I just mention that so if it bothers you too it doesn’t put you off and make you stop watching, because this is a great movie. It didn’t take long for me to get over that and get hooked. Detective Chan (Simon Yam) is a supercop who’s in that van crash. He’s transporting witnesses to a big trial against the Triad boss Wong Po (Sammo Hung) but they get ambushed and the witnesses all die. Chan survives but when they’re pulling a chunk of glass out of his head they discover that he has an inoperable brain tumor. So he makes plans to retire and before that he wants to bust Wong Po by any means necessary. That’s what’s on his bucket list. He probly has other things on there like bungee jumping and wearing a bee beard, but those are not mentioned in the movie because those are activities that occur mostly outside of the Kill Zone.

He’s got a great team to bust Wong Po, played by Liu Kai-Chi, Danny Summer and Ken Chang. They all love Chan like a father or really nice big brother so they’d do anything to fulfill his last wish of putting that motherfucker behind bars, including skirting a few rules or straightup framing the bastard. Yen plays Ma Kwun, who’s been transferred in to lead the team after Chan retires. He’s legendary among cops for having once punched a guy so hard it mentally incapacitated him, but he still  causes tension when he finds out the team aren’t exactly playing by the book.

Yen comes strutting into the movie wearing baggy pants and a John McClane tank top. He’s far from the reserved, humble character of Ip Man, but also is not the brazen asshole his reputation implies. He turns out to be the conscience of the team, but his values are challenged. Not surprisingly he’s also the primary asskicker and has two great fights with Sammo Hung.

It’s funny that Sammo has become good at playing scary. He’s believable as this cold-blooded pony-tailed tyrant, you don’t see the jolly goofball behind his eyes. I hope they just keep doing this Yen vs. Hung matchup in movie after movie, time period after time period. Sometimes they could switch and have Sammo be the good guy, though.

The other scary villain is Wong Po’s psychotic knife-wielding enforcer Jack (Wu Jing), who goes around assassinating our protagonists. This guy’s a really good fighter, likes to do flying, spinning kicks and takes perverse pleasure in stabbing people. I don’t know how he gets in so much practice though when he obviously spends so much time on his looks, bleaching his hair and shit. He wears an all white outfit (bad idea when in a baton vs. knife alley fight with Donnie Yen) and his coat almost looks like Captain Eo’s. You just immediately hate this guy before you even realize what a threat he is.

The action (directed by Yen, according to the credits) is excellent. The fighting combines the type of exaggerated, acrobatic moves we love in a kung fu movie with more brutal modern MMA type of styles. Yen is doing armbars, leglocks, chokes, they’re pinning each other down and slamming each other, but there’s still time for jumping and knocking people into things and what not. And I don’t know if this counts as action or not but there is a moment that knocked me on my ass (metaphorically) when Yen is clear across a huge room, he throws a duffle bag of money and it somehow lands exactly at Sammo’s feet. Maybe it’s just CGI but it doesn’t look like it. My #1 guess would be wirework and #2 would be Donnie Yen is a champion bag thrower skilled at both distance and accuracy.

I’m not sure if Yen’s action directing extends to what’s going on in the scenes or not, but there are clever ways to add tension to the proceedings. There’s one where a cop gets tricked into being locked inside a fenced off area and Yen’s on the outside unable to help. (Is that what the Kill Zone is?)  Another part Detective Chan is there during a big fight but he literally has his hands tied, he can’t intervene. I mean I guess that’s a pretty common thing to happen in action movies, but in this story it seems kinda deep the way it parallels Chan’s situation of not being able to affect the outcome of this ongoing war between murdering criminals and cheating cops.

But what I love about this movie is that almost every major character has some emotional thing going on in his life. Chan not only has the impending death, but he’s raising his goddaughter, whose parents were the murdered witnesses. Another guy has his daughter who he rarely gets to see coming to visit, another guy’s estranged from his dying father, and even Sammo has a wife and baby he cares about and he has them on speaker phone as he’s fighting to the near death. Donnie Yen’s character, everybody thinks he’s cool for punching that thug into retardation, but wait ’til you find out what he secretly does because he feels so guilty about it. (some of you guys will like it, because it involves playing video games.)

