So it turns into one of those classic one-upsmanship duels. The rich pricks keep giving away more and more riches trying to top each other, and the hoes keep switching their allegiance back and forth until the cops show up and Wang wins through what Ho probly considers un-oneupsmanlike conduct, but I consider Bugs Bunny-like smarts. Ho is a jewel thief, but probly not a master jewel thief, so he is easily and constantly outsmarted by Wang throughout the movie.

After the ho incident they circle around each other as rivals for a while but then Ho gets a poisoned head wound and Wang knows the antidote and agrees to parcel it out only if he becomes Ho’s master. This is also how Eric B and Rakim first started working together, and Woody and Wesley.

Wang seems to have Ho on a leash, teaching him kung fu, but the prince is injured and can’t even stand up, so they sort of need each other. He pokes Ho with a wooden pole (8 diagram?) to show him what to do, and there’s training montages with Ho doing various kicks over layers of candles. It’s way more of a comedy than 36TH CHAMBER but them Shaw Brothers are kind enough to get some training scenes in there. They know we love training.

The fights aren’t as huge and impressive as, say 8 DIAGRAM, but they’re like Jackie Chan before Jackie Chan, a high number of clever high concept fights. Ho puppeteers a chambermaid to make it seem like she’s fighting (like RAGING PHOENIX), there’s a duel disguised as a wine-tasting, a duel disguised as an antiques viewing. To be honest I didn’t exactly understand why they were all trying to hide that they were fighting, even from Ho, but I’m sure they have their reasons. Dirty reasons.

There’s also a fight against dudes disguised as cripples (blind man, hunchback, one-armed man) and a fight with Wang actually crippled and Ho pushing his wheelchair. It’s almost like LONE WOLF AND CUB the way Ho pushes him around and does most of the fighting but Wang does what he can with his arms and pulling hidden weapons out of the chair.

DIRTY HO is not one of the top Shaw Brothers pictures I’ve seen, but it’s completely solid and especially good for those who enjoy them a little more light-hearted.

HEROES OF THE EAST is a really top notch Shaw Brothers production that’s half all-time classic martial arts movie, half romantic comedy. There are cultural differences that separate it from a Katherine Heigl movie besides just martial arts, the main one being arranged marriage. In a Heigl picture she’s forced to be with a guy she initially hates because of a baby, here it’s because of powerful Chinese and Japanese business families trying to expand their reach by making their kids marry each other.

Gordon Liu is Ah To, the Chinese son. It’s a real different character from the monks he plays in 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN and 8-DIAGRAM POLE FIGHTER. He’s much more priveleged, he has servants, he has hair. And it’s the modern world, he wears a tie sometimes.

Anyway Kung Zi (Yuka Mizuno) is his Japanese bride, and there’s a little misunderstanding where his servant – I feel weird saying that, let’s call it his assistant – hears her behind closed doors practicing karate and thinks he’s beating her. Don’t worry, the assistant takes it seriously and reports it to Ah To’s father, which causes some embarrassment. But when the truth comes out it becomes a household battle between karate and kung fu, Japan and China. She keeps breaking everything in the backyard with her kicks and chops so they move her into the practice hall, but she has all the Chinese weapons moved out and replaced with Japanese ones.

At first I sided with the wife. The husband seems real uptight and sexist. He gets real upset about her boobs showing when she wears her gi. He also shows her a kung fu style for women to use so that their legs stay closed. It’s completely ridiculous, it looks like he has to piss real bad. So I felt like I understood why she was fighting with this guy and trying to piss him off. But then she just keeps pushing him and she starts to seem like she’s taking it too far and I go back to his side.

The argument escalates to sparring, next thing you know they’re throwing hidden knives and darts at each other to demonstrate the superiority of their respective nations’ traditional weaponry. It’s a funny kung fu WAR OF THE ROSES but the argument comes to a head when she brags about ninjitsu and he says of course Chinese people could use that type of trickery, but they don’t believe in it, they believe in honorable fights and think that ninja shit is only for “treacherous villains.”

And that point causes a serious bump in the marriage. Remember when your parents would fight and your mom would pack a suitcase and not say which motel she was going to? Kung Zi does the exact same thing as your mom, assuming your mom went back to Japan to complete her ninja training with a handsome ninja she’s likely to fall in love with because she grew up very close to him and he’s played by Yasuaki Kurata, the old Japanese master in that classic earn-each-other’s-respect fight in FIST OF LEGEND.

