"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Invincible (2001)

tn_invincibleI saw this old issue of Asian Trash Cinema that had an interview with Ching Siu-Tung, veteran martial arts choreographer, prolific wire-fu practicioner, Jackie Chan Chinese Opera schoolmate, and director of Steven Seagal’s weirdest movie (BELLY OF THE BEAST). Of course the interview covered alot of his most legendary work: he directed the SWORDSMAN trilogy, EXECUTIONERS and NAKED WEAPON, he was stunt coordinator for A BETTER TOMORROW II and action director for HERO. But I was even more interested in the weird little tidbits I’d never heard about his brief flirtations with Hollywood after THE MATRIX exploded and Yuen Woo Ping was all booked up.

The craziest one was a story about “the director and producer” of SPIDER-MAN coming to Ching, unhappy with how their action scenes were coming out, and wanting him to redo them. Of course it never ended up happening, he seems unclear why and doesn’t go into details. But it’s an intriguing story. Raimi was always up on the Hong Kong guys, he executive produced HARD TARGET after all. It makes sense he would know about the top wire-fighting guy and think of him for a movie about a guy swinging on webs.

But was he thinking of having Ching as kind of a consultant, to choreograph the computer animation to be more dynamic, or did they actually want him to reshoot it in live action? I’m leaning toward the second one, ’cause remember, action scenes with photo-real CG human characters hadn’t really been done before SPIDER-MAN, just select shots in the pioneering BLADE 2. I bet the early rough versions were dicey and almost scared them off. Too bad they didn’t at least get a Ching test to put on the DVD to see what it would’ve looked like. But maybe it’s best left to our imaginations, like Jodorowsky’s DUNE. Maybe we can get a doc of CHING SIU TUNG’S SPIDER-MAN ACTION SEQUENCES. It would be pretty short though, probly.

mp_invincibleAnyway, in the interview he also mentioned directing “a show” called INVINCIBLE, produced by the LETHAL WEAPON 4 odd couple of Mel Gibson and Jet Li. No, not the Mark Wahlberg football movie, and definitely not the Werner Herzog one with the bodybuilder. I remembered seeing a DVD cover  – that’s the one with Billy Zane, right? Sure enough it’s a feature length movie made for TBS Super Station, a pilot for a series that never happened. Jefery Levy (INSIDE MONKEY ZETTERLAND, S.F.W., THE EXPENDABLES [1999 tv movie]) is credited as director, Ching as action director.

I found an LA Times article from the time that says the movie was shot Hong Kong style, with separate units for action and non-action. It sounds pretty complicated:

Most films are shot at 24 frames per second, but Levy shot more than 80% of “Invincible” at speeds running from one to 150 per frames per second. The action unit didn’t shoot any of the dialogue scenes. “If it had dialogue, the main unit shot the action. The main unit shot about 25% to 30% action. If it had wires, it was shot by the wire unit, and if it didn’t have wires, we would talk about who was shooting what.”

Adding to the challenge of making the film was the fact that wire director Ching and his staff didn’t speak any English. “I had an interpreter,” says Levy. “The storyboarding sessions were quite excruciating because really I had to stand up and kind of act out what was in the script.”

The result of these negotiations is a funny specimen of that odd collision between bland American cheese and pure Hong Kong martial arts fantasy that could only happen in that era. It’s not as crazy as Ronny Yu’s WARRIORS OF VIRTUE (like so many American movies it fails to have any talking kangaroos in it), but still bizarre enough that it must’ve befuddled a few viewers who got bored of the Facts of Life reunion on ABC and switched over to TBS.

Right at the top Zane (in a wig that makes him look like the dude from Green Day) is in a hazy alley spinning through the air like one of those flying fairy dolls from the ’90s, having a sword fight with a glowing-white battle angel called The White Warrior (stuntwoman Michelle Comerford), who defeats him, which somehow teaches him to love. He’s an ancient demonic being who decides to turn good and train a team of troubled mortal chosen ones representing four of the five elements to work as a team and use mental powers and kung fu to stop his former friends Slate (David Field, CHOPPER, THE ROVER) and the Shadowmen from getting both halves of the ancient tablet that will open a portal freeing them from purgatory (who cares?) and destroying the world (bad).

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Zane narrates in a jokey, modern tone, and philosophizes to the group, shifting between spoken word and telepathy for maximum dreaminess. His part is about 50% mumbo, 45% jumbo, 5% smartass, and nothing else.

At first it’s a recruiting movie. He appears to each of these generic TV types (cop, thief, bodyguard, soldier) right when they’re in trouble, about to get killed. He strolls in casually and talks them into escaping certain doom by going on his mystical adventure. It’s weird that they all have these impending death experiences on the same day, but I guess that’s part of the prophecy or whatever.

