"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

China White

CHINA WHITE (1989) is the movie where Ronny Yu tackles the ’80s Hong Kong gangster genre that we all fell in love with when we found out about John Woo, Ringo Lam and those guys. Like A BETTER TOMORROW or BULLET IN THE HEAD it chronicles the tragic rise and fall melodrama of dashing young anti-heroes who run a criminal empire and care about family and loyalty and what not. Like CITY ON FIRE it deals with somebody undercover getting too close to a crook, but in this case it’s a female informant falling in love with a guy who she doesn’t know is bad (so, a little bit like THE KILLER). But along with these standard genre themes we have the strongest example so far of Yu’s international world view.

That’s because it takes place in Amsterdam, where the Chow brothers, Bobby (Russell Wong, ROMEO MUST DIE, THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR) and Danny (Steven Vincent Leigh, RING OF FIRE, SWORD OF HONOR) have made a home, but must make peace or war with gangs of other nationalities. They’re most threatened by the Italians, led by Scalia (Billy Drago shortly before DELTA FORCE 2). This is a cutthroat internationalism, but Yu sees opportunity for these immigrants, and seems to come out in favor of cross-cultural/interracial relationships. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 5th, 2023 | 6 Comments »

Bless This House

Another Ronny Yu haunted house comedy, but without Chow Yun Fat? I don’t know, guys. In 1988, four years after THE OCCUPANT, Yu returned to his old haunt (that’s a pun) with BLESS THIS HOUSE. Fortunately by this time, when there were seven FRIDAY THE 13THs, four ELM STREETs and the first CHILD’S PLAY in existence, Yu had had a little more experience under his belt and was able to make something a little more accomplished than before, a little more stylish.

This one is about an architect named Bill (Bill Tung, reuniting with Yu after MUMMY DEAREST) who gets a promotion that allows him to move his family into a fancy house owned by the boss. He doesn’t catch on that it’s actually a punishment – the fuckin place is haunted as shit!

Of course the movie makes a point of Bill not being superstitious before he goes through this experience. He gets into trouble for disagreeing with his firm considering feng shui in their designs. His daughter Jane (Loletta Lee, THE DRAGON FROM RUSSIA, SEX & ZEN II) is more open to it and wonders if she should believe the “madman” from the nearby temple who keeps giving them the friendly advice that they should get the fuck out of there. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 4th, 2023 | 1 Comment »

Rapid Fire

Occasionally during this Ronny Yu series I will go on tangents about films that are not directed by Ronny Yu, but are related to the topic at hand. I’ve been meaning to revisit my maybe-favorite-Brandon-Lee movie RAPID FIRE for years, and thought it would fit in well here. To be honest I forgot that I already reviewed it in 2009, but that’s okay, this is a better review. It was worth a reboot.

Lee followed his movie debut in LEGACY OF RAGE with LASER MISSION (1989) and SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (1991), but it was the Yu film that attracted the atttention of producer Robert Lawrence (A KISS BEFORE DYING) and made him want to find a vehicle to turn Lee into a huge American action star.

As I referenced in the LEGACY OF RAGE review, the Metrograph theater did an interview with Ronny Yu where he said of Lee, “He was 19 when I met him. He was wearing a leather jacket, leather boots, riding a bike, he was very rebellious,” and “He said, ‘I hate martial arts. I hate it. And don’t talk, don’t even mention Bruce Lee to me!’”

Years later in RAPID FIRE (1992), Lee’s character Jake Lo is introduced wearing a leather jacket, leather boots, riding a bike, looking very rebellious. An art major at a college in L.A., he pulls up to campus during a demonstration for democracy in China. Seeing the protest signs causes him to flash back to the historic events at Tiananmen Square, where he saw his dad (Michael Chong, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.) killed by soldiers. According to RAPID FIRE’s entry in the AFI Catalog, “Lee was involved in the development of the story, and a key element that resonated with the actor was his character’s struggle to deal with his father’s death, which mirrored Lee’s personal life.” (read the rest of this shit…)

April 3rd, 2023 | 11 Comments »

Legacy of Rage

LEGACY OF RAGE (1986) is Ronny Yu’s Hong Kong action movie that’s in a crime/martial arts type vein, written by Clifton Ko (ONCE A THIEF) and Raymond Fung (later art director of Yu’s CHINA WHITE). It’s also the first starring role for then-21-year-old Brandon Lee, following his father’s path from American television (he was in KUNG FU: THE MOVIE) to Hong Kong cinema. Of course, we can also draw a parallel to Yu’s travels between Hong Kong and the U.S., which is part of the reason producers Linda Kuk (HARD BOILED) and John Sham (YES, MADAM!, ROYAL WARRIORS) thought they might work well together.