Of course this is when Ah To realizes how much he cares about her, so romantic comedy tradition dictates that he must perform some sort of trickery to deceive her into interacting with him so he can get her to love him again. Not necessarily pull a full-on Mrs. Doubtfire, but he’s gotta somehow lie to her so that he can straighten it out at the end, right? Well, his assistant has a good one: send her a challenge letter. Her pride will force her to come home for a duel and then he can say no baby, come on, I don’t really want to have a sword fight, we belong together, etc.

The only problem is she’s training with the five greatest masters of each major Japanese martial art, so they read the letter like What the fuck!? This guy thinks China is better than Japan? And he’s gonna prove it by beating up his wife? No fucking way. We’re going. So this letter that was supposed to win him his wife back instead forces him to fight five masters. That’s the second half of the movie: one fight per day until he beats them all. Kung Zi actually feels bad about it so she joins him as his interpreter as he tries to defeat them all.

The director is Chia-Liang Liu, who also did the aforementioned 36TH CHAMBER and 8-DIAGRAM, and like those it finds excuses for Gordon Liu to fight in a whole bunch of different styles and with a whole bunch of different weapons. He does get to use the 3-section staff again (against nunchakas – his opponent announces that H To wins because his weapon is longer). There’s a kitana vs. a Chinese double-edged long sword, there’s karate vs. drunken kung fu, etc.

Every one of the fights is great and different from the last. He’s supposed to be kind of pushing it, cramming to master each of the Chinese styles before each duel, but we know he’s Gordon Liu so we don’t believe he doesn’t already know it. But he has to use cunning (or trickery) in some of these things. One that seems like almost a cheat is when the Japanese grappler is kicking his ass but Ah To’s assistant lubes him up with peanut oil so the guy can’t get a grip on him. That trick is still used to this day though in mixed martial arts.

The sword fight is a classic, but I think my favorite is the climactic ninja duel. They use all the techniques: disguises, decoy dummies, padded clothing, throwing stars, sleeve arrows, back darts, throwing knives, smoke bombs, spiderhole, underwater stealth, spitting poison, faking death, and more.

Somebody recommended this one to me, I wasn’t sure if it was gonna be up my alley, but I absolutely loved it. You could say we were in an arranged marriage and fell in love. Okay, I can’t really relate to that part of the story in my culture. You know what Disney’s ALADDIN said about arranged marriage. It’s against it. Despite that the themes in the movie are universal. It’s about stubbornness in relationships between men and women, and between countries. They never stop and listen to each other, they’re so insistent on proving their own points. I know it has too many titles already, but another good one would be DUEL OF THE SHOW-OFFS. Because of their egos they’re not gonna just talk things out if it prevents them from busting out a couple more weapons and showing them off.

Because they refuse to be diplomatic they cause an international incident, and because they don’t take the time to learn each other’s customs they make it even worse. There’s a great turn of events where the samurai offers him his sword as a sign of respect but he doesn’t pick up on it at all and manages to completely insult him and make the masters even more pissed. His wife explains to him later that if he would’ve taken it he would’ve squashed the whole beef. No such luck.

But the thing is, Ah To & Kung Zi and Ah To & the masters obviously love showing each other their different techniques. They do a move or a style or pull out a weapon and they announce what it is, sometimes they offer a little explanation. In their minds they’re competing but in a sense they’re also doing show and tell. They’re sharing their cultures with each other, they just don’t realize it.

This is gonna be a SPOILINGS, but another reason why I love this movie is that it’s one of these stories where they angrily fight each other but end up accidentally bonding. There are plenty of kung fu movies, including classics like FIST OF FURY, that come across very nationalistic. This one shoots that kind of thinking down. Nobody kills each other and at the end they’re all friends. It’s a romantic, feel good, ass-kicking kung fu and karate masterpiece. SHAOLIN LOVES AND RESPECTS NINJA.

Vincent Zhao (apparently a TV star) plays Su, a great general who leads a band of warriors into a cavern to rescue an abducted prince. After a successful mission (SPOILER) the prince wants to promote Su to governor (same thing that happened to Schwarzenegger after COLLATERAL DAMAGE). Su convinces him to give it to his adopted brother Yuan (Xun Zhou) (even though the prince says he’s reckless) so he can go off to start a family and perfect his wushu, just like you or I would do if we had the time.

