Action and stunts, whether
they’re live or filmed, are eaten up by audiences the world over. Sometimes this is because they marvel at the
physical skill involved. Watching the
razor-sharp choreography of someone like Charles
Chaplin or a show like “Cirque Du Soleil,” we are amazed at just what the
human body is capable of, and we may even be a little jealous that we’re not at
that level (maybe you are, but I’m not).
It puts paid to the expression “poetry in motion.” Sometimes, however, our excitement doesn’t
come from the appreciation of a performer’s abilities. It comes from our dark, innate desire to see
if someone is going to be injured or killed while in the execution of an act. This is not to say we would wish bad results
on these people, but there is a mighty large “if” at the center of spectacles
like those Evel Knievel used to
do. Without the danger, though, there is
no thrill. It’s an odd dichotomy. We may not want to see these people die, but
we totally want to see if these people are going to die. If you think about it, it’s actually a pretty
morbid, and pretty large, part of our collective psychic makeup. Even when the stuntwork has been practiced,
and filmed, and edited to within an inch of its life, we are still amazed. This is the beauty of performers like Jackie Chan. He shows us the end result of his
efforts. But in a lot of his films, he
also shows us the screw ups. We get it
all, and we know that since Chan is still alive and kicking by the
end, it’s all good, no matter how many times he had to be whisked to the
hospital. De-mystifying his stunts makes
them all the more impressive, because it humanizes (at least in part) the
superman we see on screen, and we go from the darker end of why we love these
things to the lighter side. It’s
uplifting, sort of.
Ryu, nicknamed the City Hunter (Chan), is a private detective with a carefree streak a mile
wide. When his partner (Michael Wong) is gunned down, Ryu
promises to raise Wong’s sister
Carrie and never chase after her amorously.
Naturally, this lasts right up until Carrie matures into Joey Wong in the next scene, and then
the two have to deal with their feelings, or at least Carrie does. The search for missing teenager Kyoko (Kumiko Goto), complicates matters, and
puts Ryu and Carrie in the path of terrorists, gold diggers, and one of the
weirdest musical duos ever.
I’ve not seen tons of Chan’s filmography or director Wong Jing’s either, but I would be
interested to know whether or not this one is the furthest removed from
reality. It’s adapted from a manga, and
the filmmakers embrace the comic/cartoon aspects of same to the nth
degree. Consequently, we have things
like sound effect balloons during a fight.
The sound effects proper throughout the film appear to have been foleyed
by the good folks at Hanna Barbera. The
musical score is a quasi-ragtime-style piece of work perhaps better suited to
Mickey Mouse’s earliest efforts. Ryu’s
garage looks like the set of a mid-Eighties music video. A song and dance number breaks out in the
middle of the film, with characters inexplicably taking part as dancers (though
this sequence fits in a narrative sense, allowing it to play out and observing
how other characters react to it emphasizes its oddness). But because elements like these are embraced
with a gigantic smile on the producers’ faces (and most certainly on Chan’s), we more readily accept
them. Sure, there are still instances of
the sort of wince-inducing “comedy” that plagues a great many of the airier
Asian films I’ve seen. You know what I
mean: the pronounced facial mugging, the overdone slapstick that would give Moe, Larry, and Curly the fits,
and so on. It’s the sort of thing that
either hits or misses wide. Thankfully,
it mostly hits here.
Bearing that in mind, there is
little to no attention paid to either plotting or characterization, and this is
probably my biggest beef with the film.
Not so much that these things aren’t developed, but that the
action-oriented tangents the film goes down are so divorced from the film’s
story, that they simply become extensive vignettes. Like porn loops for stuntwork
enthusiasts. Not a bad thing, by and
large, but it can become stale after prolonged exposure. Just not enough to hate.
With this film we again have a
pronounced emphasis on performances, and not simply from the physical efforts
of Chan and company. The very first scene is a bit of
self-reflexivity with Ryu directly addressing the audience. There is the aforementioned song (“Gala Gala
Happy”) and dance from Soft Hard and
their cohorts. Carrie puts on a
performance with her cousin (Bei-Dak Lai)
aboard the cruise ship, partly in an effort to make Ryu envious. The two femmes fatale (Chingmy Yau and Carol Wan)
put their wares out there (so to speak) to attract rich men, but one of them
keeps a briefcase loaded with weaponry.
This presentation aspect is perhaps best summed up by the scene in the
movie theater. Ryu is matched up against
two towering black goons. Meanwhile, Bruce Lee fights Kareem Abdul Jabar in Game Of
Death on the movie screen. Ryu takes
his cues from Lee, and after his
enemies have been dispatched, Lee gives
Ryu verbal and visual thumbs ups.
This leads me, circuitously, to
another facet of this film, and Chan’s
films in general, that I’ve noticed over time (again, I can’t speak to his
entire oeuvre). There is a sort of
sexless sexuality at play, which at once appeals to the prurient interest of
fourteen-year-old boys while simultaneously being remarkably chaste. When Ryu sleeps, he dreams of scads of
swimsuit-clad women fawning over him in a pool.
Ryu touts himself as a womanizer of the first order, yet he doesn’t kiss
a single woman the entire film (or none that I can recall). We get semi-lurid shots of women lounging
poolside, but none ever take their clothes off.
It relies on what parts of the human body are allowed on display (and
they are some darn fine parts, no argument there), but there is never any sort
of consummation happening. Like Sheriff
Buford T. Justice once said, “You can think about it. But don’t do it.” This is a flirtatious, wholesome sexuality. It doesn’t even quite rise to the ribaldry
level of something like The Benny Hill Show. Nonetheless, it absolutely has an easygoing
charm about it. It’s not aggressive. It’s more like the first time you took notice
of those suspect lumps under a girl’s shirt when you were twelve or
thirteen. It has a good-natured heart behind
it. Is it sexist? Maybe.
But it’s innocent, too. I suppose
this is an odd way to end a review of an Action film, but I think it nicely
reflects the disposition with which I left this film. So there.
MVT: The “anything goes”
sense of fun is infectious, and it goes a long way in bolstering the film’s
ample charms. To play a film like this
any more seriously than this one is would be a mistake, in my opinion.
Make Or Break: The Make is
the scene where Ryu scans the fingerprints on Kyoko’s butt, trying to determine
who the bad guys are. There’s a terrific
payoff to this, and it is handled remarkably deftly here. I know it’s not as visually impressive as something
like the Street Fighter scene, but I
simply loved this little moment.
Score: 7.25/10