Cynical Cinema

The original Mummy movie was kind of neat.  Not fantastic, not a brilliant achievement by any means, but fun and action-packed and charming in a certain way.  The second Mummy was much worse.  But at the very least it was exactly what kids have come to expect from Brendan Fraser.  He will draw laughs by falling down and hurting himself, and he will throw cheesy lines at the screen with all the charisma of a bag of trail mix.  All of this is cranked up for the third installment in the series, The Mummy:  Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.  And it is much, much worse.  This is one of the worst movies of the year.  Like many series that run on too long (think about that original run of Batman movies) there are more and more characters thrown at the screen.

The original players are back - Brendan Fraser as the wisecracking spy-archaeologist-mummyfighter.  John Hannah as Fraser’s long-suffering, greedy but good at heart brother-in law.  Maria Bello stands in for Rachel Weisz, and that’s a decent switch.  Rachel Weisz does absolutely nothing for me, whereas I do like Maria Bello.  But, like the other characters, she is given just about nothing to do.  Thrown into the mix this time are Luke Ford as Fraser and Bello’s son, a…dashing archaeologist.  Almost the exact same story as Indiana Jones 4.  Then there is Isabella Leong, who is thousands of years old and guards the emperor’s tomb.  Her mother (Michelle Yeoh) also guards the tomb.  And then there’s an ancient Chinese general, a double-crossing museum curator, and the emperor himself.  Jet Li.

Everything about this movie is dreadful.  Great actors like Michelle Yeoh, Maria Bello and Jet Li are given, basically, nothing to do.  Every other actor is a cartoon.  Especially Luke Ford, who exudes the personality of a wet towel as the most boring “dashing archaeologist” of all time.  Somehow, this two-thousand-year-old woman falls in love with this tofu-stir-fry of a man.  How does this happen?  I think it all took place when he said “golly, I think you’re neat”.  And BAM!  Love.  The set-up involves Fraser and Bello being recruited to transport some kind of artifact to China.  Why them?  Well, the bad guy made sure it would be them.  Why did he do that?  Well, so they could be in the movie, of course.  And that’s about the extent of the logic that goes on here.  Until the Abominable Snowmen show up to put the narrative back on the straight and narrow.  No, really.  The Yeti come.

So we get some kind of ancient mystical cryptic secret.  Luke Ford, the linoleum floor of dashing archaeologists, has uncovered the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.  Who is Jet Li.  The woman who defends the tomb attacks him.  But then they fall in love when the bad guys show up and have this crystal thing, and it opens the emperor’s sarcophagus and removes the curse that was placed on him thousands of years ago.  Why do they do this?  Because the crazy army guy thinks that the world needs a crazy emperor.  Which is fine.  We DO need a crazy emperor who can somehow shoot fire from his eyes and create icicles with his mind.  So far so good.  Well, so bad.  But it gets worse.

It turns out that the emperor (who is still a computer-generated Jet Li) needs to get to some kind of gateway in the mountains (the YETI mountains) with his crystal.  And if he arrives there, and puts the crystal in the hole, ALL will be LOST!  So he gets there and puts the crystal in the hole, and…oh.  It just shows him where he needs to go now.  But if he gets THERE, and drinks from the water, he will become immortal and be able to turn into a dragon, and ALL will be LOST!  So he gets to the cave, drinks the water, and…oh.  It turns out that NOW, all he needs to do is raise his army and cross the Great Wall of China, and then ALL will be LOST!

It really seems like they are making this movie up as they go along.  The emperor gets to a certain place, and they realize that the movie has only been going for half an hour, and they need to make it longer.  So they create another crisis and another trek and add more and more characters.  At the end of the film, they have the same problem - it isn’t yet long enough - so they pad it with a really cheesy, lame computer-generated battle between armies of the undead.  And then - the one moment that could have saved this movie!  Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, two of the greatest actors in the history of kung-fu movies, are going to have a sword fight!  And…ugh.  The sword fight is six thrusts, six parries, and forty-eight jump cuts.  We have NO idea what’s going on! 

And that’s the problem with most of this movie.  This is a non-stop, beginning to end action movie.  So at the very least, it should involve compelling action.  But this movie is directed by Rob Cohen.  The guy behind The Fast And The Furious.  And it looks like a crappy music video.  So many jump cuts, so much frenetic editing, that we never, ever know what’s actually going on.  When you have Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh who are going to fight with swords, you know what you could do?  Nothing.  Just get out of the way, point one camera at them, and let them go.  They know what they’re doing.  But Cohen obviously couldn’t leave well enough alone, and the charm and excitement are completely sucked out of this film.

Jet Li is still an awfully cool actor, and great martial artist. But he’s a little past his prime when it comes to the high-flying stunts and crazy kung-fu action. That prime came between 1991 (Once Upon A Time In China) and 2002 (Hero). And one of the best films in that span was Tai Chi Master, a 1993 movie directed by Yuen Woo Ping. Ping is one of the greatest kung-fu action directors of all time. He’s the visionary behind such fantastic films as Iron Monkey, Drunken Master, and Wing Chun. He’s also the fight choreographer on Kill Bill, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Matrix, and Kung Fu Hustle. And one of his best (and Li’s best) is Tai Chi Master, which comes out on DVD today, August 5th, from Alliance Films.