SPL looks very slick and modern, but that combination of topnotch violence, sincere melodrama and blurry lines between cops and robbers reminds me what I loved so much about the ’90s Hong Kong cinema when I first discovered it. It’s a movie that doesn’t skimp on the action, and yet takes plenty of time for quiet moments of emotion and brotherhood and shit. It can slow down and linger on a guy’s face as we know what he’s thinking about. This is one ZONE I would absolutely KILL to– you know, whatever. Point is I loved it.
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SPOILER ZONE (or SPL)
Seriously, big ending spoilers below

Early in the movie, whether you consciously think about it or not, it seems obvious that the two characters who will have to die by the end are the terminally ill captain and the enemy he’s trying to avenge before he dies. A few other people on each side could die of course, but those two are the for sure ones, you figure. The sick man probly shortly before the final battle, inspiring his team with his final words as he slips away, maybe sacrificing himself heroically because he’s the one that’s gonna die anyway so he might as well take advantage of that situation. And then maybe Donnie Yen has a big showdown and kills Sammo Hung, right?

So I loved that it was the opposite of that – the terminally ill guy and the villain are the only two characters who survive! The entire rest of both teams get killed, and these two assholes are alive regretting how much shit had to go down. Beautiful.

The movie begins in France in 1917. Chen Zhen is a soldier in the middle of a tense battle. He has some kind of amulet which the other soldiers credit with saving their lives. (I don’t get it.) For a minute it’s like a normal war movie: trenches, helmets, guns, bombs. But then things get desperate so Chen Zhen decides fuck it, I am a martial arts legend, I’m gonna run around and do a bunch of flips and parkour and kung fu the shit out of a whole bunch of French soldiers. The action (choreographed by Yen himself) is really cool, but almost comical in how exaggerated it is. He swings on a rope in a Peter Pan pose with a dagger between his teeth, he runs in circles leaning over so far his body could almost scrape the ground, it looks like a cartoon. Even I, an avowed fan of absurdity, thought at some point it was gonna turn out to be a comical fantasy or daydream type sequence. Nope. Just a war flashback.

Then it skips ahead to 1925 Shanghai, for more of that Chinese-Japanese tension that was such a big part of FIST OF FURY. When that was remade as FIST OF LEGEND they made an effort to tone it down, to be more nuanced, explore the reasons for the tension and show good and bad on both sides. For example there is a classic scene where Chen Zhen and an old Japanese master learn from each other and gain each other’s respect through a duel. But nationalism is back in vogue in Chinese movies these days, so LEGEND OF THE FIST tones it back up a little.

The Bruce Lee version of the story ends with Chen Zhen defiantly running toward a firing squad, in the Jet Li version he’s allowed to fake his death and escape. In this one he’s presumed dead so I figure either it follows FIST OF LEGEND or he used that magic amulet from the war to be bullet proof. Either way he comes back wearing a fake mustache and the identity of one of his dead war buddies. He hangs out at a night club called Casablanca and impresses the owner Master Liu (Anthony Wong) so he ends up working for him. They seem like real homies, but Chen is doing this as part of an undercover mission for the Chinese resistance. He also falls for the club’s singer Kiki (who’s Master Liu’s girlfriend, but he says it’s okay).

Alot of Japanese dignitaries hang out at the Casablanca and cause alot of squabbles that I feel confident I don’t fully understand (something about a spinning a coin). Chen finds out about an assassination attempt that will hurt the goal of Chinese unification and help the Japanese to invade, and soon after that there’s a whole enemies list of Chinese people they plan to execute. It just so happens that the local movie theater is showing a super hero movie called THE MASKED WARRIOR, so Chen conveniently steals a Kato or Black Mask style costume from a window display to anonymously defend the people in danger.