Five years later Su is doing some awesome moves and has a son named Little Feng and lives in a nice little place with his wife Ying (Zhou Xun) and his elderly parents. When Governor Yuan comes to visit Su thinks it’ll be fine, but everybody else is nervous because, well, things are a little more complicated than they were letting on.

See, Su’s dad did more than just adopt Yuan. He killed his dad for being out of control with the Five Venoms Fist. Then he raised them both as sons, but Yuan never let go of the “you killed my father” resentment. Oh yeah, and Su’s wife is Yuan’s biological sister, so that’s a little weird too. I’m not sure who raised her – hopefully Su and her didn’t grow up as brother and sister. Whatever the deal is Yuan loves her to an uncomfortable extent. I mean he doesn’t do anything, but I get a definite Flowers in the Attic vibe from him.

So anyway when they reunite Governor Yuan has turned into a damn supervillain. His flesh is pale as a corpse’s and Little Feng hides as soon as he gets a look at him. Not “I’m shy” type of hiding, but “holy shit my uncle looks like Nosferatu” type of hiding. That’s without even knowing that Yuan dips his fists in piles of spiders and scorpions to power his perfected Five Venoms Fist or that he has “dark gold armor” sewn into his flesh to make him nearly invincible. I guess since he’s a governor it’s legit but it still makes me suspicious, like I would be if a guy walked past me wearing a bullet proof vest but he wasn’t a cop or a rapper.

It turns out Yuan is pissed at Su for “stealing” his sister, which is bullshit because Su told him his intentions and Yuan gave him his blessing. He should’ve fuckin said something five years ago, but I guess he had a Revenge Master Plan taking advantage of the governorship, and he wanted Su to have a son so he could raise him as his own like Su’s dad did to him. (Such gratitude foster parents get. Geez.)

Okay, it’s a pretty good revenge, but I gotta call a guy like this out for being such a fuckin baby. People need to settle this shit man to man. Talk it out. Get it over with. It’s not worth dying over, stupid. Cool armor, though.

But I suppose we’re dealing with a genuine evil motherfucker here, so what did I expect? One example of Just How Evil Is He? is when one of his soldiers puts his hand on Ying’s shoulder, he says “Nobody touches my sister!” and slices the offending arm off. And it’s weird because they continue the discussion and don’t seem at all distracted by what just happened. You’d think the guy would be hollering and spraying blood everywhere, but he doesn’t. So many etiquette rules back then.

Yuan is really not good to his soldiers. I would strongly advise against taking any jobs with this guy. Another shitty thing he does is have soldiers bury his sister alive, then he kills the soldiers so nobody will know where she’s buried. You see, this is why we have unions.

Yuan also does things unbecoming of an uncle, like keeping Little Feng in shackles. He’s a good villain – larger than life, scary and easy to hate.

It’s an epic story. It skips over time at a couple points, goes into different portions of Su’s life. He has to retreat to re-train himself. He goes mad and thinks he’s battling “The God of Wushu” (Jay Chou, the new Kato) to prove himself. He becomes a beggar who enters an international fighting tournament like the one in FEARLESS. And one of the random white guys he fights is the star of PIT FIGHTER.

I like that it starts in fantasyland and ends like a FEARLESS or IP MAN type based-on-a-real-historical-figure movie. Su is the character also called Beggar So, a legendary master of drunken fist. In this movie he masters that style after the death of his wife, because she had made him wine and he missed her so he’d drink all kinds of wine and note that it’s not as good as hers.

Beggar So appears in the DRUNKEN MASTER movies, associated with Wong Fei-Hung, a movie and folk hero exaggerated from a real guy. He was one of “The Ten Tigers of Guangdong,” who I think were also real guys, but have been turned into fantasy heroes. So I think he originally was a real guy, but I’m not sure. Anyway, that must be why it’s called TRUE LEGEND. Also because Yuen Woo-Ping knows enough English to trick critics into writing “a true legend in his own right, Yuen Woo-Ping’s newest blah blah blah…”

But it’s true, and the true legend master delivers a whole bunch of great fights souped up with stylistic devices that might be borrowed from everything from THE MATRIX to 300 to even the camera moves of the Robert Zemeckis 3-D movies. In China it was actually released in 3-D, and I thought that would be amazing, especially the opening battle with sword fights on multiple levels of rope bridges with other soldiers falling in the background. But unfortunately Kung Fu Cinema reports that it’s only partial 3-D with crappy conversion that ruins the fights.

