This film is 25 years old - 25. When you think of all the movies that have come and gone in that time you really have to wonder if this will hold up against movies of the same kind. Let’s have a sit down, have a nice cup of tea, and find out as we play
buy it from iTunes and hope for the best. Full disclosure: I first saw this film about fifteen years ago, and I’m curious to see what time and distance have done to nostalgia.
Because I’ve tried to fit in as many screenshots as possible, feel free to click on them to embiggen.
First off, this is a
Shaw Brothers production. That alone should let you know what you’re in for: some pretty amazing kung fu, lots of noble characters being fucked over by the bad ones, social injustice and people abusing their position of power, and gratuitous wewungwung. What is wewungwung? A term popularised in the pleasantly entertaining HK film
And I Hate You So (小親親, 2000), wewungwung is the combination of noises that audio artists put on movie soundtracks when kung fu masters are facing off against each other - the sounds of metal blades on metal, of swishy feet doing slippery kung fu moves in the dirt, of general fighting and combat. In a word: wewungwung.
At its core this is a political thriller (and romance between the heavy weights) that shows you the impact bad politicians have on the little people. In order to do this, it draws on such stellar talent as Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk (who you may know from such films as
In the Mood For Love 花樣年華,
Hero 英雄, and a whole host of other high-brow movies) as the boss of a dye manufacturing company. Her colours come out so much better than everyone else’s due to a handed-down family secret, one that she can’t tell anyone. However, she does spill the beans to Ti Lung (狄龍)’s character (you may know him from 60,000 other Shaw Brothers films), basically because she’s trying to hint politely that she fancies him and he’s being much too gentlemanly about the fact that he already fancies her.
The conflict of the story is kicked off by a young lad, fresh from his own village, whose dad has just died. Before he did, he told his son to look up Ti Lung and claim some kind of fatherly gift. This son doesn’t know why his dad entrusted it to Ti Lung or even what it is. The young lad arrives in the village and immediately catches the eye of Lady Boss Maggie Cheung by getting thrown out of a food queue. It turns out he’s literally only got the clothes he’s standing up in without shoes - that’s right, you’ve just met the bare-footed kid. She takes pity on him and gives him food; he’s so young and naiive that he’s instantly touched by her kindness. This is interesting, as I wonder if this set him up for so many falls later on - the first person he met in town was nice to him. He’s a complete bumpkin and doesn’t understand things like lying, double-crossing or politicking. The side effect of this is that he's the happiest, most helpful person you’ll ever meet - and also dives right in to protect or stand up for someone if he thinks Bad Things are happening. And if you're already thinking
that’s going to get him into trouble one day then you’re not wrong.
This adorable, charming little bundle of sunshine and helpfulness is played by Aaron Kwok (郭富城), and very well - you’ve never seen a smile so wide when he’s somehow helped or eyebrows so abused when he’s struggling to understand why people are arseholes. He bumbles along, trying to track down Ti Lung with just an address given to him by his father. He bumps into a bloke in the street and asks him to tell him where it is - unbeknownst to him, the young dude he’s just accosted is actually the ever-impressive Jacklyn Wu (吳倩蓮 - you may know her from such movies as
A Moment of Romance 天若有情 I, II, III,
Jiang Hu 江湖, etc.), who has dressed as a bloke to enable her to gad about town with her best mate.
A bit of a struggle ensues as she’s desperate to make a break for it before she’s found out - but poor Aaron is even more desperate to find out where Ti Lung is. He makes a grab for ‘the dude’s’ shirtfront and accidentally pushes her in the chest. When he realises what his hand is smushed up against, a look of childlike panic takes over his face and he lets go like he’s been slapped - and he very nearly is. Instead she runs off and he’s left kicking himself for being impolite to a lady.
He eventually finds Ti Lung and in doing so gets a job with Lady Boss at her dye factory. It’s not long before he has to sign an order form and that’s when the audience learns he can’t read or write. Undaunted, he finds a local school and tries to join - and you’ve guessed who the teacher is, right? Jacklyn Wu, now dressed as a woman, recognises him immediately (he has no clue who she is) and when he gushes about wanting to learn to write his name so he’ll ‘be somebody’, she calmly asks him what it is and then writes it out for him. She gives him the paper and tells him to come back when he can write it. Still none the wiser, he does just that.
When he strolls back into the school, carrying a gift basket of flowers for her and feeling accomplished, she asks him in front of all the little children to write his name out for them all to see. He does - and the kids nearly wet themselves laughing. He can’t understand why until one of the kids tells him he’s written ‘dumbass’ instead.
His face goes from happy-proud to betrayed-vulnerable over the course of 5 hurtful seconds. If you look closely you can actually pinpoint the moment when his heart breaks due to his sudden understanding of the word ‘gullible’. She’s grinning with vindictive revenge but when she sees his reaction it only makes her happier. Instead of being angry, he just comes at her like a shamed puppy, asking her why she had to be so mean to him when he was only asking for help - her being so ejamukated and all. He slopes off and she’s left feeling like the git she is - and then she discovers the flowers he brought her and feels even worse. She assumes she’ll never see him again anyway, as most people that come to the town are there for a martial arts competition and once they’ve made enough money they leave again. But hey, she could always find him and apologise, right? After all, he seemed like a nice enough lad, and maybe she was a bit harsh…
Meanwhile the local magistrate is Up To No Good and is betraying people left, right and centre so that he doesn’t get found out. A new government official arrives in town and wants to root out corrupt officials, so a cat and mouse game ensues that begins to have knock-on effects for everyone: Lady Boss’ dye factory becomes the MacGuffin that everyone wants to buy or steal from her, bullies turn up regularly to try to wrest it from her, and people get into deep water by promising things they don’t have. Fights break out, friendships are underestimated and just when you think someone might get out of this alive and happy, the rug is pulled out from under your feet.
Some great acting here from the heavy-weights, and Aaron is no slouch in the reaction-face department. He’s also pretty nifty on his feet (comes from being a gifted dancer, I guess) so you get some good close-ups of the fight scenes because they have no stand-in or stuntman to hide. The wewungwung is great and I have to say, this is one I will be watching again as the fight scenes are awesome - this is mostly ‘credible’ kung fu, so you won’t see anyone flying off to land on roof tops or tackle 20-foot walls like they’re nothing. What you
do get is a lot of pseudo-wing chun, some epic elbow and footwork from Aaron, and the feeling that this movie really isn’t as depressing as it should be, given the subject matter. The ending is typical Shaw Brothers ‘
hero wins but not how you’d like’ - for the fiftieth time I was hoping against hope that this pulled of a miraculous ‘
gotcha!’ at the end. I won’t spoil it for you on that front. The ending song was sung by Aaron as part of his studio deal -
Leave Me With Some Respect (
留下句號的面容), and like a good Bond film, a melody of it was used well throughout.
All in all, this was a case of
grief, that was better than I remembered instead of
not-stalgia (where something is nowhere near as good as you remembered it to be). I’ll wait till tomorrow to skip to the fights and watch them again.
Verdict: 9/10; fantastic wewungwung, great characters, pretty solid plot and nice execution. Nice final words from a character too - very
in your face, bitch!. In fact my only gripe is that this appears to be the USA DVD version, as it’s been dubbed into Mandarin (don’t get me started on the redundancy of doing that when you can clearly see people’s mouths moving in Cantonese). But if I’d been less careless and managed to keep hold of my original HK version, I wouldn’t have had to buy it from iTunes so it’s my fault really.
And that’s it from me today - I do still have
Cold War II to rewatch and review. Best get on it, then.
Soopytwist.
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