In addition to Li, Tai Chi Master stars Michelle Yeoh, who became a massive international kung-fu superstar with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2000. As kids, Junbao (Li) and Tienbo (played by Chin Siu-Ho) are inseperable. Although Tienbo is clearly a little bit of a bully, and takes advanatage of Junbao all the time, Junbao is too naive and good-natured to let it bother him. But it becomes clear early on that while Junbao will always be pure of heart and mind, Tienbo is headed for bad news. The two are in training at a Shaolin temple, and after a violent incident perpetrated by Tienbo, the two are booted out. Lost and adrift in the world, after spending their entire lives in the Shaolin temple, they are kung-fu masters with no idea how to live a regular life. Jet Li is playing the role he was born to play, the wide-eyed, innocent optimist who ends up having his world crash down around him and turns into the bad-ass who fights for truth and justice.

The two best friends soon split - Tienbo to join the government’s soldiers, with a plan to move up the ranks in order to make money. We realize right away, although Junbao of course doesn’t, that this path will make him into a really bad guy. Junbao, on the other hand, ends up becoming a member of a resistance force that fights against government corruption. Of course, we know the stage is set for an ultimate showdown between the two former best friends, but it’s the journey that is magnificent. As in every kung-fu film, there is some comedy, and although it is rare in Tai-Chi Master, the comedic scenes are very, very funny. Michelle Yeoh shows up as a kung-fu master whose husband has left her for an important official in the government, and she is drinking her sorrows away. Which leads to the inevitable drunken restaurant kung-fu showdown that is so standard in kung-fu films of the 80s and 90s. But rarely has it been done this well.

And it’s the kung-fu that makes this movie so great. There are some of the greatest, most adrenaline-pumping action fight scenes in oriental cinema in Tai Chi Master. The story isn’t classic, but it’s very good. The acting isn’t classic, but it’s very good. The comedy isn’t classic, but it’s very good. But the kung-fu IS classic. And that means that Tai Chi Master verges on being classic itself. It isn’t quite classic, but it’s very, very good.

Fearless is directed by Ronny Yu, a man who has directed several Asian martial arts classics, but who has recently become corrupted by Hollywood. He is the man behind Freddy vs. Jason and Bride of Chucky, two of the better entries in otherwise terrible movie franchises. Fearless is said to be the last martial arts picture Jet Li will ever make, and this is a shame. Fearless succeeds only because Jet Li is fantastic. Not only is he a great fighter, but he is also the right type of actor for the role. He plays real-life martial arts legend Huo Yuanjia, the man who created the Chin Woo martial arts school in Shanghai at the turn of the century. Yuanjia became a hero in China when he fought a series of highly publicized fights against foreign fighters.

When I first watched Fearless, I thought this was the weakest in Jet Li’s impressive “wushu” kung-fu movie resume. It was good, and the fights were the best part of the film, and handled brilliantly, and the filming made Fearless a visual treat. Unfortunately, the film didn’t really get interesting until the very end. Now, however, Alliance Films is releasing Fearless: The Director’s Cut on July 8th, and it has all of a sudden become much, much better. 35 minutes of additional footage has been added, which fills out the story to such a degree that the entire movie is transformed. We are now far more invested in the character, seeing his transformation in greater detail.

Yuanjia is the child of a great wushu master, who is the champion of their village of Tianjin. His father forbids him from practicing kung-fu, so he must train in secret, with the help of his best friend Nong (Dong Yong). When he sees his father lose a match because he wouldn’t destroy his opponent, young Yuanjia vows to do everything he can to glorify the honour of his family, and vows never to lose a fight in his life. And he doesn’t. As he grows into an adult, fighting in these wushu competitions has become an obsession for him. Nong tries to warn him about the dangers, and begs him to relax and back off, but Yuanjua won’t listen. When a reckless fight leads to tragedy all around, Yuanjia is ashamed, and goes into self-imposed exile, and almost dies. He is found in the country and nursed back to health by a kind family with a lovely blind daughter. He learns a lot about life through this little country village, and learns even more about wushu and about himself.

Now on the right path, and fully understanding the potential of wushu to unify rather than to divide, he returns to civilization with the goal of establishing a school of martial arts. By this time, China has been taken over by Western influence, and the need for national unity is enormous. Yuanjia is determined to do what he can to help provide this national unity, and agrees to fight a series of highly publicized fights against Western fighters in order to defend Chinese honour. He is no longer out to promote himself, or his family name, he is now using wushu to defend and promote all of China.

The new edition of Fearless comes in a two-disc set. The second DVD is the exact same disc that was released in 2006, the “unrated” edition, with the unrated version, the theatrical version, and a featurette called “A Fearless Journey”. The only thing that is new here is the first disc, the actual director’s cut. And that makes it completely worthwhile. The director’s cut transforms Fearless from merely being a decent entry into the kung-fu movie canon, into being a wonderful, heartfelt historical document that really resonates. Whether you’ve seen Fearless before or not, now is the time to pick it up on DVD.