What I love is that the fights are so varied. You might be scared off that I mentioned there are some digital effects – some CGI weapons with cameras rotating around them and that type of shit – but he doesn’t repeat himself. He just lets loose. Lots of fighting styles, sometimes very grounded but then all the sudden there’ll be a little anti-gravity wirework flourish. When he meets the Elder Sage (Gordon Liu!) and the God of Wushu they’re balancing one on top of the other, on top of a tree, then they dart across the tops of some tall grass like a crazy cartoon character. The old man jumps onto his head and balances upside down while he talks to Su. (The CGI backgrounds in this part look pretty bad, but otherwise these scenes are great.)

Su is no match for the God of Wushu at first, so the god taunts him by folding his arms and striking lazy, casual poses each time he dodges a fist or a foot. Even the fights against mortals are super-powered though, with a great emphasis on breaking objects and structures, tearing through clothes, creating a blast of wind, all that kind of stuff. One fighter might just barely dodge a blow, but the opponent sliced through the back of his robe and now has smoke coming off those fingers.

Michelle Yeoh and David Carradine show up for small parts. Carradine is pretty bad, doing one of those “since nobody else here speaks English I don’t have to try that hard” performances the white guys tend to give in Asian movies. Actually it’s weird that Woo-Ping put him in here, didn’t Carradine talk a bunch of shit about him in a book or something? I guess it’s just like Beatrix Kiddo and Bill, it was hard to keep hating him despite what he’d done.

I guess this was a big failure in Hong Kong, but I really enjoyed it. It’s full of larger than life characters but also intimate emotional moments. The type of movie where a legendary warrior battles gods and supervillains, but ends up a hairy drunk living on the streets. And his luck changes again because a guy he gave a sword to back in the day recognizes him drunk on the street. I’ve seen some criticism of the episodic structure of the story. I can see not liking the tournament at the end because it’s similar to FEARLESS and IP MAN 2 (review of that coming soon), but I like the way it shows this guy through many years of his life, what could be a couple different movies (especially since this is a character who has been in a bunch of different movies and legends).

I wouldn’t mind some more movies like this about other true legends. And maybe use 3-D cameras next time.

So you got these fuckin Tartars goin around oppressing people, right? No surprise there. Humiliating people, publicly executing people, fucking with innocent people’s seafood shops and all that kind of crap. I mean let’s be honest here, we all know how these fuckin Tartars are. And in a Shaw Brothers classic like this, we know Gordon Liu is gonna do something about it.

There’s this classroom of kids (played by adults) and they’ve been learning about the importance of their country and standing up to their enemies but they can’t figure out why they’re learning this in the classroom and then watching the Tartars pull this kind of crap. Are those lessons just words or are they concepts they should really live by? They decide on the second one and when they try to stand up and make a difference, they are rewarded with a serious assbeating.

But Gordon gets away, and you know what he always does when he gets away. He finds his way to the Shaolin Temple where the monks patch him up, then he demands to stay and become a monk, and then he asks to learn kung fu.

Most of the movie is about Gordon learning lessons of kung fu, having to pass 35 “chambers” before he has mastered shaolin kung fu. Most of them are not fighting, but things like jumping across a bundle of sticks floating in water, then jumping across just one of the sticks. We see him grow and build his powers until he has finally mastered all 35 chambers. Then he has to defeat one of the other monks in a duel in order to take charge of any one of the chambers. This takes several tries and in the process he invents the 3-section staff, one of the most badass kung fu weapons you’re gonna see. It’s like super nunchucks. I would like to thank Gordon Liu for inventing the 3-section staff. Also could you give me lessons is my next question, let me know Gordon, you got my email.

When he finally earns the right to become a master, he requests that his chamber be the non-existent 36th chamber, where he teaches shaolin kung fu to everyday average joes or gordons who just want to live a humble life and defend their seafood shop from the god damn Tartars. His request is rejected but he goes anyway, shows back up at home with his yellow monk robe. Take that fuckers.

You kind of expect everybody to be freaking out on their classmate coming back as a shaolin master, but nobody seems to recognize him, they just call him master. They do a real good job in this movie of showing a transformation. He really has a poise and seriousness when he comes back that makes him seem like a different person from the goofy kid he was at the beginning. And of course the last section of the movie is about him recruiting a couple promising students, teaching them a couple tricks and then launching an assault on the fuckers who wronged him in the beginning.

