FILM REVIEW: THE RAID 2

A scene from The Raid 2. 

Spray cans of whoop ass

By John Esther

Three years after the 2011 film, The Raid: Redemption, writer-director Gareth Evans returns with the highly anticipated, vehemently violent sequel, The Raid 2. 

Essentially commencing where The Raid: Redemption finished, the sequel finds the protagonist, Rama (Iko Uwais) going undercover to infiltrate a crime syndicate and bring everybody down, especially the crooked cops at the top. 

As Rama falls deeper and deeper into his undercover role, he begins to lose his senses of what is right and wrong, incrementally becoming more punitive toward his aggressors. Of course, in a society where cops and government officials are as crooked as the gangsters, who can tell what is right and wrong? The only thing to know for sure is how to survive and fight another day.

As gratuitously violent as any insane person would want it to be, The Raid 2 makes the balletic violence in 300: Rise of an Empire and the ejaculatory explosions in Need for Speed look like bloody adolescent-minded masturbation (even more so than before). Here in The Raid 2, faces are bludgeoned, legs are snapped, heads are smashed, arms are amputated, etc., via baseball bats to the head, hammers to the throat, knives to the chest, etc. There is also a lot of death-by-furniture. Only the insecure need a gun to fight here in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

For a while the martial arts choreography make the violence somewhat entertaining, or thrilling at least. Perhaps it is psychologically appealing? There is something deeply existential about seeing Rama trapped in a situation, facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles and then watch him think, or respond, using his mental and physical skills, his way out of the situation. Who does not wish he or she could master the environment like Rama?

However, after a while, the violence becomes a means unto itself in this 150-minute film. Each fight becomes prolonged and belligerent, thrusting the earlier thrills of the film into plotting mechanics as Rama must work his way through a game of death until all evildoers are vanquished. Ultimately, the martial artistic choreography becomes bloodthirsty pornography. 

FILM REVIEW: IP MAN THE FINAL FIGHT

A scene from Ip Man: The Final Fight.

Fighting history

By John Esther

Over the past five years there has been a great influx of films about Ip Man (AKA Yip Man), a Chinese martial artist whose greatest claim to fame is that he taught Wing Chun to martial artist legend Bruce Lee.

In 2008, Donnie Yen starred as the titular character in Ip Man, and then reprised the role in the 2010 film, Ip Man 2. That same year, The Legend is Born – Ip Man was released. Ip Man also appeared in the 2010 Chinese TV series, The Legend of Bruce Lee as well as the current Chinese TV series, The Legend of Ip Man. Noted director Wong Kar-wai’s recent film, The Grandmaster, stars Tony Leung as the great master in 1930s China. And now comes director Herman Yau and writer Erica Lee’s version, Ip Man: The Final Fight.

Something of a part III to the Yen films, Ip Man: The Final Fight focuses on the later years of Ip Man (Anthony Wong) as he is once again forced to save the day. This time the enemy is organized crime, which has been allowed to run rampant by the powers that be in order to break up the unions.

Like the Ip Man films starring Yau, Ip Man: The Final Fight paces itself quite nicely, for the most part, between story and choreographed martial arts. Unlike many an American action film, Ip Man: The Final Fight begins with story before swinging in action – which is only a brief scene to establish Ip Man’s martial arts superiority and why people wanted to learn from him. However, as the film progresses there are quite a few fight scenes which are forced, but is that not what the audiences are here: to see some fights!

While the film is adequately entertaining as an action film and politically significant as the unions are shown in a positive light, Ip Man: The Final Fight, like the Yen films, takes great autobiographical liberties with its protagonist. While some liberties may be “excused” for dramatic effect (such as the film’s portrayal of Ip Man’s martial arts schools on the rooftop), trying to rewrite history is another thing. In real life, Ip Man was a cop and member of the Chinese Nationalist Party, so it would have been nearly impossible that he would have fought on the side of labor. Then there is a scene where he scolds his new and younger love, Jenny (Zhou Chuchu), for using opium during his recovery. In real life, Ip Man was known to have used opium (at least in his latter Hong Kong days).

Ip Man was a notable martial arts instructor, he was not a saint. Perhaps someday, somebody will make an accurate film about the man. Meanwhile, we have these kung fu pseudo-biopics to entertain us.

 

 

 

LAFF 2011: DETECTIVE DEE

Detective Dee (Andy Lau) in Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

A reason to explode

By John Esther

Once upon a peg tale in 7th Century China, a giant Buddha statue was being built for the coronation of China's first female emperor, Empress Wu (Carina Lau). It would be a great day in Chinese herstory, but there were many misogynistic men who did not take kindly to the notion of Miss Lady "wacky eyebrows" Boss.

With just a few days away from the equal-rights event, important men started bursting into flames. Nobody could figure out why. Clearly this was a case for Detective Dee (Andy Lau).

In prison for treason, Detective Dee is released and appointed head of the case by the Empress herself. Of course, the Empress does not trust him so she sends her spy, who might be a double agent, to watch Detective Dee as he finds the bad guys or bad gals.

But this was to be no ordinary adventure. Detective Dee will have to visit places like Spooky Pandemonium in order to find Donkey Wang for information on Fire Turtles and other crazy characters. And just when you think Detective Dee has caught the culprits, a more menacing figure is lurking behind the next clue.

