Cynical Cinema

Come Drink With Me is an absolute classic of the martial arts genre, filmed in 1965 and released on DVD tomorrow, June 24th, by Alliance Films. It stars Cheng Pei Pei, a legend of Chinese kung-fu films, who might be familiar to modern artists as Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Crouching Tiger, incidentally, is a film that owes a lot to Come Drink With Me, not just the involvement of Pei Pei, but also in tone and in the concept of the high-flying wire stunts that make up so much of the action. While it isn’t as visually incredible as Crouching Tiger (it WAS filmed in 1965), the costumes and set design were first-rate.

This really is one of the best kung-fu films ever made. Cheng Pei Pei is gorgeous, and incredibly skilled and convincing as a fighter, much like Zhang Ziyi today. She plays Golden Swallow, a martial arts expert and bodyguard for the royal family (who also happens to be the daughter of the king) who sets out on a mission to rescue her brother from the clutches of a group of bandits led by an evil kung-fu abbot. Along the way, she finds help from a local drunken beggar named Fan Da-Pei (or, Drunk Cat). His character is one that would become a staple of the Hong Kong martial arts movie industry - the old drunk who’s always singing and sloppy and messy and gross, but is secretly the leader of a lost clan of martial artists, and a ridiculously proficient fighter when push comes to shove. I think it likely that in the Hong Kong of the 1970s and 80s, it was quite likely that people left the drunks in the bars alone, for fear that hassling them might provoke a lethal barrage of kung-fu kicks and punches. And the drunks are always the good guys.

As the movie progresses, it relies on an impressive series of wire-aided fight scenes between Golden Swallow and the bandits, culminating with her showdown with the bandit leader Whiteface, while the drunken master takes on the evil abbot who is also his brother. Throughout, the film is part comedy, part musical, part drama, part romance, and all action. The story is very straightforward, while underlying themes run through the narrative. The major one, of course, is female empowerment. But it also touches on the idea of corruption through religion. This film is widely considered, in Asia, to be one of the best Hong Kong movies of all time, and it made a star out of Cheng Pei Pei and her drunken co-star, Yueh Hua. Their stars would continue to shine brightly in Hong Kong for years to come, and this film is as good today as it was when it was released.

Fans of kung-fu cinema might, just maybe, recognize Gordon Liu. Liu played Johnnie Mo, the leader of the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill Volume One. He also played the role of Pai Mei in Kill Bill Volume Two. This was Quentin Tarantino’s way of paying homage to one of the great actors and martial artists in the history of kung-fu cinema (as was his decision to cast Sonny Chiba as Hattori Hanzo). Liu has had a long and storied career in martial arts movies, and it is in no small part thanks to the film Heroes of the East. Which I believe was an inspiration for Kill Bill itself. A classic in the genre, Heroes of the East was one of the first Chinese movies to portray Japanese martial artists with respect, as noble and powerful warriors. Until then, the Japanese were merely convenient punching bags for the “superior” Chinese fighters.

Of course, Heroes of the East does not go so far as to say the Japanese could actually be better. Kung-fu student Ah To (Liu) is forced into an arranged marriage with a Japanese woman. She is beautiful and feisty, but insists on practicing Japanese martial arts around the house. This leads to a series of confrontations between the couple, which threaten their marital bliss. When she returns to Japan, intent on training harder on her fighting skills with various Japanese masters, it is for the purpose of becoming better so she can beat her husband and show him that Japanese styles are better. When he sends her a note, challenging her in these various fighting disciplines, it is for the purpose of finally ending their dispute. However, all these things get misinterpreted by all those around the couple, and before long Ah To finds himself in a tournament, fighting the seven top martial artists in all of Japan.

Now, this guy is a kung-fu student. A very good one, but still just a student. The idea that he could best all seven of these fighters - the best in their disciplines - judo, karate, katana, nunchaku, yari, sai, and ninjitsu. It’s fairly ridiculous. But at the time (1979), Chinese movies would not accept that their various styles (jian, three-section staff, Qiang, Butterfly swords, rope-dart and the always popular drunken style of kung-fu) could be defeated by even the most powerful of Japanese adversaries. These fight scenes are played for drama, for comedy, for action and for really cool stunts, all of which are expertly handled.