To me it seemed like a reasonable idea to go that pulpy. It is after all the LEGEND of the fist, not THE HEAVILY RESEARCHED HISTORICAL ACCOUNT of the fist. But the way it’s handled is pretty lazy. There’s just a montage that shows little bits of fights and then spinning headlines about “The Masked Warrior”’s success. There really wasn’t a strong reason to turn him into a costumed super hero, and they barely do anything with it. And I can always roll with a Kato mask but I did find it pretty laughable whenever he stood posing on top of a building like the end of the old Michael Keaton BATMAN movie.

It’s half-assed as a super hero movie, and only about 3/4 assed as a spy movie. But there is some intrigue and double-crosses and what not. Chen ends up abducted, strung up and tortured. It turns out the Japanese general who hates Chen is the son of the karate master he killed in the dojo in the original story, so he’s out for revenge, and they’re gonna fight and what not. (Remember, the first story was about his furious revenge for the death of his master, now this guy is avenging the death of his master/father, so it’s a taste of his own medicine).  When he finds out what’s going on Donnie Yen as Chen Zhen gets to repeat Bruce Lee’s “Chinese are not sick men of Asia line,” which I still don’t understand no matter how it gets translated.

(And no, I’m not saying Chinese are sick men of Asia. I honestly don’t have any opinions about who is or is not sick men of Asia.)

The nationalism and stubbornness in the original bothers me, but the movie is so undeniably great that you still gotta enjoy it. This is a much weaker story, so it’s harder to forgive. One scene in particular is goofy because they have some college protesters chanting “Remember our national humiliation!” in protest of what the news reports as 30,000 killed or wounded. 30,000 victims and you guys are upset because it was embarrassing? I know it’s a cultural thing, but jesus.

I get a kick out of the fake mustache. I guess it’s kind of an homage to FIST OF FURY because that Chen Zhen had some disguises too, he dressed up as an old man for example. But alot of time passes during this legend, so I had to wonder how he manages to have close relationships with all these people over a long period of time and none of them ever notice he’s wearing a fake mustache. I was thinking maybe at some point he grew it for real, but then I realized he never has it when he’s the Masked Warrior. So you gotta give him credit for pulling that off, I guess. Musta gone through alot of spirit gum.

There’s a little bit of the competition between dojos from the old school kung fu movies, so the bad guy says “Feel free to stop by Hongkou Dojo” and Chen says, “I’ll do that sometime.” I liked that.

The editing is very quick, but not usually in a bad way. The story keeps moving at a clip, and if I spoke the language instead of having to read the subtitles I could probly keep up fine. Still, it just goes through the motions, it doesn’t have any depth to anything, so it’s not nearly as exciting as a kung fu, super hero or war resistance movie should be. Also it has too many eye-rolling cliche scenes, like the one where the inspector makes a rousing speech to inspire the jailed protesters and the French occupiers immediately give in.

The good part is the action. There’s alot of cool moves and it’s pretty violent. That was good. I liked the fights, but the two classic FIST movies (not to mention Yen’s two recent IP MAN movies) have characters and stories you care about, and fights that are tied into the story and characterization. LEGEND OF THE FIST can’t compare to any of them, not even close.

Oh well. It’ll make for an interesting Scorsese remake.

IP MAN was very episodic and ended early in Ip Man’s life, so there was a natural opening to continue the story. But the movie had such a perfect blend of character drama and martial arts action that it’s alot to live up to. And in recent years the sequels to the international action phenomenons have been pretty iffy. I enjoyed ONG BAK 2, but it’s a big mess that lost alot of people, and I ahven’t heard anything good about part 3 yet. DISTRICT B13 ULTIMATUM was watchable but completely underwhelming. So this was far from a sure thing. There’s curses to overcome.

This is gonna sound weird, but there were some hats that worried me. The story begins in Hong Kong in the early ’50s, but there’s a couple young dudes wearing what look like modern headwear. I’m not sure what’s up with that.

Ip Man is poor and living in the city, it’s got less of that sweeping epic feel the first one had with the war time conflicts and his aristocratic lifestyle living in the mansion for the first part. This is more like FIST OF LEGEND, a story about rival martial arts schools. Ip Man rents out the top of a building to teach Wing Chun, but he has no students until a young hot shot named Wong Leung (Huang Xiaoming) shows up saying they’ll spar and if Ip Man can beat him he’ll sign up to become his student. Well, of course Ip Man can beat him, but Wong gets in a huff about it. Later Wong comes back with a bunch of friends, and Ip Man reluctantly beats them too, so they bow to him and he becomes their master.