Stuffed to the sensory gills with stunning set designs, elaborate costumes, flamboyant martial art scenes, sneaky sounds, absurdly-sexual innuendos, fantastic photography, masterful special effects and an array of images conducive to multiple viewings under different methods of intoxication (for the record, I had just one beer before the screening), Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame would be a wildly entertaining film on your typical movie screen. However, in a stroke of brilliant programming, the single screening of the film at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival was at the Ford Amphitheatre. 

Outside and under the stars, the neighborhood's frogs, birds and other creatures accentuated the atmospheric film-going experience. The real and the reel meshed into a synchronicity, breaking common film-viewing experiences. A bird catches on fire in the film; a second later a real bird makes a sound. Dogs barking in the distance may as well have come from "off screen" in the film. At one particularly precious moment, a live plane flew by the Ford Amphitheatre as the screen showed the gigantic Buddha against the blue sky.

Sometimes art and life just jive right and, as a result, it was the most fun I have had at the movies in years.

And then I attended LAFF's theatrical event, The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, the next night. Oh my!

 

FILM REVIEW: TRUE LEGEND

Yuan Lie (Andy On) in True Legend.

Intoxicated avenger

By John Esther

What an ungrateful lout. Five years after his stepbrother, General Su (Vincent Zhao) offers the promotion he was originally offered, Yuan Lie (Andy On) comes home to wipeout the family because, hey, it is one of those kung fu "your master (father) killed my master (father)" sort of things. 

Once upon a time Su's superior martial arts skills could have stopped Yuan, but Yuan's Five Venom Fists technique, plus body-stitched armor, are now too powerful for Su. After defeating Su, beating him within an inch of his life, Yuan throws Su into a great body of water whereupon Su's wife and Yuan's sister, Ying (Zhou Xun), jumps in after him, leaving their son behind with his poisonous uncle.

As the years go by, both Yuan and Su train hard at further mastering his martial arts style. Su drinks jugs of Ying's wine while Yuan sticks his fists in a bowl of scorpions. (Impressive, both would be very good pub tricks). When the time comes you can wager the two will do some serious battling; but in a world of an eye for an eye someone must die.

Eventually widowed and homeless, Su drinks himself onto the precipice of self-destruction only to discover that alcohol inebriation which does not kill you only makes a much better fighter. (I just bet the wives down at the local battered women's shelter will find comfort knowing that.)

From the opening credits to its predictable conclusion it becomes clear that True Legend lays its intelligence at the level of a superhero comic strip (or saloon delirium). Time and motion pass by as quick as character outlines are developed. The impressive production design by Huo Tingxiao provides a magical realist, wasted world where gravity, endurance, space and motion recognize fewer limits. Those are some powerful shots.

This creates for quite a few elaborate fight scenes with wildly uneven results. Directed by renowned martial arts action director Yuen Woo Ping (Hero; Kill Bill; The Matrix trilogy), there are some incredibly entertaining combat scenes (mortal, blades, sticks and all), yet for every praiseworthy action scene there is another one as annoying as a teenage jock shit-faced for the first time.

The most sobering non-fighting aspect of True Legend is the incessant emphasis on family ties when it is those very ties that pull the family apart. Yuan, then Su, are so intoxicated with revenge against father, then brother, respectively, that they try to cure the family as a whole by killing of its parts. They should have just thrown a party.

True Legend also hosts martial arts legends David Carradine, who plays a Sinophobic businessman; Michelle Yeoh, as a benevolent doctor; and Jay Chou, as the God of Wushu. While Chou's role is mostly silly and Yeoh's is a throwaway here (she does not fight), the late Carradine's performance, one of his last, is embarrassingly poor. (Are you sure you want to dedicate the film to Carradine's memory?)

Along those lines, On gives a good performance while, I imagine, his strikingly gothic good looks will seduce some audiences members into rooting for this snake to emerge victorious.

Unevenly entertaining, occasionally extremely violent and utterly predictable, True Legend amounts to little more than another martial arts fairytale, full of fists of fury, signifying little else than advocating the consumption of mass quantities of booze in order to improve one's fighting abilities -- which is a lesson we can all carry to our neighborhood drinking establishment.

NBFF 2011: BROTHER'S JUSTICE

Dax Shepard (Dax Shepard) in Brother's Justice.

Title game

By John Esther

Dax Shepard (Dax Shepard), the funniest guy in Idiocracy and Baby Mama, has decided to retire his comic chops and become a marital arts star in his next film, which will be written, produced and maybe directed (he has not decided yet) by Shepard. He does not have much of a storyline yet for the his makeover project, much less a script, but he has a title, Brother's Justice. 

After Shepard and his producing buddy, Nate Tuck, are rejected numerous times, and all the poorer for the delays, they decide to reach out to fellow Hollywood actors like Tom Arnold and Ashton Kutcher who are not immediately in on the joke...until Shepard starts pitching.  

Co-directed by Shepard and David Palmer, Brother's Justice comes off in many ways, such as its attack on Hollywood preciousness and America's homophobia, like a stripped down version of Sascha Baron Cohen's latest films. Shepard is not as gusty to go undercover to unmask society's shortcomings as Cohen, nor does he have the budget, but the mockumentary is still a pretty funny send up on moviemaking and, as such, will definitely appeal to Hollywood insiders a tad more than the general public.

Considering how well this would have played to Tinseltown audiences, and that the Newport Beach Film Festival snagged Brother's Justice up before the upcoming Los Angeles Film Festival could screen it, shows somebody behind the Orange Curtain was on his or her toes.