Forgive me, film freaks, for I have sinned. Despite claiming the title of movie buff at an early age, I somehow managed to resist the charms of the holy corpus known as the Hong Kong action film--a genre (or genres) that obsessed the cinema faithful for the better part of a decade. Don't ask me how, but the appeal of John Woo's The Killer managed to sail straight over my head, and as Woo's subsequent efforts made no dent on my consciousness, either, I wondered: if this is the top man in Hong Kong mayhem, how good could the runner-ups be?

But as I resisted exploring the nooks and crannies of Canto-pop, I felt vaguely guilty. Was I cheating myself out of some hidden treasures buried deep in the HK filmography? Was I being ignorant of a national cinema that extended beyond the ivory-tower confines of the likes of Wong Kar-wai? Was I a hypocrite for piling through mounds of Hollywood crap while sniffing at the chirpy innocence of someone else's pop culture? And so even as I sinned, I was tormented by the thought that something wonderful might have eluded my grasp.

But my absolution is at hand. The recent team-up of Fox and Fortune Star has resulted in a wide array of HK favourites hitting the street in new, minty-fresh transfers--many of which were offered to FFC for review. And so I find myself in the position of catching up with the national cinema that got away. Many of my worst suspicions were realized as I ploughed through a quartet of randomly-selected titles, which were as sketchily written, lackadaisically directed, and broadly acted as I had feared, but at least one of them suggested that there's something to the films that justifies their collective existence.

Heart of Dragon starts promisingly, with a group of cops fighting a group of thugs in yellow jumpsuits in a wooded area; the jumpsuit boys have the fighting edge, as well they should since they include Jackie Chan among their numbers. But what do you know, it's all a training exercise: Jackie's just a humble SWAT man who dreams, as all SWAT men do, of becoming a sailor. His main obstacle in this pursuit is Danny (Sammo Hung), his mentally disabled brother, who is continually getting into trouble and requires constant supervision. Danny is introduced to us running up a huge tab at a restaurant, getting beaten by the restaurant staff, and locking himself in cold storage--requiring the kung-fu efforts of Jackie to secure his release. After much melodramatic excess, Danny unwittingly comes into the possession of a cache of stolen jewellery, falls in with the mob, and requires rescue in an extended action sequence at a construction site.

Action is not the thing for most of Heart of Dragon--it's mostly a straight melodrama about Chan's desire to flee his brother and make a life for himself. As such, the film alternates scenes of Danny making a fool of himself with much wailing and gnashing of teeth on behalf of his brother and benefactor. To pull this off would require research and sensitivity, but nobody involved knows their way around either--Danny is a literal child with a bowl haircut and jolly jumper outfits, and his misadventures are either hilarious (as when he impersonates the father of one of his grade-school friends) or heart-wrenching (as when he seeks a job and is humiliated by a shop owner) in shameless and manipulative ways. In brief, the film manages to re-affirm all of my prejudices about HK movies: written on the fly, it's directed like traffic and acted as if attempting to land a jumbo jet.

Things improve somewhat with My Lucky Stars (also directed by and starring Hung), though not by much. This time, Jackie Chan is Muscles, a cop on the trail of master criminal Mashimoto. When his partner is kidnapped by Mashimoto's ninja thugs, Muscles is somehow moved to collect his criminal buddies "from the orphanage" to catch the culprits. Exeunt Jackie Chan: the rest of the film is a slob comedy in which Hung and the rest of the gang are collected one by one, blackmailed into participating, and do rascally things until Chan returns for the final fight scene. Along the way they vie for the attention of the female agent assigned to supervise the gang, which leads to some major audience discomfort as they arrange to be tied up with her, one after the other. (Long story.)

Creepy hijinks aside, My Lucky Stars at least has the advantage of not pretending to be a representation of reality--one is asked to respond not to the story but to the comic back-and-forth between Hung and his cohorts as they crack wise and abuse each other. But while that places it somewhere above Heart of Dragon, there's no getting around one problem: the jokes would embarrass a Police Academy sequel. Really, there's no excuse for one character's trying to drive while practicing ESP, or the zany confrontation with irate bus drivers, or most of the other broad attempts at humour that litter the film. All might not have been lost had these feeble bits been given timing and proportion by the director, but as Hung made two more movies that year, getting it done seems to have been more a priority than getting it done right. There's some nice interplay between the principal actors, but as far as their choice of scripts is concerned, their luck appears to have run out.

Reportedly one of the last of the classical "swordsman" films, Duel to the Death deals with a rapidly approaching fight between Chinese martial arts master Ching Wan (Tsui Siu Kang), and top Japanese ninja fighter Hashimoto (Damian Lau). Unfortunately for the pair of them, intrigue seems to be upstaging the actual competition: a band of ninjas has stolen a crucial Chinese manuscript and keeps re-appearing in various forms to cause chaos. As it turns out, the Japanese are plotting to capture China's finest fighters in order to render them powerless; Ching Wan and Hashimoto must put their differences aside to foil the most dishonourable plan to tip the scales in Japan's direction.

This one almost makes it over the top. For starters, more care is taken in both writing and direction: not only is there interesting use of space in some courtyard scenes, but the expression of Chinese resentment towards Japan is deployed with some cleverness, as in an early scene in which elders from both countries compare notes and argue superiority. And the fight scenes are very, very, very elaborate, as when the ninjas silently swoop in on kites or form one giant super-ninja before exploding into action. But somehow, it doesn't take these elements far enough--the action scenes just sort of hang in space, trivialized by the increasingly ridiculous machinations of the plot. One gets the feeling that the filmmakers wanted to do something meaty but chickened out at the last minute, making one yearn for the better film that might have been.