All of the fights in this movie are great, lots of different weapons and styles are used. These are not big elaborately choreographed battles though for the most part, which is why I like EIGHT-DIAGRAM POLE FIGHTER (not the porno, the Shaw Brothers movie) a little better. But some might prefer the simplicity of this one. It depends on what kind of Gordon Lui going to the Shaolin Temple and demanding to be trained so he can get revenge movie you are looking for.

I love this one though because it’s just a great, elemental type story of training to become a master. I like the theme of bringing the knowledge to the people. I think this movie is actually pretty deep, it’s about toiling to learn the great knowledge of the masters and then sharing that once elite knowledge, empowering your people to overcome their oppressors. It could be applied to so many situations besides kung fu. It’s what we gotta do now, in fact.

On the other hand this movie could just be about teaching people self defense, which is like an episode of Oprah or something, so it’s not as deep. When you’re going into the parking lot at night, hold your keys between your knuckles in case you have to punch a guy, and that kind of stuff. I like my interpretation better though. So lay off, Oprah, if you’re reading this. (thanks for reading though, let me know if you want to use my book for your book club.)

[ratings]

The movie comes from our friends the Shaw Brothers and it’s apparently considered one of their best. And god damn if it isn’t one of the best martial arts pictures that I’ve seen, anyway.

Obviously this is one of the lush period picture kung fu movies. It starts with a big battle between elaborately costumed warriors. I mean they got these colorful robes and one of the squads are guys with bow and arrows wearing what almost looks like Santa Claus costumes. All this color and choreography on a big soundstage, it looks like a big song and dance number by that Bugsy Berkeley dude.

The good guys in this scene, who are not dressed as Santa Claus, are the 8 Yang brothers and their dad. All but two of them are killed, betrayed by Pan Mei, who I don’t think is the same guy as Pai Mei, but I think he’s their grandpa? The queen’s dad, anyway. I’m not sure but the important thing is, the guy is a dick, getting all these Yang brothers killed. For fuck’s sake your a grown man, Pan Mai. You got a long beard. You should know better.

None of the Yangs have names, they’re just numbered chronologically. Yang 6 comes back “a little bit demented” by the trauma according to mom. He comes home to the temple and laughs like a nut while describing how all his brothers got killed. He wants revenge on Pan Mei but, well, it doesn’t work out.

Which leaves two Yang siters and the M.I.A. Yang the fifth. He deals with his troubles by journeying to a monk temple on Wui Tan Mountain and trying to join up. This is some funny shit. He can’t hide that he’s crazed and vengeful. And these are monks, they don’t believe in violence and they know he can’t focus on monk business, so they turn him away. The way he deals with it is, he threatens all of the monks, storms into the head shaving ceremony, grabs the knife and crazily cuts off his hair, leaving himself all bloody. Then he punches a shrine, grabs two huge sticks of incense and burns six dots onto his head.

I mean how are they supposed to deal with that? They can’t call the cops. The next day, I don’t know if they drew straws or something, but a couple of these poor bald bastards have to tell him something like:

hey man, no offense but the abbot says after you’re, uh, feeling better, you know, I mean maybe… well, what I’m trying to say is — I mean not me, the abbot is saying this — he’s saying that you should– That you should leave. (cough). Hrem. Excuse me. I mean not right away or anything, it’s just… it’s just… Hey, isn’t pole fighting cool? I love pole fighting, it’s fun. What were we talking about? Well I better go.
Well, this doesn’t go over well.

From that point I knew the movie had me, and it never lets up after that. I think where RZA’s brotherhood thing comes in, not only is this Yang #5 torn up by the loss of his family, but the monks end up becoming a new family to him. And the real bitch is, the abbot secretly goes to talk to Yang’s mom about his troubles, and then Pan Mei kills him too. Is that fucked up or what? (A: yes, it’s fucked up.) Also, he kidnaps one of the Yang sisters. For crying out loud is there no end to this fucker’s villainy. There’s only one thing a fifth Yang brother could do, that’s go save 8th sister and kill Pan Mei, but that sort of goes against the monks’ non-violent wishes. So his one family needs vengeance, his other family needs peace. He’s in a bind.

The final fight is one of the best ever. You got all kinds of guys with all kinds of pole type weapons (not sure what diagram number they all are) and 5 is taking them all on. And there’s a pyramid of coffins with guys in them and he has to hop up to the top and kick the lids around and step on some guys and pull out his sister, who’s all tied up and then gets lifted up by the ropes by about 8 guys with poles. The whole thing keeps escalating and then all the sudden all the monks jump out of nowhere and start fighting!