These new disciples mean well, they’re loyal to Ip Man and the Wing Chun style, but you know how disciples can be. They’re dudes who like to go around and get in fights, so pretty quick Wong gets into a street fight with some jerks who represent what the subtitles on the DVD I saw call “Hong Kong style.” When Wong defeats them with Wing Chun they pull a bitch move, they pretend he attacked them and unfairly beat them up, so they take him hostage and demand that Ip Man come pay a ransom to get him back.

Ip Man shows up but won’t (and/or can’t) pay the money. Luckily Jin Shanzhao (Fan Siu-Wong, STORY OF RICKY) sees what’s going on and intervenes. Remember, that was the show off who showed up and challenged Ip Man in part 1, broke his wife’s vase and everything. He was the main villain in part 1. Now time has passed, he’s grown up a little, he has a wife and kid, so he and Ip Man might as well be old friends instead of enemies. It’s that thing I love, the “Beer’s To You” philosophy of ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN, the Seagalian “I need time to change,” the Korean opponent coming back to fight by his side in BEST OF THE BEST 2, the embrace between opponents after a grueling UFC fight. Enemies who bond and become allies. It’s the perfect feel good theme for action movies.

So that situation is defused, but not completely, because then we meet Brother Hung, played by Sammo Hung (who also did the excellent fight choreography for both movies). He’s the master of these assholes, and the boss of all the martial arts schools. He says Ip Man has to follow the rules, he has to meet with the heads of the other schools and get permission to teach. Because he’s polite Ip Man does to got the meeting, where he doesn’t understand the customs but quickly finds out he has to defeat anyone who challenges him in a fight on top of a large table without falling off. So he defeats a couple of the teachers and then has to fight Brother Hung.

This is a classic, gravity-defying fight where 58 year old, heavyset Sammo Hung flips around and glides through the air and the two manage to stay balanced when the table is split in half and tossed across the room. Ip Man wins the right to teach, but Brother Hung tells him to pay dues. He refuses, so the conflict is still on.

Brother Hung is the highlight of the movie. He just seems like such a mean asshole, but then after the fight he sits down and says “Medicine” because he has asthma. I immediately sympathized with him. These two gain the Beer’s To You respect for each other over the course of the movie as Ip Man convinces him that having a duel with him is not as important as having dinner with his family (including a chubby little kid who stands licking a giant lollipop as they’re about to fight), and as Brother Hung shows a few signs of respect toward Ip Man and then fights courageously for the honor of Chinese martial arts as they’re being demeaned by westerners. So we don’t even have to wait for a sequel for a great villain to turn into a great ally.

Yes, this is another international fight tournament movie like FEARLESS or TRUE LEGEND. Brother Hung is involved with organizing this western style boxing match. He’s willing to compromise alot for it, but when the arrogant British boxing champ Twister (Darren Shahlavi) insults their wushu demonstrations he puts his foot down.

Ip Man’s wife isn’t as strong of a character this time, she’s just the wife who sees the symbolic importance of what Ip Man does and sacrifices her time with him for the cause. In fact she makes sure they don’t tell him when she goes into labor because she doesn’t want to distract him from his training! Man, that’s fucked. Just like A BETTER TOMORROW 2 how he missed the birth of his child to go have a shootout. Luckily Ip Man survives (SPOILER). Then when he gets home and his wife has a baby he doesn’t even seem surprised or guilty or anything. Hopefully she’ll make sure he doesn’t neglect his new kid because he’s so obssessed with the Wing Chun (like she did with the first one).

After the story’s all wrapped up it fades out, but then instead of going to the credits there’s a little scene where Ip Man’s first student Wong (based on a real guy, by the way) brings by a kid who wants to learn Wing Chun. It’s Bruce Lee, of course, a very good young lookalike. He acts humorously cocky, like he probly really was, but also like he somehow knows that hey man, I’m gonna grow up to be Bruce fucking Lee. Anyway he struts in, but Ip Man tells him to fuck off. The end.