The standard themes in these films are explored - Ah To is emasculated by his martial artist master wife, there is comedy to be derived from looking at women’s boobs, there are sound effects at nothing, like when swords go through the air and make a metallic “swooshing” noise. The various styles matching up against the other styles. And the always-popular and influential “drunken boxing” style of kung-fu, a style which Ah To has to learn overnight, in a scene that is as funny as anything in a kung-fu film. Heroes of the East is a classic most of us here in North America have never even heard of, and it will be released on DVD June 24th by Alliance Films.

The main problem with Jumper, as it is with most Hayden Christensen movies, is Hayden Christensen.  He is so wooden, he may as well be a totem pole.  Or Steven Seagal.  In this movie his love interest is Rachel Bilson, some girl who is famous from some TV show called The OC.  She is not a great actress, but compared to him she’s Greta Garbo and Meryl Streep rolled into one.  And then there’s Samuel L. Jackson, who will appear in just about anything ever, phoning it in as he does in the bad ones.  And this really is a bad movie.  The story is that Christensen is a “jumper”, some kind of person who can just disappear from where he is and reappear anywhere he likes.  He robs banks with this power, builds something of a playboy lifestyle, until finally he is tracked down by Jackson.  Jackson is a “palladin”, which is an organization?  A species?  A committee?  dedicated to tracking down and killing these “jumpers”.

Christensen escapes the first time, meets another “jumper”, finds out there are others like him, and finally meets his mother, Diane Lane, who abandoned him when he was a five-year-old.  Basically, the last hour of this movie is a cross-dimensional, all-over-the-world chase and escape involving the two jumpers and Jackson and the other palladins.  Which is all well and good, but I’d like a little more story.  Where do these “jumpers” come from?  Why do they exist?  Who are the palladins?  Why do they want to kill the jumpers?  How come the jumpers don’t always know that there are others like them?  Any back story at all would be nice, but there is none.  Zip.  All of this leads to a fairly mundane, inexplicable and silly conclusion after a mundane, inexplicable and silly movie.

But I kind of like it.  In a way, Jumper is delighfully idiotic.  The scenes where buses fly through time and space to emerge in the Arabian desert are insane.  The plot twists and the ideas that characters have and the complete lack of effort from Jackson and Lane are, in a way, hilarious.  The pointless and contrived involvement of Bilson, the unecessary high-school-bully scene, the wannabe heart-rending scenes with Christensen and his father…it all adds up to enough lunacy and idiocy and stupidity to make this movie somehow watchable through it’s mercifully short hour and a half running time.  I can’t say it’s a good movie without feeling a little nauseous, but I can say that you may well enjoy it.

When I bought my Blu-Ray player, almost a year ago, it came with 5 free Blu-Ray movies.  I had to fill out a little card checking off the movies I might like, and they would be shipped to my house.  Because it was almost a year ago, there weren’t many movies out on Blu-Ray yet.  So although I could grab Full Metal Jacket and The Prestige, the others were a crap-shoot, so I just picked the three I hadn’t seen.  One of those was S.W.A.T.  I think.  I can’t really remember.  In fact, I had completely forgotten I had ever placed this order, since it took eight months for it to arrive.  And when it did, it came with a not saying there had been a “slight delay” in shipping because one of the titles I had requested was no longer being made and they had to replace it with something else.  And maybe that something was S.W.A.T.  I sure hope I didn’t order it on purpose.

And that’s why the movie, although it’s old, merits a review.  Because people who are loving the Blu-Ray technology are buying up everything they can on that medium.  Every movie that’s out there on Blu-Ray gets serious consideration from the owners of the players.  And I am writing this to warn those of you who may want to purchase all these films to avoid SWAT.  At all costs.  It doesn’t matter one bit how good it looks on your TV, it is a giant waste of your time.  Yet another vehicle for Colin Farrell to play an Irish tough guy, SWAT concerns the LAPD SWAT team, the “toughest, meanest, best, coolest, heaviest, deadliest, most powerful, most bad-ass, most attractive fighting force in the world”.  Or something.

Colin Farrell, Michelle Rodriguez, LL Cool J, Samuel L. Jackson, and some other chumps train to be SWAT.  Farrell is getting a second chance at the team, one that comes after a dust-up with his out-of-control former SWAT team-mate.  I wonder if that preamble will be referenced later?  Of course it will!  For the first hour of the movie, the team trains.  And then they pass their course.  Much to the chagrin of their captain, who hates them!  We also get to see the evil antics of some foreign bad-guy.  He might be a drug dealer, or a human trafficker, or  a counterfeiter or a distributor of fake Faberge Eggs.  We have no idea.  We just know he’s evil, because he kills folks, and he will obviously eventually be the guy who faces off against the SWAT team.

