Striking Rescue (2024)

Bai An (Tony Jaa), a man with a rather expert talent for inflicting physical punishment on dozens of goons at once, is going on a bit of a personal crusade through the underworld of a South East Asian (or the censors would never allow some of the elements of the plot if it took place in China) country. Turns out murdering his pregnant wife during the course of some corporate/criminal business wasn’t the villains’ greatest idea.

Because movies – supposedly - need a bit more of a plot, Bai An rescues the teenage daughter of the corporate overlord he takes to be the man behind the murder, and finds himself drawn into protecting her while still murdering his way through the underworld and what turns out to be a conspiracy.

This Chinese direct to streaming action movie by Siyu Cheng is positioned as something of a return to form of its leading man, troubled Thai action star Tony Jaa, and if you’re an old-fashioned lover of watching Jaa smash his elbow (and other parts of his anatomy) into bad guys’ heads like me, you’ll be quite happy with the fact that Jaa is indeed still a fantastic screen fighter up to all kinds of inspired physical shenanigans. One whose elbows you want to keep far away from your head.

The plot, such as it is, is decent enough to hold the action scenes together, though the film could have lost its final scene that’s built on a misguided believe we care one way or the other for a certain character, or feel the need to see them punished, as well as the Chinese morality police mandated text about how Jaa’s character is going to be punished for his violent acts off-camera, because order and virtue and blah blah blah.

Even the subplot about the teenager, the sort of thing that can get pretty annoying right quick, meant to humanize proceedings and our violent protagonist, works well enough, also thanks to a perfectly decent performance by Chen Duo-Yi (I believe) as said teenager.

The action itself is brutal and varied – as we like it around here. Cheng knows what he has in the screen fighters, martial artists and stuntpeople assembled here, and appears to see it as his job to make them look as good as possible doing their things. Which, obviously, should be a given when you direct an action movie centred on a beloved martial arts star, but I’ve seen too many directors obfuscating instead of enhancing what’s happening in action scenes to take this sort of approach for granted.

So, yes, Striking Rescue is indeed the comeback we were promised, possibly the one we deserved.

In short: Monster Hunters (2020)

Looking for some missing colleagues, some bad-ass US soldiers under the leadership of one Artemis (Milla Jovovich) drop through a rift in space into a desert full of giant monsters.

It doesn’t take terribly long until Artemis is the last one standing of her team, so it’s lucky for her she meets and eventually – after the usual tensions and miscommunications – teams up with a guy she dubs Hunter (Tony Jaa). There’s more monster fighting, unfunny jokes, and even something akin to a plot for the two to work through eventually.

I know I’m supposed to hate everything Paul W.S. Anderson does, what with all of his films (let’s ignore Event Horizon and that thing with Kurt Russell as early aberrations on the more brainy side, comparatively) being low-brow action, science fiction and horror mash-ups based on video games that aren’t ideally suited to adaptation even at the best of times. His insistence on casting his wife in the lead in every single movie he makes doesn’t make the not hating part easier, given that Jovovich can barely act on the best of days.

However, watching this stint in the playground of Capcom’s Monster Hunter games, I found myself not annoyed by low effort writing (though the script by Anderson himself certainly is nothing to write home about) but started enjoying myself quickly. Watching old Milla, the always lovely Jaa and co fight against various well-realized CG monsters may not be the deepest experience of my movie watching life, but it turns out to be effective popcorn movie fun, with neat monsters, special guest star Ron Perlman, a silly cat person right out of the games, and a well-paced script. Hell, I didn’t even mind Jovovich’s performance here, and found the film’s “so what” shrugging at its source material’s stranger elements pretty charming.

Even better, in this one, Anderson has most of his annoying directorial tics fully under control, not showing even a single scene first backwards in slow motion before repeating it normally, and really giving off the calm, professional directorial air of a guy who has made mid-budget popcorn movies of this type for several decades, and actually knows his business very well indeed; at least this time around.

All of this may not sound like a glowing recommendation, but honestly, Monster Hunter is a fine way to watch people fight giant monsters for hundred minutes or so.

Three Films Make A Post: Get a Lift

Harry and Tonto (1974): Having lost his home to city development, and not really jibing with living with his son and his family, elderly New Yorker Harry (Art Carney) and his cat Tonto (Tonto) go on a road trip through the USA, encountering old flames and new experiences, living parts of life Harry never did before. Among other things, for this Paul Mazursky comedy is stuffed full with humanity and human encounters big and small, feelings simple and complicated, treating aging and old age and the loss that comes with it with as much dignity as humour, exhibiting an openness to different ways of seeing the world that seems to be utterly alien to today’s “you’re either for us or against us” world.

Mazursky creates (or sees) an America made out of very different people believing very different things that still express a shared humanity, never making a grand gesture out of this, but treating his characters kindly, even those that might not completely deserve it.