This is a one-two punch here, one of my favorite things in badass cinema which I have not yet coined a name for, but I first wrote about it in reference to MY FATHER IS A HERO starring a little kid and Jet Li. What it is is when the same scene is the action climax and the emotional climax. Action climax because you got a whole pack of monks in yellow robes knocking the bad guys’ teeth out with poles, emotional climax because the monks have unexpectedly changed their strict interpretation of religious law so that they can save the fifth Yang, showing how much they care about this crazy fucker who moved in with them against their will and bringing together the needs of his two families.

I would also like to make a special mention of the scene where Yang 5 has to fight a wooden wolf dummy. This is an incredible scene although I must admit it got me excited to see him fight a real wolf (which does not end up happening).

In addition to the wolf dummy this has everything you need in a great martial arts picture: huge, detailed fights, many different weapons used in impressive ways, a wide variety of fighting styles, beautiful sets and costumes, some philosophy, a little bit of gore and even a really dramatic score, somehow reminded me of CAPE FEAR a couple times. Most importantly this is the type of kung fu where you care about the story and characters and yet they don’t skimp on the fighting at all. And all in just over 90 minutes.

On VHS you might find it as INVINCIBLE POLE FIGHTER but if you can play the asian DVDs you MUST get the nice Shaw Brothers collection version which has the whole beautifully remastered/widescreen Shawscope package. If you seen any of those DVDs you know what I’m talking about. Americans never knew those movies looked so good when they first came out.

I’m still not sure what that great title means but I do know this: 8 DIAGRAM POLE FIGHTER is the best movie ever about diagrams and/or poles. It definitely runs rings around STICKFIGHTER and 8 IS ENOUGH, to put it mildly. HIGHLY recommended.

[ratings]

Harry and associates,

I am writing to inform you of an exciting new picture called KILL BILL VOLUME 2. Please forgive me if you already know about this one or have covered it already. Or if you have travelled to China to visit the set. I don’t usually read your sight except when my reviews are on it.

Just jerkin your chain bud but seriously here’s the deal. This has been coming on for a while but after seeing this movie I think today is the day. I would like to officially endorse the works of Mr. Tarantino as an important chapter in the history of Badass Cinema. VOLUME 2 is a very satisfying conclusion to that exciting saga of revenge we began oh those several months ago with The Bride.

VOLUME 2 is really different from VOLUME 1 though. It seemed like that one was more about fighting than talking, and this one is the other way around. In fact there’s so much sitting around talking in the opening scenes that it looks like they had to move the opening credits to the end, afraid that people would be bored by endless driving followed by endless talking. But this one goes much deeper into the characters, revealing all the goods about the relationship between the Bride and Bill (who, remember, you didn’t even get to SEE in the first one – now he’s all over the place). The Bride becomes a little deeper of a character and you even get to feel some amount of sympathy for Bill. It’s a much sweeter film.

But it’s still totally brutal. One thing I loved in VOLUME 1 was the scene where the Bride woke up from her coma, realized her baby was gone, and just started to bawl. The audience is having a great time and then Tarantino intentionally bums them out and makes them watch Ms. Thurman’s extended, uncomfortably realistic trauma. I can’t think of another movie that plays so well with a combination of goofy kung fu type fun and raw emotion. Tarantino and the audience have so much fun with the violence and then every once in a while he just slaps you upside the head with the real life consequences of it, like the scene with Vernita Green’s daughter. I mean shit I love the CHARLIES ANGELS pictures but this is like the “deep” version of that. On crack. Times ten. From beyond the grave.

Well, VOLUME 2 is like the sequel to that crying scene. There were times when I thought jesus Tarantino, do you really have to put this poor gal through even more horror? How many times can we see her face bloodied or her eyes red from crying? Can’t she kick an ass or two first before she gets shotgunned, drugged and buried alive? But once again Mr. Tarantino proves that he knows what he’s doing, just you wait. To me the most satisfying moment in the movie – and for christ’s sake don’t be reading this shit if you don’t want it given away – is after she’s been buried alive and it moves on to the next chapter, “The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei.” We leave the Bride gasping for air six feet deep and flash back to her as a young gal wearing Keds being dumped with a bearded old school kung fu mentor for years of horrible training. I thought all right, this is a cliffhanger, we’re gonna have to wait to find out how the hell she survives that. And then you kind of forget about the grave until it comes back to it and you realize exactly how she’s gonna escape, and you have no choice but to smile like a retard. Absolutely perfect Badass filmatism.