So after an hour plus of six guys looking tough, talking tough, flexing and posing and saying bad-ass things to each other while wearing mad-cool sunglasses, there is actually…the plot!  Of the movie!  Which involves the entire city attacking the SWAT team, who respond by looking tough, talking tough, flexing and posing and saying bad-ass things to other people while wearing mad-cool sunglasses.  There is actually no story in the film, no compelling character, no single scene that’s cool enough to justify the action portions of the film…no reason at all to watch this hunk of junk.

Iron Man is amazing. Not only is it one of the best summer blockbusters, it’s actually one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Robert Downey Jr., although a seemingly strange choice, is perfectly cast as the titular superhero. Tony Stark is a billionaire weapons manufacturer who sleeps with hundreds of hot women, lives the life of Hugh Hefner, and uses his genius brain to create some of the most devastating weapons in the world. He is kidnaped by terrorists, who attempt to force him to build a replica of his powerful Jericho missile. While appearing to build that missile for them, Stark is in fact building a robotic suit of armor that will allow him to make his escape and, eventually, turn him into Iron Man. With shrapnel near his heart, he must build a device to keep his heart running while he fights the forces of evil. This device ends up, of course, being Iron Man’s Achilles heel. Or, his kryptonite, if you will.

And of course Iron Man is a lot like a lot of the super hero movies out there. One thing I have always thought is that the first movies in these series is always the best. The movie where we learn about the origins of the super hero, and he undergoes a character transformation that leads him to become Batman, or Spiderman, or the Incredible Hulk, or what have you. In subsequent installments of these series, the hero is already fully formulated, so there is no more room for character growth. It all comes down to action, explosions and whether or not the bad guys are any good. Iron Man is true to that form, in that Stark undergoes a character transformation as well as a physical one. He decides that his company will no longer build weapons to kill other people, but rather will begin focusing on doing good in the world. The one problem I have here is that just like every other movie like this one, his transformation changes his outlook on everything. Here is a guy who used to get every woman he wanted. Now that he has become “good”, he begins to think about settling down with just one woman. Is that what “good” people do? Couldn’t he still live the life of George Clooney, and still be a good guy? Or are all good people monogamous?

Well, it is Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Stark’s long-time assistant, the cheesily-named Pepper Potts. I am not normally a fan of Paltrow’s, but she is very well cast in this role, as the meek yet competent and smart assistant to a lascivious playboy billionaire genius…or who knows? Maybe anyone could play that role. Not anyone, however, could have played Obadiah Stane, Stark’s partner in the weapons company. Jeff Bridges is magnificent, with a shaved head and a certain amount of comforting sensibility that masks his darker intentions. I hate to call a role in a comic book movie a “tour de force”, but Bridges and Downey both come close. Terence Howard is in here as well, but he is badly underused as a military advisor and sometime babysitter of Stark’s, but it appears as though he is being saved for something much bigger in the second Iron Man movie.

Jon Favreau directed this adaptation of the comic book, and he shows an absolute command of the entire movie, as well as a love for comic books. The scenes where Downey is trying out his suit for the first time are quite funny, and seem to be taken (I can only assume) straight from the silly middle pages of the comic book upon which this is based. And the actual fighting done between Iron Man and the terrorists, or Iron Man and the bad super hero at the end of the film, are exceptionally well done. This movie is absolutely pulse-pounding, beginning to end, and for me it ranks with Batman, Batman Begins, Blade and Superman as the finest comic book movie adaptations of all time. Watch it!

When it comes to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal skull, you get what you expect. It isn’t Raiders of the Lost Ark, or even The Last Crusade, but it is still better than Temple of Doom. Harrison Ford, now 88 years old, returns in this latest installment from Lucasfilm and Steven Spielberg as the archaeologist professor turned spy, soldier and superhero. Joining him once again is Karen Allen, his main squeeze from Raiders who apparently was always “the one”. Also signing up is Shia LaBeouf, who plays Allen’s son, a tough-kid Marlon Brando wannabe in the 1950s. His presence is announced in a fairly cheesy and hilarious fashion when he shows up riding a motorcycle, dressed up as Brando in The Wild One. And frankly, his presence in the movie is largely pointless, despite the big revelation that everyone saw coming from the start.