Michelle Yeoh is the main event in Magnificent Warriors, an Indiana Jones rip-off set in 1938. She's Fok Ming-ming, a bullwhip-slinging, biplane-flying dynamo who takes no guff and takes no prisoners. At film's beginning, she's selling arms to villagers and then punishing them for non-payment; clearly a candidate for espionage, it's no surprise when she's sent on a mission to rescue an agent gathering intelligence on the encroaching Japanese. Unfortunately, her plane's gas tank in punctured on the way over, requiring a refill somewhere in town. Worse, the town in question is completely under the thumb of the Japanese, making extraction of both spy and fuel a tad difficult.

By all rights, I should have hated this film. It's derivative, it's not interested in character, it's not especially good-looking--it even features an embarrassing scene involving a man in a bathtub. But there's something spirited about this film that lifts it above the pack. At worst, it suggests the work of people excited by the prospect of making it at all--care has been taken to ensure the action scenes come off as big and not perfunctory, and while one doesn't want to fall into the trap of calling the martial arts "balletic," there's no denying that they have a creative ingenuity that the other movies don't possess. Standing front and centre is Yeoh, an actress seemingly thrilled by the prospect of being there even as she performs punishingly difficult stunts--she's the stuff matinee idols are made of, and her enthusiasm helps pull Magnificent Warriors through whatever dry patches it might have. This is where I learn to stop worrying and love HK action--a few more movies like this, you just might number me as a convert.

Heart of Dragon's 1.85:1 anamorphic video transfer does well for itself. Aside from some murky blacks, definition is sharp and colours are vivid without looking too saturated. The 5.1 sound, meanwhile, is very good in either Dolby Digital or DTS, with a slight difference between excellent (the punchy, articulated DD mix) and outstanding (the seamless surround of DTS). As for extras, two deleted actions scenes grace the disc; although it's impossible to ascertain where they might have fit in the narrative, they are twice as lively as anything in the film proper. Two trailers for the film (old and new) are included, as well as trailers for City Hunter, Magnificent Butcher, Magnificent Warriors, Naked Killer, and Hong Kong 1941.

Meanwhile, My Lucky Stars is not really so lucky when it comes to the transfer. While the 1.78:1, 16x9-enhanced image is several cuts above an alternative video store dupe, it's somewhat lacking in the definition department--blacks are often flecked with white and slight fuzziness mars the picture. It's a toss-up as to which sound configuration is superior here: both formats, DTS and Dolby Digital, rise to the occasion in rendering a not-terribly-complex original mix with sharpness and punch (DD) and a round, blended harmony (DTS). The only extras are the film's new and old trailers, and trailers for Duel to the Death, City Hunter, In the Line of Duty 4, Hong Kong 1941, Eastern Condors, and Magnificent Butcher.

The Duel to the Death transfer--anamorphically letterboxed at 2.35:1--leaves a lot to be desired. The image is clear and vivid enough during daylight scenes, but night scenes are near disastrous, with flecks of white playing hell in shots of the mildest darkness. Extremely poor shadow detail repeatedly bedevils the picture. The sound--in both DD 5.1 and DTS--is a vast improvement, though again the original recording is far from optimum. In this case, the DD mix has the minor edge on DTS: while the former renders the elements with crispness and excellent definition, the DTS tends to hit the reverb a little too often and blends its elements with a slight muddiness. The only extras are the film's trailers (an old one and a new one) as well as trailers for Magnificent Warriors, Naked Killer, City Hunter, Magnificent Butcher, Hong Kong 1941, Eastern Condors, In the Line of Duty 4, and Heart of Dragon.

The Magnificent Warriors disc is the only one loaded with extras--and the only one to feature Dolby 5.1 sound only. As far as the 2.35:1 anamorphic image is concerned, it gets by all right. Day scenes are slightly bleached out and night scenes often suffer from jaggies, but the definition is fairly crisp and nothing is indiscernible. The aforementioned 5.1 mix is actually pretty sharp, and if it doesn't use of the surround channels with any particular brilliance, there's at least one explosion that will make you thankful for owning a subwoofer.

Extras begin with two solid individual interviews with Michelle Yeoh (7 mins.) and stunt coordinator Tung Wai (13 mins.). Yeoh recalls Warriors as being her toughest shoot (especially the bullwhip scenes) and compares American and HK practices while Tung explains his procedures on the film and reminisces about colleagues Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Bruce Lee. Additionally find a photo gallery for the film proper, a separate photo gallery/bio of Michelle Yeoh, a huge selection of promotional materials, production notes (just a plot synopsis, cast and crew names in English, and Yeoh's filmography), trailers for the film (both new and old), and trailers for Heart of Dragon, Kiss of the Dragon, The Transporter, City Hunter, Naked Killer, Magnificent Butcher, and Hong Kong 1941.-Travis Hoover

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
90 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
Cantonese DD 5.1,
English DTS,
Cantonese DTS
CC
No
Subtitles
English
DVD-9
Region One
Fox

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or Compare Prices

DVD VITALS:
Running Time
96 minutes
MPAA
PG-13
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
Cantonese DD 5.1,
English DTS,
Cantonese DTS
CC
No
Subtitles
English
DVD-9
Region One
Fox

Buy at Amazon USA
Buy at Amazon Canada
or Compare Prices

DVD VITALS:
Running Time
87 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.35:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
Cantonese DD 5.1,
English DTS,
Cantonese DTS
CC
No
Subtitles
English
DVD-9
Region One
Fox

Buy at Amazon USA
Buy at Amazon Canada
or Compare Prices

DVD VITALS:
Running Time
91 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.35:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
Cantonese DD 5.1
CC
No
Subtitles
English
DVD-9
Region One
Fox

the critic

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Published: February 5, 2004