If you are not familiar with volume 1, what this story is about is a badass killer who is ruthlessly shot on her wedding day, along with her unborn child. She is in a coma for 4 years, then boldly overcomes her atrophied muscles to escape the hospital, goes off to train with swords and then goes down the list of the people who shot her and avenges them one by one.

I know what you’re thinking. What do you mean ‘HER’? The character of Mason Storm is clearly a MAN, played by Steven Seagal, and he was in a coma for 7 years, not 4. And his child who was supposedly dead but is not actually dead was already born. Actually, you’re thinking of HARD TO KILL, another fine film on this same topic of coma revenge. (Where’s that dude who did “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU’RE FOOLING?” when you need him?)

Anyway, there is a classic fight scene or two (on a much more intimate scale than the House of Blues scene in volume 1) but most of this movie seems to be going for the spaghetti western type feel. Lots of wide shots, extreme closeups of faces and dusty settings. The music is less upbeat, mostly bits of Ennio Morricone scores or more often Robert Rodriguez imitating Ennio Morricone scores. If you loved the RZA’s score for GHOST DOG as much as I did I am sorry to report that once again it is unclear how he got the composer credit. Except I did notice one great scene with what sounded like RZA beats, and there is an instrumental on the end credits.

The whole cast is great and as always Tarantino is a master at finding actors you either haven’t seen before or don’t remember when you’ve seen them, that just seem like the perfect guy for that scene. I was most impressed by the dude who played Michael Madsen (FREE WILLY)’s boss at the strip club. Where does he find these guys?

(Hey, wasn’t the dude from SPAWN supposed to be in this movie? Where’d he go?)

But the most important part of the picture is of course Uma Thurman. I really don’t think anybody else could’ve done this movie. She’s just a once in a lifetime combination of surface and substance. Obviously she is gorgeous and her long limbs help her look great in all the physical stuff she pulls off so perfectly – the tiger crane kung fu, the menacing strut, the zombie-like stumbling around covered in dirt and blood. But then she also has to do all the “real acting” shit. It’s a classic character and performance. If she can get an oscar nomination for PULP FICTION and not for this then I guess there must’ve raised the bar or something.

But like I said before, I am happy to welcome Mr. Tarantino into the pantheon. I don’t care if the guy yammers on too long in his interviews or whatever it is people don’t like about him. I don’t care if you used to like him but then everybody else liked him so then you decided you didn’t like him and took his pinup out of your locker. Kids, all that shit is only relevant in the talkbacks. In the actual world of Badass Cinema what matters is what’s projected up on the screen there. It’s not his encyclopedic knowledge of crime/action/kung fu/western etc. that makes him great (thanks for the homage to MR. MAJESTYK though, that was nice). Behind all that is an extreme confidence that he can take the audience wherever the fuck he wants to, and the skills to back that up.

When I reviewed Mr. Kubrick’s 2001 recently I tried to describe that feeling you rarely get in movies where you feel you are in the hands of a true master who ignores all Hollywood formula and common sense, and just KNOWS he can take you in one cut from primitive ape men playing with bones to a space station thousands of years later. No, I’m not saying Tarantino is the new Kubrick, but he gives me that same great feeling. He KNOWS he can skip around in the timeline at his leisure, and you will follow. He KNOWS he can balance gruesome violence, goofy humor, campy ’70s homage and the serious story of losing a child. That he can put the crying scene in the same movie with O Ren decapitating the yakuza boss for laughs. I appreciate that this guy takes his time to get things right, instead of making a movie every year just to be working.

I gotta say it friends. He is one of the great living filmatists. For sure. You don’t make RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION, JACKIE BROWN and now this unless you know what the fuck you’re doing. He is one of the few (besides occasionally Mr. Soderbergh) treating crime, martial arts and action pictures as both crowdpleasing fun and serious Art with a capital A. I mean even in the ’70s you didn’t see that all the time, although obviously alot of Peckinpah’s movies qualify, and of course POINT BLANK.

Oh jesus can you imagine if he had done a movie with Lee Marvin? Or Charles Bronson or Steve McQueen? Holy shit.

Anyway I approve of this guy and I can’t wait to go see this movie again.

thanks Harry,

Vern

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