Cate Blanchett, the sublime actress responsible for such brilliant performances as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There and Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator, is as good as expected as the evil woman searching for the titular Crystal Skull for the Russians. (It’s the 50s - the Cold War is still big news.) The standard Indy fare is here - the friends who betray him, the kid who’s along for the ride, the hot-and-cold romance with Karen Allen, the fear of snakes, the temples full of trap doors and levers and booby traps, and the ridiculous action escapes from danger. Harrison Ford is as good as ever as Indiana Jones, making light of his age at the very beginning - “this isn’t as easy as it used to be”. References to classic moments in the first three movies abound. “Looks like you brought a knife to a gunfight”. And the warehouse that houses the ark of the covenant appears again at the beginning. Is that the corner of the ark we see?

I heard people complaining a bit about the movie when it ended - “aliens? Come on, farfetched much?” But in point of fact, the whole series is magical and mystical and farfetched. Are aliens really less believable than the ark of the covenant, the holy grail, and a mystic temple where people pull your heart out of your chest? So come on people. Jump on board and enjoy the ride here. For me, the fact that this time it’s aliens just adds to the B-movie feel that has been the hallmark of the Indy series up until this point. Is there anything more B-movie than aliens? I don’t think so. John Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Jim Broadbent round out a cast that appears to have been selected more for cachet than for anything else.

There are moments which are, even for the Indiana Jones series, a strain on credulity. Like the one where he escapes a nuclear bomb, or the one where he makes an escape from that warehouse on some kind of super-high-speed rocket device. But all in all, the story moves along insanely quickly, as you would expect. The protagonists encounter several interesting ancient cultures, if only for two minutes at a time. The evil bad woman lives through the killer ants and the plunges off waterfalls to make an appearance at the very end. The duplicitous friend perishes when greed gets the best of him. And the demise of the evil woman is as Indiana Jones as it gets.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the poster child for “popcorn movie”, the definitive summer blockbuster, where you sit down for two hours of non-stop action, check your brain at the door, and allow for a guy in a fedora and a bullwhip to assault your senses with one stunt after another. It’s a testament to the skill of Spielberg and Ford that they make it so easy to shut off your brain.  A reasonably worthy inclusion into the Indiana Jones Franchise, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is worth the price of admission. And the price of a small popcorn.

One of my pet peeves with TV shows on DVD is when those DVDs don’t have an option to “play all episodes” on the menu. If you get into a show, and you want to really watch a disc or two, it’s annoying to have to switch back to the menu and play each one at a time every 45 minutes or so. A minor quibble, but one that becomes immediately apparent with a series like Jericho. This was a series that ran on CBS in 2006, but was cancelled after that season. But, like so many other TV shows of late, a fan campaign (one would assume one of those oh-so-effective online petitions) resurrected the program for the 2007-2008 season. After seven episodes in that second season, the show was canned again. This time, one would assume, for good. Those seven episodes are available on the Second Season DVD tomorrow, June 17th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Jericho is a series that I believe may have been overlooked. I can understand getting into this show in a big way, which is one reason playing each episode individually is so irritating. It’s a series that answers some questions - like “whatever happened to Skeet Ulrich?”, and poses many more. Questions like “how would America respond to a nuclear holocaust?” which is the basic premise of the show. Jericho is a small town in what used to be rural Kansas, that is attempting to rebuild after a massive nuclear attack on major cities destroys the United States as we know it. This of course presupposes, as do so many other television programs today, that no country outside the United States actually exists, or has ever existed. And only Americans can help Americans rebuild America in the American way for good Americans. Maybe the idea here is that after the Bush response to the last terrorist attacks, the rest of the world says “screw you, U.S., you’re on your own”? Well, it doesn’t really matter.

The setting of this show is pretty solid, in that small-town USA is the best place to see misguided patriotism and right-wing crazies and NRA members and gun nuts and humble apple farmers and jovial greasy spoon owners and drunken locals can all come together in the big melting pot, pulling together in a post-apocalyptic world. Although most of those characters aren’t there. The army is there though. And so is the sheriff, Skeet Ulrich. And the government is there too, in the form of a giant corporation called Jennings and Rall. It’s a solid premise, with the idea of a corporation rising in the wake of a massive nuclear attack to control the entire country in every facet making some obvious comparisons to the current governmental situation in the U.S.