A Man Called Sledge (1970): This is one of two movies directed by actor Vic Morrow, though producer Dino DeLaurentiis apparently robbed him of the final cut, and there may or may not be material included shot by Giorgio Gentili instead. Despite an American cast, director and US money, in feeling and tone, this is a lot like an Italian Western, starting with its treatment of the Southwestern setting, over the “sweat and dirty shirts” production design, and certainly not ending in its pretty cynical view of the world. The film also includes a pretty hefty heist movie element and ends up as a Treasure of the Sierra Madre variation.

It features James Garner in one of his grimmer performances as the titular gunman Sledge, and moves through its set pieces of dust and mud with a degree of vigour. It never quite manages to reach the allegorical heft the director – at least going by the final act – clearly wants it to have, but then, I dislike allegories anyway. In the state it is in, it’s a solid enough movie, not as well directed as the best Italian westerns (nor as crazy as these can get) but entertaining enough for what it is.

Jiu Jitsu (2020): On the plot level, this thing directed by Dimitri Logothethis is a completely bizarre attempt to mix martial arts movie traditions with a Predator rip-off, plus the dreaded amnesiac protagonist (Alain Moussi is our hero, such as he is) syndrome. And Nicolas Cage is a crazy jiu jitsu swordsman veteran (jiu jitsu in this film has little to do with the actual martial art, by the way), so you can expect a couple of scenes of Cage flipping out entertainingly, doing his best in martial arts fight scenes against people who are actually good at this sort of thing, and doing an Obi Wan (just louder). Also appearing are action and martial arts film darlings like Tony Jaa and Frank Grillo, but they only get a couple of fights in. Moussi is good in his action sequences but pretty terrible at the whole acting thing. He was probably much cheaper than those members of the cast who can do both; but then, the script is so utterly bad at stringing the decent, sometimes fun, action scenes together, even a great actor might have not gotten through the affair with dignity intact.

In short: Tom yum goong 2 (2013)

Kham’s (Tony Jaa) peaceful country life is disturbed when another gang of evildoers steals his elephant. This time around, the bad guys around a certain LC (RZA, because why hire an actor and martial artist when you can get a rapper who can’t act and is shit in his action scenes presumably for free because he’s an – admirably – big martial arts fan) want to use the poor elephant to blow up some foreign politicians. The elephant bomb is not the most stupid thing in the movie.

If you expected Tom yum goong 2 to be a return to form for Tony Jaa and director Prachya Pinkaew, there’s a good chance you’ll be disappointed, for it’s rather overly polite to call the film not very good. It’s not just that RZA – whose love for martial arts movies, it turns out, doesn’t make up for him being crap in them - makes a horrible main bad guy. There’s also the fact that for every fun stupid action movie idea, the film has three ideas that are just stupid, the trouble the films plot has to even connect the action scenes decently, and that Pinkaew’s direction seems rather disinterested.

The action itself fluctuates between the by now routine Thai choreography style, badly integrated CGI, and too many moments that are clearly meant to impress the audience with their stupid awesomeness (I’ll just say burning feet) but mostly feel like acts of a filmmaker trying way too hard and embarrassing himself with it. It’s a shame too, for there are a handful of moments in the fights that still show the brilliance early Pinkaew/Jaa had. Unfortunately, these moments are never where any given scene stops, because each and every fight here goes on way past its welcome, editing things down looking like a lost art.

Last and worst, if you were hoping that the casting of JeeJa Yanin beside Jaa would lead to either some awesome team-ups or awesome fights between the two, like I did in my naiveté, you will also be disappointed, for JeeJa spends most of her fights being everyone’s punching bags in what I can only see as a desperate attempt to make Jaa look more impressive. Well, at least it fits the film’s series of other wasted opportunities.

Technorati-Markierungen: thai movies,in short,martial arts,prachya pinkaew,tony jaa,jeeja yanin

Three Films Make A Post: In Bloody Panic Color

Hard Gun (1996): This story of a one-upmanship competition in vengeance between a cop and a gangster seems to me to be quite typical of that era of Thai cinema , at least as far as I understand it, and not only because Panna Rittikrai action directs and Tony Jaa has one of his early minor roles.

The film features some cheap yet fine action and does the mandatory clichéd melodrama well, yet permanently undermines its own strengths by an incessant barrage of comic relief of the most painful sort that never seems to know when to stop (which would preferably be before it even begins). How much enjoyment one will get from the movie will certainly depend on one's ability to just ignore those parts of the film. I found them terribly difficult to sit through.

 

Guys in Ghost Hand (1991): No, I don't have the faintest idea what the title is supposed to mean.

This Taiwanese (or HK?, things are a bit unclear) fantasy horror ghost movie thing about the ghost of a raped and later beheaded woman taking vengeance on the descendents of her tormentors starts out very weak, with seemingly hours and hours of uninvolving dialogue scenes between characters without any character and pointless guest roles by people like Wu Ma and Alex Fong. Whenever the silly supernatural menace strikes, or Kara Hui and Ku Feng appear as the squabbling pair of Taoists who are our heroes of the evening, the film becomes instantly entertaining, only to fall back into drabness soon enough.

After about an hour of this, the plot suddenly becomes jumpy like a frightened kitten. Of course, nothing in the film's last half hour makes much sense, but at least everything is very colourful and completely bonkers, which is what I want from a film like this.