But Lee’s character Brandon Ma is not specified to be an immigrant, and I think his mouth movements are Cantonese (though both that and the English soundtrack seem to be dubbed by someone else). I was nervous when the opening had some nerd rollerskating through traffic listening to a Walkman, but luckily that’s just some drug courier and not Brandon. He gets a much more macho introduction controlling the machine that lifts and smashes cars at a junkyard.

This Brandon is a good-hearted guy – when his girlfriend May (Regina Kent, A BETTER TOMORROW 2) is angry at him for being late he doesn’t even bother to explain that he was delayed by heroically carrying a toddler to the next bus stop after she was left behind by her mother. That’s just the kinda shit he does, so it wasn’t even worth mentioning.

Brandon and May work together at a hotel restaurant called Casablanca, as a waiter and a dancer, respectively. Is the junkyard demolition thing part time? I’m not sure, it’s not mentioned again. Other than maybe having two jobs, you could call him a slacker – he sleeps on a mattress with no bed frame and has two posters of motorcycles on his walls – but he gives May a ring, which I think indicates engagement. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 30th, 2023 | 6 Comments »

Mummy Dearest

MUMMY DEAREST (Si yan zai) is from 1985, and it’s another one of the Ronny Yu movies that’s never been available in the U.S. I had initially skipped it while writing this series until I found an affordable English-subtitled VCD. The bad news is it’s not about a mummy, the good news is it’s pretty entertaining. It kind of takes the serious horror + broad comedy formula of THE TRAIL and THE OCCUPANT but switches out supernatural chills for a serial killer story, with a maniac similar to the one in THE SAVIOUR.

The killer is played by Alan Tam (ARMOUR OF GOD), which I think may have been a bit of stunt casting. Maybe I’m wrong, I can’t find out enough about his early filmography to be sure he’d never played a psycho before, but he had started as a Cantopop star, known for singing romantic ballads. There’s even a joke about it in the movie when another character uses the titles of Alan Tam songs to hit on his character’s mother. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 29th, 2023 | 1 Comment »

Furies

FURIES (Thanh Sói) is a great new Vietnamese action movie on Netflix as of last Thursday, and it’s a prequel to FURIE (2019). On one hand I want to be clear that not having seen FURIE would hardly affect your viewing of FURIES – it’s just an origin story for one of the supporting characters, and you don’t even know for sure which one until the end (it’s kinda like LEATHERFACE in that sense). On the other hand, FURIE is fuckin great, so you should definitely watch it. But I really don’t think the order matters.

FURIE starred Ngô Thanh Vân a.k.a. Veronica Ngo in a knockout performance as a rural debt collector who has to venture into the city when her daughter is kidnapped – and it turns out that when her daughter was born she ran from a life there as a gangster, which is why she knows the ins and outs of this underworld, as well as how to kick 75 different types of ass. For FURIES, Ngo takes over as director, as well as having a supporting role in the movie. As a totally different character! It’s weird. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 28th, 2023 | 2 Comments »

John Wick Chapter 4

JOHN WICK CHAPTER 4 is the culmination of one of the great movie series of our time, and a masterwork of its genre, one of the few American action movies to arguably outdo overseas epics like THE RAID 2, THE NIGHT COMES FOR US and THE VILLAINESS. Like its predecessors it expands on JOHN WICK’s distinct style of martial-arts-and-guns ultraviolence, introduces colorful new allies and enemies, and invents even more astounding ideas for types of action spectacle you haven’t seen before. But this one adds an extra layer of emotion through heroic bloodshed style bonding and a deeper realization that everything John Wick does in these movies only digs his hole deeper.