But unfortunately, that’s the best thing this series has going for it - the premise. The characters are, for the most part, one-dimensional. The plot, despite the complexity of the ideas, is too simplistic. And the series just doesn’t attain the level of other, similar programs. What made Lost so popular was the fact that the first season was so compelling that people were desperate to watch the second one. (Although the second season suffered for the exact opposite reason - people need to know there’s an end in sight.) Jericho is the kind of series proves to be tougher for us to connect with it, and as such lost a large portion of it’s potential audience right away. But it’s also the kind of show that once you get into it, you need to know how it ends. And since Season Two is the final season (at least on CBS, for now), the DVD set needs to provide closure. And - it does.

What seems to be a hastily devised wrap-up for the show, written once they knew it would be the last season and they felt obligated to provide that closure, gives us the final episode. This is the one that was broadcast on television, ending with a looks-like-everything-will-be-OK-now finish. A second, alternate ending is provided on the DVD set as well, the one that would have been broadcast had the series been extended - a cliffhanger, will-everything-really-be-OK ending. At least the closure makes this DVD series worth picking up.

A movie I’ve had sitting around on DVD for a long, long time.  It’s been in my collection, and I haven’t had the time until today.  Also, after a little while, I had forgotten about it almost entirely.  Then I started watching more and more of the Dragon Dynasty DVDs that are being shipped into Canada, and they all had trailers for this Dog Bite Dog business.  And the trailers made it look amazing.  So I finally got around to it today, having been completely sold by the trailers.  I do love a good, action-packed kung fu movie.

But this is not a good, action-packed kung fu movie.  There is a lot of action, but not enough that I would call it “packed”.  There is a lot of fighting, but none of it is kung-fu.  Or martial arts of any kind, for that matter.  And Dog Bite Dog has that martial-arts movie standard plot element, the underground illegal fighting operation that pits man against man as gamblers toss money around.  But this time, it isn’t kung-fu fighters vs. MMA fighters.  It’s simply a battle of craziest-maniac-wins.  That is what makes the characters in this movie compelling.  They are not martial arts experts or unstoppable hit-man killing machines.  They are simply determined not to lose, and not to stop going until the other guy is dead.  Which makes for intense fighting sequences, far more intense and real than you could ever see in a balletic kung-fu epic.

A hit-man opens the movie by killing a woman in an especially detached and brutal fashion in a restaurant, right in front of her elderly husband.  He then gets into a standoff with the police, where he kills a cop.  Then he escapes from custody, kills more cops, and then kills a guy in a shed so he can use his phone.  As it happens, this guy in the shed is not really a nice guy.  In fact, he is a rather heinous individual, who has been keeping his own daughter prisoner in this shed at the dump for years.  The daughter, indebted to the hitman, yet damaged in her brain beyond all repair, forms a bond.  We find out quickly that this hitman is also damaged beyound repair.  And through the whole movie, he isn’t so much the prototypical steel-eyed assassin from these movies, but rather a child in a man’s body who just happens not to care who he kills.

 The shambling, childlike assassin and the cops out for vengeance are of course on a collision course, and by the end of the movie, you really don’t know who to root for.  You’re not supposed to.  The cops are as bad as the hitman, the assassin is as good as the cops, they all have something to fight and to die for, but someone has to lose.  The final confrontation is as intense as it is fast.  It’s over before you know it, which is amazing for this kind of movie.  Oh wait.  There’s more.  I thought this film was taking forever to end, with one of those music-montage fadeouts into the end credits.  But really, it was a music-montage fadeout into the REAL ending of the movie.  Which is even more gritty and intense than the rest of the movie leading up to it!

Throughout the whole movie, however, one thing really bothered me.  Internal Affairs cops kept showing up and investigating the cop, and his hero-cop father, for what seemed like no reason at all.  I mean, they had a reason, but why throw it into the movie?  I think it’s just a given in Asian cop movies - the IAD has to be in there, and they have to be weasels and we have to hate them.  Perhaps it’s written into the contracts.  These directors are like the Don Cherry of movies - put the whistle away!  Just let ‘em go!  Let cops be cops and boys be boys…anyway, Dog Bite Dog is one of the best Asian action movies to come along in a while.  I’m sorry I missed it up until now, but I’m sure glad I finally got around to it.  Gritty, grimy, dirty, and incredibly intense, you’ll find yourself, right at the end, letting out the breath you didn’t even realize you were holding the whole time.  Dog Bite Dog is a must.