Nah, actually he tells him to come back when he’s older. I thought this scene was great ’cause it’s the martial arts movie equivalent of the Joker card at the end of BATMAN BEGINS or the Nick Fury cameo after the credits in IRON MAN. You think it’s all over and then they toss you a tantalizing excitement bomb so you’ll spend the next few years anticipating a followup. I know Donnie Yen said he won’t risk blowing it by making a part 3, and they had trouble with the Lee estate when they wanted this one to focus on Ip Man and Lee’s relationship, but after this scene you definitely get hungry for the part 3 it implies, a sort of student and master buddy movie between humble old legend and young arrogant phenomenon. If they never make it I’m sure people will continue begging for it, like they do for EVIL DEAD 4 or some shit like that that’s probly never gonna happen.

The good news is Ip Man at this point is supposed to be alot older than Yen currently is, so they could naturally pick it up years from now if they had to wait that long to convince everybody. Of course, by then the hats will be even more modern.

Anyway, unless and until they blow it with a part 3 the IP MAN movies are great for their combination of fights and characters. Just absolutely topnotch fight choreography and performance where you care what happens ’cause you like these guys so much. And once again Yen is perfect as this uniquely polite asskicker. I love how constantly humble and apologetic he is. When he gets kicked out of his rooftop studio he says, “I understand. I’m sorry.” I think that should be the subtitle. When his future students want to fight him he says, “Don’t be rash.” In his argument with Brother Hung he says, “I understand what you’re saying.”

In fact, even in the fight with Twister, a total asshole with no sense of honor, Ip Man keeps his cool. Here is an early example of mixed martial arts and already they’re trying to rig it in favor of their style without even showing Ip Man the respect of learning his name. “Please tell the Chinese guy no more kicks like these.”

I can’t remember if Rocky had a flashback to some wisdom from Apollo Creed just before the winning blows in ROCKY IV, but he probly did. That’s sort of what Ip Man does here, remembering some words from Brother Hung during the fight, but then he flashes back to some of his own advice. With that in mind Ip Man’s outward humbleness is even more impressive, because that means he knows how fucking awesome he is.

If I had to choose at spear point I’d have to go with part 1 being the better of the two, because the setting is a little more visually arresting and because the international tournament thing, even though it’s inevitable in a continuing Ip Man series, has already been done well a few times in recent years. But that’s nitpicking. This is a really good sequel, a gem in its own right.

When we non-martial artist martial arts fans see a great martial arts movie we have to admit that some part of our brains fantasize about how great it would be if we could do that type of crazy shit if it came down to it. Some junkie tries to grab your wallet, so both of you leap nimbly to the top of a tree and have a sword duel (you throw in some Wing Chun, he keeps using Dope Style). Or we wish that whatever it is that we do could be as disciplined and powerful as a martial art. I mentioned in a review of FIST OF LEGEND or something that I would want to have criticism duels showing why my style is the best. Ip Man often introduces himself “Ip Man. Wing Chun.” I would have to say “Vern. Outlaw style.”

But I think the sign that this is a classic is that as much as I admire the fights it’s his personality that I go away thinking about. Since seeing the movie I’ve honestly thought about how Ip Man’s peaceful discussions could be applied to situations in my own life. Next time I’m in an angry confrontation with somebody I hope I’ll remember Ip Man and his “I understand” calmness, and see how well that can defuse the situation.

(if not, there’s always the swords.)

Like Ronny Yu’s JET LI’S FEARLESS, IP MAN is a prestige martial arts picture, a fictionalized take on a historical figure, a beautifully shot period piece (in this case the ’30s) mixing drama and inspirational nationalism with topnotch martial arts choreography. The look is a little more timeless than FEARLESS though – I didn’t notice any digital shots, and only a couple wire-assisted moves.