I’ll warn you before I get into the biggest spoilers, but as usual this review will be better for reading after you’ve seen it. If you’re just wondering how good it is compared to other chapters, I believe the first film stands on its own and then the sequels get better the more spectacular they become. So CHAPTER 3 was the best but has now been usurped by CHAPTER 4. (But I love the Halle Berry and Mark Dacascos stuff in 3 so much it’s not an easy choice.) (read the rest of this shit…)

March 27th, 2023 | 58 Comments »

The Occupant

THE TRAIL was far from Ronny Yu’s only attempt at mixing sincere supernatural horror with silly comedy. THE OCCUPANT (1984) is a ghost tale that takes its tragic backstory seriously, but the movie centers on a goofy love triangle, and one of the three leads is a broadly comedic nerd character named Hansom Wong (Bak-Ming Wong, MAD MISSION, LETHAL PANTHER, also a writer, producer and director).

Like Yu himself, Angie (Sally Yeh, PEKING OPERA BLUES, THE KILLER) is a world traveler – she’s from Vancouver, visiting Hong Kong for three weeks to work on her thesis about Chinese superstition. Hansom is a… used car salesman/property manager/random weirdo?… who sees her trying to find an apartment, latches onto her and “helps” her in exaggeratedly-sexual-harassy ways. He invites himself in, makes excuses not to leave, asks if he can take a shower, suggests that he should run around the apartment naked to scare away potential ghosts. I don’t know if that’s a cultural thing or a Hansom Wong thing. (He also claims to be an expert on the supernatural.)
(read the rest of this shit…)

March 23rd, 2023 | No Comments »

The Trail

One of the main reasons to do a Ronny Yu career retrospective is to see how the hell this great Hong Kong director ended up in another part of the world making (SPOILER FOR THIS REVIEW SERIES) BRIDE OF CHUCKY and FREDDY VS. JASON, so it’s relevant that as early as 1983 (at which point there were only three Jason movies, zero Freddys, and zero Chuckys) he was already doing horror movies. Funny ones, too. THE TRAIL is Ronny Yu’s fourth film, never available in the U.S. as far as I can tell, so at first I thought I wouldn’t be able to see it. But I discovered I could order a Region 3 DVD that Fortune Star released in 2010, and there’s also a blu-ray out there. That’s good news, because I really enjoyed this one.

Horror comedies will end up being a big chunk of Yu’s career, but he’ll mostly set them in the present. This one takes place in 1922, in what seems to be a transitional period between old traditions and the modern world. (I guess that describes most period pieces, in a way.) It’s the story of Ying (Ricky Hui, MR. VAMPIRE) and Captain (Kent Cheng, ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA, IP MAN 2 and 3), two conmen impersonating Taoist priests transporting corpses. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 22nd, 2023 | 3 Comments »

The Postman Strikes Back

Ronny Yu’s 1982 film THE POSTMAN STRIKES BACK (or THE POSTMAN FIGHTS BACK in the U.K.) is not a sequel to Kevin Costner’s THE POSTMAN, but it is about a heroic letter deliverer. Courier Ma (Bryan Leung, IRON MONKEY, IP MAN, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS) enjoys his humble life as a messenger in bandit-ridden territory between Canton and Shanghai. Like many of us he has the shadow of technological advancement hanging over him: when the trains come in, people like to tell him, they won’t need guys like him anymore. But he’s still reluctant to take 300 taels of gold for a sketchy delivery-through-the-mountains job offered to him by Hu (Eddy Ko, HEROES SHED NO TEARS, THE EAST IS RED, LETHAL WEAPON 4).

He only delivers letters, he says. And you can see why he likes it. The villages treat him like the ice cream man when he shows up. Now that I think about it it might not be because of the letters – he actually does bring the kids treats. He tries to introduce some kids to chocolate, which he got in Canton, but they refuse it because they say it looks like mud (or dog shit in the dub). I guess that shows you how important it is to experience different parts of the world and learn from different types of people. Those dumb little shits missed out on free chocolate! Back when it was rare!

Ma’s wimpier friend Yao Jie (Yat-Chor Yuen, CHINESE HERCULES, SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU, IN THE LINE OF DUTY 4) really wants to take that job, and he can’t do it alone, so eventually Ma gives in. All they have to do is carry several cases, “a gift for Zhao Long” to deliver by his birthday to keep the peace. They just can’t look to see what’s in the cases. (That’s one of the Transporter’s rules also.) (read the rest of this shit…)

March 21st, 2023 | 13 Comments »

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