There are a couple notables in the cast. The bodyguard is played by Byron Mann, who later worked with Ching in BELLY OF THE BEAST and continued his Seagal relationship into A DANGEROUS MAN and STREET WARS (one of the True Justice movies).  You may also know him as Silver Lion from THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS. The thief (a Robin Hood type, of course) is Dominic Purcell before he played Dracula in BLADE: TRINITY. He gets to be Australian, which works because that’s where he was raised. The cop Serena Blue is played by Stacy Oversier, who only has one other acting credit (GUARDIAN with Mario Van Peebles) but she was a stuntwoman in DEEP BLUE SEA and BATMAN AND ROBIN, so maybe she really did these limber, dancerly kung fu moves. The dishonorably discharged soldier is played by Tory Kittles, recently on True Detective. And one of the Shadowmen is Bren Foster, the young martial artist who stole FORCE OF EXECUTION from Seagal (and was also in MAXIMUM CONVICTION with him). Another one, Kyle Rowling, was Christopher Lee’s stuntman in STAR WARS 2-3.

Anyway, after they all sign on it becomes a training movie – sitting in shallow water, listening to wisdom, kung fu montages. And at the end they fight the bad guys and suddenly know how to shoot magic beams and fly and stuff.

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Visually I think it’s a little on the cheesy side, but I give them credit for making it stylistically different from regular TV. There’s alot of silhouettes, not just to hide the fight doubles but also for, you know, art or whatever. For example one scene is a long conversation between Zane and a guy he has to convince of something, done in a couple long shots of them standing silhouetted on a beach, the setting sun reflecting off the Australian water.

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I’ll tell you this: in my opinion this is pretty much the only thing I’ve ever seen that’s made for TV where a guy jumps on another guy’s shoulders and leans back and acts as a catapult to launch a third person into the air.

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Now, there are still some Jesse Stone movies and some Hunter episodes I haven’t seen, but otherwise I’m pretty sure this sort of thing has been done less than ten times.

The story is credited to twin brothers Chad and Carey Hayes (THE CONJURING, HOUSE OF WAX, Baywatch Nights, actors in the BMX movie RAD), with the teleplay by Michael Brandt & Derek Haas (2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, 3:10 TO YUMA, WANTED) and Levy. But I bet you money Ching came up with that human catapult business on his own.

That coulda been in SPIDER-MAN, Raimi. You blew it bud.

I really can’t claim this is very good or that it should’ve been picked up as a series, but it’s one of those fleeting moments in the pop culture timeline I like to be reminded of: the time when it made sense for Ching Siu-Tung to do a mystical TBS movie starring Billy Zane. You’re a weirdo, history. That’s why we love you.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2014 at 10:17 am and is filed under Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

12 Responses to “Invincible (2001)”

  1. Written by the creepy groupie-sharing BMX twins from RAD?! Way to bury the lede, Vern.

  2. I just a realized I am wearing my Rad Racing T-shirt right this second. It’s clearly a sign that I must watch this movie soon.

  3. Thanks Vern, reading this was a nice break from my already hectic workday. Hong Kong-influenced action was already filtering down to television, this pilot was rather late to the game, wasn’t it? Martial Law came and went, John Woo directed the Once A Thief and Blackjack pilot movies. I wonder how the quality of the choreography would have been sustained if Invisible did go to series. I recall the fights in Martial Law got shorter and simpler as production moved forward.

  4. If you have not already, I highly recommend watching Ching’s directorial debut DUEL TO THE DEATH, still probably his best movie. It’s got a lot of the bugnuts visuals and chaotic action scenes of his better known later movies, but it’s grounded with a stronger, more impactful story with somewhat nuanced characters. It also has a talking severed head that kills itself via spontaneous combustion, so, you know, his crazy shit is in there too. It’s one of my favorite wuxias and one of the first ones I saw that really grabbed me and got me interested in the genre.

    Note to Mr. M, it may be a little too Cirque du Soleil for you, but makes up for it with some choice graphic violence.

  5. I liked this quite a bit. Stylistically shot action and the movie has an exotic feel to it.

  6. There’s a movie on Netflix streaming called Butterfly Sword, actually titled Butterfly and Sword but the distributor randomly changed the title, that I think they credited to Ching. IMDB credits him as action director. I don’t recall the film’s credits having English, so who knows. The quality was really terrible, but it’s one of the very few classic Hong Kong movies on Netflix that is uncut, subtitled and in the right aspect ratio (I think…). Off the top of my head, the others on there are Wing Chun, which looks pretty good, and Tai Chi II or Tai Chi Fist or whatever they randomly titled it, which looks decent. There are a few others that I thought the quality was unwatchably bad for (Swordsman 2, New Shaolin Temple) and then a handful that were dubbed and/or cropped. I think they have Iron Monkey in the American cut. And thank the heavens, they have Riki-Oh, which looks great (relatively, of course). Some god of cinema should make a website devoted to what classic kung fu can be streamed in good quality.

