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Posts Tagged ‘Christy Chung’

The Bride With White Hair 2

Thursday, April 13th, 2023

THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR 2 (1993) is directed by part 1 editor/co-writer David Wu, with Ronny Yu as producer and co-writer. I guess since he’s the editor Wu throws in a bunch of quick flashbacks (sometimes to new backstory, but mostly to the first movie, even though this came out around four months after the first one so anyone who’d seen it probly remembered). This story takes place at about the time of part 1’s flash-forward prologue, when Master Cho (Leslie Cheung, ONCE A THIEF) has been freezing his ass off sitting on a mountain for ten god damn years waiting for a flower to blossom and/or for his ex turned evil witch Li Ni-Chang (Brigitte Lin, DEADLY MELODY) to come talk to him.

She doesn’t, so he sits out almost the entire movie while a new generation of Wu Tang students deal with “the witch,” who now leads a cult made up entirely of women who have been wronged by men. Our new main character Kit (Sunny Chan) gets in trouble with the Wu Tang elders not for getting in fights and stuff but just for mentioning the name of “that coward” Master Cho. Kit is about to marry his girlfriend Lyre (Joey Maan, CENTURY OF THE DRAGON) when Ni-Chang flies in, kills some people with her hair, and abducts the bride to teach her to “never be so blindly loyal to these heartless men.” She brings her to her cult, where everybody hates men and bangs their swords together rhythmically, which seems pretty fun. Also they dress kinda like Queen Amidala.

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The Red-Wolf

Wednesday, February 15th, 2023

THE RED-WOLF (just RED WOLF on the DVD cover) is a 1995 movie directed by Yuen Woo-ping that’s kind of like his take on UNDER SIEGE and/or SPEED 2. Thieves infiltrate a cruise ship and kill the captain in a plot to steal uranium from the boat’s safe; a lone security guard (with help from a waitress/pickpocket) must stop them. It’s far from Yuen’s best directorial work, but of course it has some very good action in it, and I can’t help but enjoy seeing him inject his style into a favorite subgenre of American action.

It takes place on New Year’s Eve (the December one, judging by the number of Christmas trees around) on a luxury cruise ship called the White Whale. That’s a literary reference in my opinion, but most of its influences are cinematic. If you know your important filmic art you know that in the film UNDER SIEGE the captain of an aircraft carrier is killed by one of his underlings, who’s working for a guy who gets on board disguised as the singer for a corny blues rock band. This is kind of a variation on that – the ship’s captain (Steve Brettingham, KNOCK OFF) is a sleazeball who expects to hook up with singer Elaine Wong (Elaine Lui Siu-Ling, THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR), so she gets into his private quarters to whoop his ass and steal his security card. She’s working with the ship’s treacherous first officer (Collin Chou, THE MATRIX RELOADED), who kicks in the door and helps. (read the rest of this shit…)