Hero Wanted is a rather painful experience.  I like Ray Liotta, who is a pretty solid, you-get-what-you-expect B-Movie actor.  Unfortunately, with Cuba Gooding Jr. you also get what you expect.  And, from him, I expect absolute crap.  Every movie this guy’s been in since Boyz N The Hood, he’s been just awful.  He seems to be that rare actor that gets worse with every passing year and project.  His finest acting performance may well have been in one of those MacGyver episodes when he was a teenager.  (Ironically, that chick who played Blossom - Mayim Bialik - also did her best work on MacGyver.)  And in Hero Wanted, Gooding is predictably putrid and unconvincing as a man on a quest for vengeance.  This is basically the same role that has been played by some very good actors in recent years -Jodie Foster, Kevin Bacon, and of course Charles Bronson.

 Speaking of Charles Bronson, there was a movie made about eight years ago called Boondock Saints (a far better movie), in which the two main characters, played by Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus, make reference a few times to Charles Bronson.  It’s the way Boondock Saints tipped it’s hat to the Bronson revenge fantasy flicks that preceded it, movies that clearly had an influence on the film.  Now here comes Hero Wanted, and where is the tip of the hat to Bronson?  Or for that matter, to Boondock Saints?  As it turns out, this movie is, throughout it’s hour-and-a-half running time, completely ripping off Boondock Saints.  Here’s how.

The guy starring with Gooding?  Norman Reedus from Boondock Saints.  Maybe the film makers thought that his involvement was in itself a big enough hat-tip.  It isn’t.  Ray Liotta plays an unusually smart and literate cop who makes amazing leaps in logic to close in on the real killer, all the while talking down to his subordinates and sending them out to get him coffee when they say something stupid.  Just like Willem Dafoe does in Boondock Saints.  He begins to feel empathy for, and identify with, the vigilante, just like Dafoe.  Cuba Gooding becomes, through some strange circumstances, a vigilante out for vengeance, just like Reedus and Flannery in Boondock Saints.  The director (first-timer Brian Smrz) loves the camera shot that goes around the characters in a sweeping circle, the kind of shot made popular by…Boondock Saints.  The big finale features a surprise appearance by an ex-marine badass killing machine, and every character has two guns, just like the big finale in Boondock Saints.  The killing scenes are shown piece by piece, where the scene begins, then they cut away, then the cops show up to piece it together, then we see how the scene plays out.  Just like in Boondock Saints.  The list goes on.

The movie starts with Cuba Gooding at a bar, playing an unconvincing drunk.  His drinking problem is easily explained away with the old quick, trite explanation.  Dead wife and unborn child, nothing to live for, and so on and so forth.  Then we see him working as a garbage man with Norman Reedus as a partner, when out of nowhere a car crash happens right in front of them.  Gooding jumps into the car and saves the little girl trapped inside, while the car burns.  He becomes an instant hero.  It’s the only good thing he’s done with his life…and so forth.  But he’s still a messed up weirdo, and he becomes obsessed with a girl who works as a bank teller.  When he approaches her, and the bank is robbed, she gets shot in the head.  He goes a little nuts, and tracks down the robbers one by one, in a quest for vengeance.  The fact that he knows who the robbers are and the police don’t gives away the ending right away, but I’ll leave out the quirky little details in case someone actually wants to see Gooding struggle his way through this painful movie.

Not only is Cuba Gooding Jr. unconvincing as a vigilante, he is also pretty bad at it.  He seems to need to deliver that one, last, tough-guy line before he kills someone, which gives them a chance to avoid death and fight him before he (obviously) eventually comes out on top.  As Eli Wallach said in The Good The Bad And The Ugly, “if you’re going to shoot, shoot!  Don’t talk!”  And the ending is ridiculous and implausible in virtually every way.  The more emotional and heartwrenching the ending tries to be, the more I laughed.  By the time Gooding inexplicably gets the girl, I was in stitches, pausing the movie several times because my sides hurt.  It’s almost worth watching just for that kind of hilarity.  But it isn’t.  Stay far away from this garbage.

