.
Drug War is something of a hybrid of a procedural and action film, exploring both the tedious minutiae of day-to-day vice investigations, as well as the explosively dangerous situations that drug enforcement officers in China find themselves in when attempting to apprehend drug traffickers. The film opens with Timmy Choi (Koo), a drug manufacturer and trafficker, crashing his sports car into a shop window while fleeing from an explosion at his methamphetamine factory. Simultaneously, we witness a sting operation led by Captain Zhang (Sun), a vice cop, in which a busload of drug mules are apprehended. Choi is brought to the same hospital that is treating the mules, and Zhang realizes that the man is connected to the trafficking ring, and though he attempts an escape from the hospital, Choi is apprehended and offers to trade information in exchange for his life. With Choi's help, Zhang goes undercover, impersonating two different figures in the Chinese drug underground, and working his way into the organization. He is introduced to all facets of the drug trade, from manufacturing to distribution and trafficking, and he is gradually introduced to the major players of Choi's syndicate. Zhang sets up a deal, posing as "Haha" a drug trafficker who operates a port and is looking to ship the syndicate's drugs across the sea to Korea and Japan, but when it's time for the deal to go down, the gangsters discover that there's a rat in their midst, which prompts an epic battle in the streets between the police and the gangsters.
I think what I like the most about Drug War is that it feels authentic. Nothing about is glossy or over the top, and there's not an attempt to glorify either side of the conflict. The drug dealers aren't, for the most part, monsters, nor are the police shining white knights. Instead, both groups are depicted, realistically, as two sides of the same coin, having to come to unsteady alliances with one another in order to operate. Though Zhang isn't sure if he should fully trust Choi, he knows that he needs him for the access that he can provide to higher ups in the drug trade, and though Choi can't fully trust Zhang, he has to try to keep him happy or he'll face the death penalty. The pair's tenuous symbiosis is at the center of the film and it stands in for the larger parasite/host relationship that the drug traffickers share with society generally, as well as the predator/prey relationship that the police and the drug dealers share.
The film is also realistic in its depiction of police work. I'm a sucker for a good, slow-moving procedural, and though Drug War is a bit too action oriented to be a true procedural, I appreciate the fact that To chooses to slow the pace and put a damper on his typically bombastic brand of action cinema. Drug War takes special time to show the surveillance teams tensely listening in as Zhang goes undercover in a room full of dangerous criminals. It highlights the technology that the police rely on to gain information about their targets, as well as the planning and precision timing that are required to execute a successful raid or sting operation. We see teams of officers working in tandem, as a finely-oiled machine or a single-brained organism. This slow pace not only allows the audience to appreciate the complexity of the work that the officers are doing, it also creates a great deal of suspense throughout the film. Early in the film, To chooses to drag out several sequences, ratcheting up the tension as the audience shifts to the front of their collective seats, teasing a disastrous outcome for our protagonists, only to rectify the situation at the last minute, easing the tension and letting everyone take a quick breath. As Zhang gets closer and closer to the top of the Chinese drug underground, the stakes, and the suspense, only raise higher. The film, generally, is a slow build towards its ultimate violent denouement, punctuated throughout by short bursts of action, and the tension/release formula that To has mastered.
The payoff for all of that suspense is the film's explosively violent conclusion. To is known for his stylish depictions of violence, and the conclusion of Drug War doesn't disappoint on that front. To makes his film's big shootout poetic, capturing some two dozen players firing wildly in the street outside of a primary school, ducking in and out of cover, while his camera does the same, zooming in and out of the action, reframing the shots quickly to mimic the disorienting feeling of an extreme adrenaline rush. The camera often tracks out from the scene, affording the audience a glimpse of the whole street, which resembles a battlefield or chess board, reinforcing the idea that the individual players, be they cop or criminal, are the chess pieces in a larger game. Though this climactic gun battle is the film's most virtuosic set piece, it still maintains the overall gritty, realistic aesthetic of the film. There is none of John Woo's gun ballet on display here. In fact, To's decision to shoot on location gives the scene an eerie, news-like quality that drives home its realism. Simply put, the scene is a great action set piece.
Drug War is full of memorable scenes, but one that sticks out especially for me, is the extended scene early in the film in which we see Zhang go undercover as two different underworld figures, "Haha" and Li Shuchang, who couldn't be further apart in mannerism and personality. In the scene, Sun is asked to play three different characters, and he nails each one of them. Sun slides effortlessly from persona to persona, fooling the characters in the film as well as the audience. He first meets with Haha, where he must impersonate the stone faced Li Shuchang, saying very little, not allowing a glimpse into his internal processing. The scene then requires Sun to flip characters and impersonate Haha while meeting with the real Li, so he completely changes his physicality, loosening his gait and adopting Haha's gregarious carefree style of conversation. The meetings are all incredibly suspenseful, as the audience waits to see if Zhang's cover will be blown, but with Sun's perfect mimicry, there's never any real doubt. He doesn't break until after the deal between Haha and Li has been secured, and only then does Sun return to the Zhang character. He's taken too much cocaine, in order to sell his performance as Haha, and Sun enacts Zhang's panic and fear of an overdose perfectly. As soon as the real Li exits their meeting room, he drops the pretense of being Haha and collapses to the floor, writhing and screaming. The layers of this performance, with Sun playing Captain Zhang, who is in turn playing two roles in his undercover meetings, always stands out to me. The three performances are all markedly different, and they are all realized in about five minutes of screen time.
I don't typically go for action movies or thrillers much anymore, because they're often so derivative and one note, but movies like Drug War remind me that the genre is still quite fresh if you look beyond the scope of the Hollywood mainstream. It was on my top ten list in 2013, and it's still a pleasure to watch a few years later. Even though I know how the story unfolds and when the action set pieces fall, To's suspenseful film doesn't lose any of its effect. Drug War is an expertly timed and acted slow burn, and To's visual style keeps the audience immersed in the world of the film, typically hanging on the edge of their seats. The payoffs at the film's end are even more satisfying because the tension has been ratcheted so high throughout the earlier parts of the film, providing an appropriate give and take between the film's contrasting styles. When the violence does finally erupt in Drug War, it has a more cathartic effect than in a mindless action blockbuster because the film has taken the time to properly set the stage by developing its characters and their relationships to one another. It's a highly satisfying thrill ride and one that I'll be signing up for again many times in the years to come.