    Anyhow, Butterfly and Sword. I wasn’t really able to follow the plot, but the action was pretty nuts. One of the first scenes has Tony Leung using a bow and arrow to launch himself and that’s just the start. Film also has Donnie Yen and Michelle Yeoh. Fights a bit chaotic for my tastes, pretty fast cutting so it’s hard to follow at times, though it would surely be easier to follow if the quality were better. But it’s such crazy ultraviolent wirework greatness that I recommend it.

    I think Ching’s latest directorial work, The Emperor and the White Snake, is on Netflix. Enjoyable flick but pretty forgettable. Despite some spotty CG there are a lot of really pretty visuals, but the action is barely there. Disappointing collaboration for him and Jet.

    If you want to see Ching doing superhero action, check out his work on the recent Bollywood film Krrish 3. The film is a grab bag of ideas lifted from our superhero movies, but it lifts so much and does so much unique stuff with it that it really becomes its own thing. It probably takes the most from X-Men, though, and there’s a fight between Krrish and some mutants, including a character ripped off from Toad (the tongue dude, I think that’s his name), which is a ton of fun. I enjoyed it more than any of the X-Men fights. The film overall is a silly great time, my favorite superhero movie since Dark Knight Rises. It’s an interesting franchise and I think you may enjoy going through the saga of Koi Mil Gaya, Krrish, and Krrish 3 (no Krrish 2), though the first two are only good in a silly weird charming novelty way and the third one is the only one I feel is legitimately great (on its an ridonculous terms). Ching also did the action for Krrish, though those fights aren’t exactly good.

  7. I was surprised the Americanization of Hong Kong lasted so briefly. Really only 1999 – 2003/4 or so. Yet we’ve had shakycam for over a decade.

  8. Fred, what do you mean by the Americanization of Hong Kong? And what makes you think it stopped?

  9. I’m sure Fred meant the Hong Kong-ization of America, and he may have a point. It hasn’t stopped but it’s not what it used to be. Certainly the marquee names like John Woo, Yuen Woo-ping, or Donnie Yen have pretty much gone back to Asia(where they’re doing pretty well, thank you) but some of the lesser-known talents have successfully integrated into the west. JC Stunt Team alumni Andy Cheng has a bunch of Hollywood credits as a stunt player but also served as fight/stunt coordinator and second unit director on films like the first TWILIGHT, THE RUNDOWN, and even a Terrence Malick film(THE NEW WORLD). Bradley Allen has done fight choreography on Edgar Wright’s last two: SCOTT PILGRIM and THE WORLD’S END. It may because it’s more smoothly integrated and not say, Drew Barrymore being artlessly hoisted up and down through the air like a teabag.

    You know I thought INVISIBLE did go to series because I had it mixed up with BLACK SASH. I don’t even if they’re that similar but for some reason in my mind they do.

  10. Ching Siu-Tung actually did work on Spider-Man. Back in the day, this was reported on a news site called Monkey Peaches and mentioned in a film review over at Hong Kong Film Net. What happened was that Ching was not a member of the U.S. stunt union, so he wasn’t allowed to physically handle wires on the set. He could only work as a consultant.

    I did a Chinese Google search where there were some references to him having worked on Spider-Man. An interviewer recalls Ching having stepped off the plane after finishing work on Spider-Man. Another interviewer began a question by saying something like: “You have worked on Hollywood productions like Spider-Man…”

    Ching’s assistant (Dion Lam) worked on the sequel in a more direct capacity because he was a union member, hence why he was credited. It’s a shame that Ching wasn’t credited since Raimi should have known better…what with John Woo being unable to get Philip Kwok to work on Hard Target due to U.S. stunt regulations.

  11. I don’t know. He said in that interview that he was approached but didn’t end up working on it. Would he hide it if he had?

  12. Ching wasn’t truthful because he wasn’t legally qualified to work as a stunt coordinator in Hollywood at that point in time. He could only work in a consulting capacity. He didn’t work on set, but he worked on the movie indirectly. The following link is a good indication as to why he would lie: https://www.sagaftra.org/contracts-industry-resources/stunt-safety/stunt-coordinator-eligibility-process

    I think part of the problem with hiring him was that there was controversy when Timothy Holcombe died during the making of Spider-Man in March 2001 (i.e. the fatality was brought about by an improperly modified forklift being used as a camera crane). Columbia ended up being sued. Ching’s methods are extreme and unorthodox by Hollywood’s standards, so discretion had to be maintained. When you look at how wirework can go wrong in Hollywood (e.g. Cheryl Wheeler’s accident during the making of Back to the Future Part II) then you can understand why Ching wouldn’t be allowed on set.

    The 2002 Monkey Peaches news item, dated March 7, cited that he began work on Spider-Man following the completion of Hero in late January. He had returned to China near the end of the first week in March. It wasn’t revealed what scenes that he had worked on, but the consultation must have been more than cursory as can be deciphered from this collection of quotes in #55 of Asian Cult Cinema: “The producer and the director showed me the action scenes of that movie and asked for my advice. We had been talking to each other for some time.”

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