Cynical Cinema

A big key to enjoying certain movies is the suspension of disbelief. You watch Kill Bill, but you don’t question the fact that Uma Thurman can bring a samurai sword on an airplane. You watch Mpix late at night, and you believe, for that moment, that women wearing see-through lingerie order pizza and tip in unconventional ways.

No genre of movie requires the suspension of disbelief more than Hong Kong action pictures, and Kill Zone is no exception. You will have to believe many things. Getting a mob boss on video savaging an informant with a golf club can’t put him in jail because someone else shot the guy. A guy with a knife can murder well-trained cops with guns because he’s just THAT FAST. Some guys can be punched once and suffer lifelong brain damage. Other guys need to be punched fifty times by the same guy just to fall over. This sort of thing shouldn’t bother you though, because this is just today’s movie world. And Kill Zone does that world justice as a tremendously violent, adrenaline-filled epic.

Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung are two of the great Hong Kong actors unknown on this side of the ocean. They should get their due, and Kill Zone is a great argument in their favour. Suspend your disbelief and enjoy.  Kill Zone is out on Blu-Ray today, December 16th.

Alliance Films came out with the Blade trilogy on August 26th.  It’s a two-disc edition, with two of the movies on one disc and one on the other.  There are no terrific special features, it’s just a plain, bargain set of the three Blade films in a package that is conveniently the same size as every other DVD in your collection.  And if you don’t have these films already, this is one you should add to your collection.  Here’s why:

Blade (8/10):  The original Blade movie was terrific, a real breath of fresh air in the world of comic book movies.  Wesley Snipes was big, muscular, bad-ass and mean.  Kris Kristofferson was amazing as Whistler, Blade’s mentor.  And Stephen Dorff was terrific as the bad guy, a vampire who wanted to trigger the Blood Tide - an event that would, I think, turn everyone in the world into a vampire.  Or something.  The point is, this movie was awesome.  Sword fighting, guns, vampires disintegrating and great special effects, and Snipes as the most ass-kicking, toughest, meanest comic book character of all time.  There was even some good comedy - mostly provided by Donal Logue, who kept getting his arm chopped off.  And for the really cult comic book fans - some appearances by Traci Lords and Udo Kier.  Terrific!

Blade II (10/10):  By far, the best of the series.  Directed by Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth), this film is as pulse-pounding and visually impressive as any comic book adaptation could aspire to be.  (Well, until 2008 when The Dark Knight came along.)  Snipes is now even more bad-ass, and he is given some awfully cool villains with which to work.  Luke Goss appears as Nomak, a new breed of vampire that preys on both humans AND vampires.  So now the vampires want a truce with Blade, because they are after the same enemy for once.  And Blade hooks up with the Blood Pack, a cheesily-named group of vampire bad-asses who have been training their whole lives to kill Blade, but now must work with him.  Ron Perlman, as the tough-guy leader of the Blood Pack, is amazing.  And even the secondary characters are cool actors - Norman Reedus as a stoner hippie helping Blade and Whistler, and Asian action movie legend Donnie Yen even shows up as a kung-fu fighting member of the Blood Pack.  And the vampire princess, played by Leonor Varela, is one of the hottest women ever in a movie.  Visually stunning, never-ending action, and some seriously bad-ass characters and actors made this movie not just a guilty pleasure, but the best in the trilogy.

Blade: Trinity (3/10):  One of the biggest letdowns I have ever had at a movie.  Del Toro is gone as director, replaced by David S. Goyer.  Kristofferson is gone early in the film, replaced by Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel.  And I really like Ryan Reynolds - he even has some solid comedic scenes in this film.  But an action star?  Jessica Biel an action star?  I know she really wants to be, and she keeps trying and trying to be one, but she isn’t an action star.  Or a great actress.  She’s hot.  That’s about it.  I mean, stick to movies where you are hot.  Those, you can do.  Blade II had Ron Perlman and Donnie Yen.  Blade Trinity can only suffer by comparison.  But it isn’t just Reynolds and Biel that are the problem.  Snipes is the only genuine action star in the movie, but he is given just about nothing to do.  The script is dreadful, the concept just doesn’t work, and there are some really long, extended scenes that make absolutely no sense.  The other Blade films were genuinely dark, tough, gritty entries that could, on some level, be considered horror films.  This one is an absolute joke.  Not only that, Blade is now the co-star.  In his own film.  Because Biel and Reynolds are the real action stars.  Come on!  This one is total garbage.

 The two-disc Blade trilogy came out August 26th from Alliance Films.  Pick it up!  And ignore that third one.

Flashpoint opens with a short montage of Donnie Yen performing some impressive acts of police brutality in his pursuit of criminals. This lands him, within the first two minutes of the film, in front of internal affairs. Then the internal affairs thing is forgotten for the rest of the movie. It would just interfere with the leg-breaking and gunfights and bad-ass martial arts if he had to worry about who he was hurting and killing. Yen’s brother, you see, is also a cop - one who is in deep undercover with a dangerous and evil criminal organization. This gang is almost as good with the crazy kung-fu moves as Yen himself. Almost. Pay close attention, that will be important information at the end of the movie.

The gang is taken down, and the trial is going to happen, but witnesses start getting killed, and so do some cops. Hong Kong martial arts movies love killing cops, even when the cops are the heroes. In fact, especially when they are. And they also love to have tightly-bonded families, devoted brotherhood, and vengeance. Oh, and they’re also alla bout the lonely cops, loner cops, and possible-problem-drinker cops. Like Bruce Willis, with kung-fu and way more guns. And Flashpoint is no exception. All of these standard Asian action movie stereotypes are in place, and there is nothing new about this film at all.

However, it is good. Flashpoint, in fact, is very good. The gunfights are expertly choreographed, the action is fantastic, the story moves along at a lightning pace, the actors are suitably bad-ass, and Donnie Yen is at his best, sort of a Bruce Lee type - combining Jet Li’s fast and brutal abilities with Clint Eastwood’s dangerous stare. The final showdown is everything you could want from a martial arts movie and more. Not only are there high-flying attacks, hardcore kicking and punching and arm breaking and leg twisting, but there is a real UFC-type feel to the scene, as well as a tip of the hat to hockey fighting. Everything in the world of hand-to-hand combat is thrown at the wall here, and it all sticks. One of the most impressive climactic fights in modern Asian cinema. Flashpoint comes out, courtesy of Alliance Films, on May 27th.