          When Fatal Contact opens, Jacky Wu Jing, touted as the next big thing in Asian kung-fu movies, is performing with a painted face in a sort of Chinese Cirque Du Soleil stage show.  He is Hong Kong’s Kung Fu champion, but must make ends meet during the off-season.  When he is approached by some gangsters to fight in an underground-boxing gambling racket, he turns them down.  He doesn’t want to participate in anything illegal, and he doesn’t want to fight anyone he doesn’t have to.  But he is starting a relationship with a girl performing in the stage company with him, and she manages to convince him, remarkably easily, to show up at this underground fight and join up.  There is a lot of money to be made, see, and right away we know this girl is the femme fatale that will lead him down the garden path to destruction. 

          The thing is, I don’t think we’re supposed to know that.  I think we are supposed to be surprised when, later in the film, we discover her true motives.  So I think in this case it is just bad handling on the part of the director, telegraphing the final act in the first one.  The main portion of the movie takes place in this free-for-all illegal fighting operation, one we have seen many times in many similar movies.  Ong-Bak, Unleashed, Bloodsport, the list goes on and on.  And in every one of these movies, the set-up, denouement, and payoff are virtually identical.  Except in Fatal Contact.  The ending is rather surprising.  But I’ll get to that in a minute.  The bulk of the action is taken up with this fighting in the ring.  And although it’s pretty good fighting, it doesn’t really leap off the screen and grab you by the stones the way it does in Ong-Bak, or even Cradle 2 The Grave.  It’s just well-done, decent one-on-one kung-fu. 

          There are two things that are very good about the middle part of Fatal Contact.  First of all, Jackie Wu Jing looks like a nine-year-old.  Which means that we are constantly identifying with him as a kung-fu expert who is still somehow out of his element.  And secondly, this isn’t one of those contrived, cage-with-spikes modern-gladiator fight-to-the-death type illegal fighting operation.  It’s more like one of these would really look, just a space cleared on a floor above a bar, with wooden chairs pushed aside and a guy at a desk with a calculator and ledger book taking bets.  It gives this operation more of an air of authenticity than any other similar operation in other movies.  Most of which look like they are channeling the spirit of Mad Max and the Thunderdome. 

          Also, the other fighters.  Wu Jing doesn’t have to fight bigger and bigger guys as time goes on, or meaner and meaner fighters.  And there is no final, in-the-ring showdown with the bad guy of the piece.  Which is a refreshing ending to a movie like this.  However, the ending doesn’t really work.  I don’t want to give it away, because Fatal Contact is worth watching, but the ending to this movie is remarkably incongruous with the rest of the film.  It’s like in the middle of a Dean Koontz book, the story takes a 90 degree turn and becomes a Shakespearean tragedy.  What?  And to be fair, the end IS surprisingly moving, given how badly it jars with the rest of the film.  And more than that, at least it isn’t expected and obvious.  There’s a greenhouse roof there - I wonder if that guy’s going to go through it and die…oh.  He doesn’t?  Really?  Hm.  How unexpected. 

          There are two other major problems with Fatal Contact.  First, there is a character played by Ronald Cheng (a Hong Kong pop singer).  He is Wu Jing’s friend and confidante, and his character seems to be growing through the whole movie.  We learn halfway through that he is in fact an incredible kung-fu master, maybe even as good as his friend.  But then…nothing is done with it.  When his character departs the scene, toward the end, we wonder why he was ever in the movie at all!  And the resolution at the end of the movie takes SO long to happen!  We already know what they reveal really slowly, and a lot of it, as I said earlier, was telegraphed from the first scene in the movie! 

          All in all, Fatal Contact is fairly decent, and any serious fans of Hong Kong Kung-Fu cinema will not be disappointed.  It does have a surprising (and surprisingly powerful) ending, some good fight scenes, and a pretty cool star in Jacky Wu Jing.  Wu Jing is being labeled the “next Jet Li” (at least by Dragon Dynasty, the Hong Kong distributors of the DVD), and in fact he actually makes specific reference to that during the film.  But for casual martial arts fans and action movie lovers alike, this one can be skipped.  You’re better off with some other Dragon Dynasty titles, like Flash Point, Hard Boiled, Dog Bite Dog, or The City Of Violence.  Fatal Contact comes out in Canada courtesy of Alliance Films tomorrow, June 10th.