What makes the movie stand out is Yen’s portrayal of Ip Man, who doesn’t seem at all like your usual martial arts badass. Yes, he he happens to be one of the best fighters anybody’s ever seen, but he’s very modest about it. He lives in a neighborhood full of martial arts clubs and people constantly ask him to be their master, but he’s not interested in teaching. He’s rich (we’re never told why) and lives in a huge mansion with his wife and young son, where he spends his time quietly sipping tea, reading, practicing Wing Chun. (Is that what’s going on in those gated communities? I never realized that.)

In the opening scene another master challenges Ip Man to a private duel – they shut the doors and Ip provides an ass-handing service, and is horrified later when he finds out one of the neighbors spied on him and told everybody what happened. He doesn’t want to embarrass anybody. Off the top of my head I can’t think of another movie badass who cares so much about the feelings of the people he defeats.

There’s kind of a conflict with his beautiful wife, who thinks he spends too much time on martial arts and not enough with his son. So when a group of bullies (led by the star of THE STORY OF RICKY O) comes into town and beats up all the martial arts masters, he declines to duel him to restore the honor of the town. Or at least he tries to decline, but the guy talks so much shit that Ip’s wife gets pissed, says, “Don’t break my things,” and leaves the room. The story and the fights are very interwoven. During the fight Ip freezes in horror when a vase gets broken, and the guy promises to pay for it. (I don’t think he ever does.)

In 1937 Japan occupies China, and things get bad real fast. It might bother some people that the movie chooses to skip over what would be major scenes in a traditional Hollywood biopic, but I thought it was an interesting choice. A montage and some titles tell us about the war and that the Japanese army confiscated Ip’s estate as their headquarters, so all the sudden he’s living in poverty and has to get a job shoveling coal. He’s never really worked in his life but he’ll do what he has to to feed his family, and now he believes that martial arts were a waste of his time. Of course, he will find use for them – training the crew at his mill to protect themselves from thieves, defending his wife from soldiers and ultimately inspiring his countrymen in a public duel against a Japanese general.

The drama is more prominent and effective than in most martial arts movies, but not enough that you could remove the fights and still have a great movie. What makes this really enjoyable is some excellent fights choreographed by Sammo Hung. Yen apparently had to learn the Wing Chun style and did some real method fighting, staying in character 24-7, eating one meal a day, etc. There’s some good weapon fighting, the best being when he uses a long bamboo pole to keep two guys from getting anywhere near him.

The story isn’t as epic as FEARLESS – it only focuses on a short period of Ip Man’s life – and I liked the character enough that when it got to the closing text saying that he became Bruce Lee’s teacher I said, “now they should make THAT movie.” Sure enough my trusty internet tells me that they are planning another one with an as yet undecided fighter to play Bruce Lee as a major character in the movie. We’ll see how that goes.

[ratings]

This movie has been making the rounds for years. It got nominated for the foreign film oscar, and it played the seattle international film festival, and it’s been on DVD in Asia forever which is no problem for a worldly dude like me, I’ve been free of the region code shackles for years. Region 2, region 3, bring it on motherfuckers, I go all the way up to region 4, region 5 on a good day. I could do region 10 if they threw it at me, region 11, I don’t give a fuck. Anything. But here in region 1 Miramax was supposed to release HERO in theaters. What they wanted to do was leave it on the shelf for years and finally put it out when there’s less interest. That worked so well with SHAOLIN SOCCER. Unfortunately HERO was sitting on the shelf but then it fell off the shelf and got stuck behind the desk and nobody knew it was there. Then I think Tarantino dropped a pencil back there or something, so he reached back there and he felt HERO. So he pulled it out and dusted it off and he was like, “You guys still have this? You should, like, release it in theaters, where people go to watch movies projected on a screen.”

That was a few weeks ago and it turned out Tarantino was right, people wanted to see this movie and it’s been doing very well. No thanks to me. I kept not seeing it and not seeing it.

In a way it kind of shows how cool I am, here is this great movie that everybody loves and I’m like, yeah, I know, masterpiece. I’ll see it later. I gotta watch FRANKENFISH. I knew it was there but I left it unseen, I wanted to save it for later. Who knows when you’re gonna need to see HERO for the first time. Well yesterday I finally figured the time was right, we had come to the point in our relationship where we should take it to that next level, sit down together in a theater and make visual contact.