Jet Li has recently suggested that he will no longer be making kung-fu epics. This does not mean he will not be making movies where he is good at kung fu, because if that were the case he would no longer have a career. No, what it means is that we are no longer going to be treated to brilliant movies like Hero or Once Upon A Time In China. It also means we are not going to see him in decent-to-pretty-good movies like Fearless any more. No, Jet Li has quit the genre that has provided him with his only truly excellent moviesto concentrate on American movies where he still performs martial arts, (wushu, to be specific) only now he will wear normal street clothes and be paired with wisecracking cops. Like Jackie Chan movies, only without the charm, the elaborate stunts or the laughs. These are the films that have made Li a star in America, and not one of them has been very good. Romeo Must Die, The One, Lethal Weapon 4, Kiss of the Dragon, Cradle 2 The Grave? All fairly awful. (I must confess to having a soft spot for Unleashed, if only for Bob Hoskins and Jet Li’s surprisingly decent performance.)

So now, having left the martial arts epics forever with the disappointing Fearless, Jet Li brings us War, a movie that sees him performing bad-ass wushu manouevers as he is paired with a wisecracking bad-ass cop, played by Jason Statham. Li plays the assassin “Rogue”, not the shape-shifting naked hottie Rebecca Romijn Rogue, but a variation on the theme. You see, Rogue has this habit of using plastic surgery to change his face after every hit, thereby never being identifiable to the cops. This is a device used in many movies. I’m not sure how reliable this method of concealing your identity is. I have seen what someone who undergoes multiple plastic surgeries looks like. They look like Donatella Versace, The Cat Lady, and Michael Jackson. They do not look like Jet Li. Also, it occurs to me that you can still tell that Michael Jackson is Michael Jackson, even if it’s the Wes Craven freaky-horror film version of Michael Jackson. In War, the assumption is that plastic surgeons can just go ahead and re-create faces at will. For example, if I wanted to look like Russell Crowe, (and I do), it would be very easy for me to go see Jet Li’s plastic surgeon, pay him enough, and emerge with an Australian accent and a penchant for phone-throwing. Tremendous.

Early on in the movie, Jason Statham’s partner and his entire family are killed by the nefarious assassin, Rogue. In the scene, Rogue is wearing a mask. I wonder why? A mask? When Jet Li, as Rogue, dispatches people with extreme prejudice throughout the rest of the movie, he seems unconcerned about who might see his face. So why the mask in the early scene? I bet we’ll find out later…I certainly hope the reason is that THAT Rogue was a different guy, and at the end of the movie we can still like Jet Li. I don’t want to see a Jet Li movie where I don’t like Jet Li. That would ruin my good-time movie fun. Also, as one of the entertain-me-but-don’t-challenge-me movie viewing mob, I would like a satisfactory ending to explain everything, where all the good guys live and all the bad guys die and the buddies walk off into the sunset together.

I must say the ending of War WAS a surprise to me. However, it was not surprising because it was a crazy twist I didn’t see coming, but because I couldn’t believe that even this movie would have resorted to an ending this dumb. Even the most bloated, brainless couch potato watching this film would be unsatisfied with the ending. The twist and the finish are so badly tacked-on that they might as well have been one of those it-was-all-just-a-dream endings. And the twists accomplish a few things. First off, they ensure that you will never watch the movie again, because knowing the truth at the end means the entire rest of the movie makes absolutely no sense. Secondly, if you pay close attention to the ending, it creates more plot holes and problems than it solves. And thirdly, it will not even satisfy those good-guys-live-and-bad-guys-die movie watchers. There is nothing wrong with being one of those movie watchers. You don’t want to think too hard about a film, you just want to be entertained. That is OK.

However, War has spent so long, through the whole film, catering to that exact moviegoer, making sure that they ARE entertained, that the ending will leave that particular viewer unusually unsatisfied and puzzled. It’s like they got to the end and thought “hey, you know what would make critics like this? Making it dark, and strange, and unsatisfying, with a twist - critics love that stuff”. Their problem was that they didn’t realize that if you are going to do that, you have to be aware of where you are going when you START the movie, and not just tack it on at the end. (This doesn’t always work either - as the next review will explain.)

Jet Li is a very good actor and an even better martial artist, but his skills are best used in the martial arts epics. It looks as though Hero will always be his best movie, simply because he has given up on that type of movie, and has resigned himself to doing movies such as War. His wushu skills are still breathtaking, the fights are still awesome, but the stories in these movies are crappy at best, and come out of some ridiculous screenplay machine they have in Hollywood where you feed in the names of the actors and out pops a script. “Jason Statham and Jet Li” whirrr….War! (Well, they were together in The One as well, but this time Statham gets equal billing.) It’s depressing. You know that scene in This Is Spinal Tap, where the band is playing the country fair, opening for the puppet show? Because Nigel Tufnel is gone, they have only six songs to play, and once those songs are done they kick into the “jazz odyssey”? Jet Li’s recent career move reminds me of this. He has given up being awesome, like Spinal Tap, and has gone ahead with his jazz odyssey. American films.