 

Clash of the Titans (2010): I could live with the fact that director Louis Leterrrier's film doesn't manage to capture the (often naive) charm of the film he is supposedly remaking and turns it into something that seems to be more based on the God of War videogames than the original.

I can't live with the fact that said videogames are a lot less dumb and a lot more fun than this movie is, or with the fact that Leterrier just has no talent at all for making action scenes exciting or visceral. No film with rideable scorpions has any right to feel this drab.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,thai movies,taiwanese movies,hong kong movies,fantasy,action,panna rittikrai,tony jaa,kara hui,ku feng

In short: Battle Warrior (1996)

aka Mission Hunter 2

A Thai archeologist/explorer has crossed the border to (what I suppose is) Laos to find an ancient artifact known as the Golden Stone hidden away somewhere in the jungle. He is captured by the local warlord General Jang who is biding his time smuggling heroin and doing various other dastardly deeds until he has gathered enough funds to establish a reign of terror in the whole of South-East Asia.

Jang would really like to know where the Golden Stone is hidden, but even after a year of torture, the scientist isn't telling, causing much blustering and evil laughter in the hairless general, a man obviously compensating for his hair loss by being very evil indeed.

But a photo of her father's plight and knowledge of his location have found its way into the hands of the explorer's daughter Vicky. She hires the friendly mercenary Captain Pratuang (possibly played by Chatchai Ruksilp) and his men to attack Jang's base and get her father back. Also part of the rescue mission will be a British journalist named Smith who wants to save one of his colleagues from Jang. Like all British journalists, he is a hulking colossus of a bodybuilder with an awesome moustache and much love for snarling while shooting automatic weapons. Add to this the group's native guide and awesome martial artist Arsu (Internet, please tell me what this actor's name is) and you have quite a merry little band.

Everyone's expertise will be needed, too, because before our heroes can even get to their actual enemy they will have to cope with the unfriendly tribe of the Black Goblins (obviously, people without much clothes wearing badly applied blackface and "tribal" make-up) and Jang's secret weapon - the Forest Immortals.

We'll only get to see one member of the latter group, but since this member is Panna Rittikrai repeating his Spirited Warrior martial arts zombie bit, that shouldn't be a problem.

Mission Hunter 2 is marketed in the West like your typical piece of Jaasploitation, which means that it is presented here as a film starring Tony Jaa, although it was produced before the actor's sudden (and deserved) fame and so Jaa is in fact only playing henchman number one in it. If you can get over this and don't expect Ong Bak 0, you get a typical jungle action flick containing all the usual ingredients, from the racially offensive tribe to people jumping away from exploding huts.

There's no dramatic need for much of anything that happens in the movie, its pacing is in fact rather slow. It would probably be more coherent without the silly-but-fun zombie bit, yet it is a perfectly watchable example of its type.

If you go into it looking for a basic and cheap piece of jungle action, you will probably have your fun, at least with its little bonus features like the very obviously stolen and highly melodramatic (often for no good reason) musical score, the very tasteless scene where Jang threatens the explorer with the mass rape of his daughter while his men are already lining up for it in single file (the difference to comparable movies from Hong Kong or Italy would be that no rape is happening after the explorer caves in) and some rather good jumping and fighting by the guy who plays Arsu.

I certainly did have a good time with it.

 

Technorati-Tags: thai movies,in short,action,adventure,tony jaa,panna rittikrai

Son of Three Films Make A Post

Ong bak 2 (2008): Despite a troubled production history and a certain stubborn resistance of the film against involving its viewers emotionally, Tony Jaa's & Panna Rittikrai's nominal sequel to the film that brought Thai martial arts cinema into the view of a Western mainstream audience delivers an infectious flow of truly awesome action sequences. People fearful of abrupt, open endings which ask the viewer to pray for a film's protagonist should probably beware, though. But if you like your martial arts films as physical experiences, this is not to be missed.

 

Rider of Revenge (1971): Quite a few people - among them house favorite Polly (Shan) Kuan as morally upright swordswoman and always dependable Tien Peng - are after the rather fearful murderer Ting after he has been broken out of jail. Some of them want his hidden loot to pay for their hundreds of henchmen, some of them to finance disaster relief (no, really), while Polly of course only seeks justice and Tien Peng is on a ma-related mission Bollywood would approve of. While all of this probably won't rock your world, fine acting and solid fighting still make for an entertaining Taiwanese wuxia.

 

Zinda Laash (1967): A Pakistani version of Horror of Dracula, with some striking black and white photography that reminds me of expressionist silent movies. Interestingly, the film is set in contemporary Pakistan, quite unlike most of its Western brethren's fixation on the Victorian era. It even culminates in a car chase. Only the needle-dropped soundtrack lets the film down sometimes: a jazz version of "La Cucaracha" does not for an ominous mood make. The musical numbers are fine, though.

 

Technorati-Tags: taiwanese movies,thai movies,pakistani movies,horror,martial arts,wuxia,polly kuan,tien peng,tony jaa,panna rittikrai,in short