And shit, not that I flinched or anything but MAN what a great fuckin movie. Jet Li plays the HERO of the title, a man with no name who has just killed the 3 deadliest assassins in China. As his reward, he gets to sit within 100 paces of the king. And what he does, he tells the story of how he killed those assassins. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, and you figure out pretty quick that the other duels were a way to get him into the palace so he himself could assassinate this bastard. Because of what he did to his people, etc.

This is one of my favorite have-your-cake-but-also-eat-the-cake type of movies where it’s all about super badass violence but ultimately is literally about laying down your sword. So you get the satisfaction of standing up against violence but the enjoyment of watching lots of violence first.

I don’t know if anybody’s reading modern politics into this story. There are some definite parallels, but I think it would be giving Bush too much credit to compare him to this king who thinks he can create peace by unifying China – i.e. slaughtering thousands to conquer all the bordering countries (and he doesn’t want to stop there). The big difference between this guy and Bush is that this guy’s plan works, and his wars even go well. Anyway, it’s some interesting political themes, whether you choose to apply it to current events or not.

The fight scenes in this movie are some of the best I’ve ever seen. They use the wires but not the way so many other people use them these days. They just use them for otherworldly effects like leaning over farther than gravity allows or running across water. But most of this is sword fights, and they are swinging those swords so fast and hard you’d think somebody would’ve lost a few fingers during the filming. Probaly not though otherwise I’m sure we would’ve heard something in the news about Jet Li’s fingers going up on e-bay or something.

So it’s a good epic chinese history/mythology type story with classic fight scenes, but then the acclaimed-director-who-let’s-face-it-I-am-not-at-all-familiar-with takes it to the next level with an incredible use of color and sound. It’s all about the huge spectacle (armies of thousands holding up bright red banners, shooting a thousand arrows all at once) and the tiny details (splitting a single hair during a sword fight). It’s about sounds, like 300 wooden paintbrushes pinging as they’re dumped on the floor, or 70 candle flames fluttering at the same gust of wind. It’s about using a sword to deflect an avalanche of arrows, or to slice through droplets of water mid-air.

Also for the ladies, there is one part where it shows Jet Li’s ass.

So yes, this is a real classy and well crafted kung fu epic. The only movie anybody would compare it to is CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. It’s shorter and less complicated but in some ways even more awe inspiring. I would like to thank Miramax for finally doing the right thing and releasing the fucking thing. Yeah, they put Tarantino’s name on the ads, but at least not on the movie itself. And they didn’t add any DMX songs to the soundtrack. I mean I gotta be honest, I’m surprised they didn’t look into adding a few reaction shots from Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson and calling it CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE: THE BEGINNING.

I don’t want to sound naive, but it’s amazing to me that Jet Li can do a movie like this and then just go back to America and do CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE. You’d think he’d want to stay in Hong Kong and count his blessings. Who wants to be in a cage swingin a midget around while DMX is riding a four wheeler across the rooftops being chased by the cops and professional motocross racers in their full uniforms? I mean seriously, who needs that kind of stress? Not Jet Li.

And what about Ching Tsiu-Tung? He’s choreographing these incredible swordfights, the very next year he’s doing BELLY OF THE BEAST, he’s got Steven Seagal standing in one place punching his opponents when they swing close enough to him. Like fucking tether ball.

I’m not stupid, I know why they do it is they do it for the money. But you don’t just roll over for injustice like this. This just plain should not be happening, period. Your mom shouldn’t have to sell her ass to put food in your mouth, and these guys shouldn’t have to work with Tom Arnold after making a movie like this. Just think about it. Kurosawa didn’t have to come to the US and do a couple PORKY’S sequels to keep his career going, did he? The world doesn’t have to be this way. I see a better tomorrow. Lay your sword down, Jet Li, and take off your sunglasses. You are no longer the property of Hollywood. Fly away Jet Li. We love you, so we set you free.

[ratings]