Cynical Cinema

The rating on The Forbidden Kingdom is PG-13.  At least, on the box, that’s what it says.  Frankly, this is one of the least violent PG-13 movies I have ever seen.  There is no swearing, and not one single boob.  I think people see “kung-fu” and immediately think there must be enough violence to justify a PG-13.  But only a few kung-fu movies are truly brutal and bloody and violent.  And The Forbidden Kingdom is certainly not one of them.  Many kung-fu movies could well be considered kids’ fare, and I think this is one of them.  The martial arts scenes, while they are good and well choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping (Kill Bill, Fearless, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), they are for the most part bloodless and at times almost cartoonish.

This movie appears to be made for children, and now is the time to do that, what with the success of the amazing Kung Fu Panda recently.  The key here is Jackie Chan.  His American movies, for the most part, have been kids’ movies.  The teaming of Chan and Jet Li is, in a sense, historic.  But teaming Li with Chow Yun-Fat would have made, one would assume, for a far more violent and dark outing.  The Forbidden Kingdom is a breezy, silly, comedic film about a staff, a monkey king, and a drunken master.  No one plays the drunken master quite like Jackie Chan, and no one plays a monkey kung-fu king quite like Jet Li.

That being said, the movie isn’t all that good.  After all, this is the teaming of Jet Li and Jackie Chan.  And the star is a young white kid?  Michael Angarano finds a staff, gets transported back into ancient China, and embarks on a quest to return the staff to the monkey king.  He is accompanied by two teachers, Li and Chan, who have a sort of half-assed rivalry between themselves.  He encounters a young Chinese girl, for the purposes of having a romantic entanglement.  And then there are the bad guys, like the Jade King and his main assassin, a ruthless woman with long white hair.  All the kung-fu movie cliches are present in this film, and while it seems as though they are trying to pay homage to the tradition of kung-fu flicks, it sometimes feels more like they are going through the motions.

The kung-fu action is pretty good, if cartoonish.  The story is weak, but standard.  The one thing I really liked about this movie, however, is that the young kid at the centre of the whole thing makes some sense.  Usually, in a kung-fu film, when someone is destined to do something, they are either a martial arts master who has been trained since birth, or they have some kind of magical power that is unleashed after three weeks of training with a master.  In this case, after his all-too-brief training with Li and Chan, Jason is NOT that good at martial arts.  He can’t defeat the Jade King, or his assassin, on his own.  After all, he’s been trained for a mere three weeks.  He needs Jet Li and Jackie Chan to come to his rescue at the end.  And that is the most original thing about this movie.

Not a great movie for kung-fu buffs, not the brilliance one would hope for from the pairing of Chan and Li, and not exactly earth-shattering.  But for the kids, who are riding the kung-fu wave after Kung-Fu Panda, this is a pretty great film to watch as a follow-up.

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.