Iceman: The Time Traveler (2018) Review

“Iceman: The Time Traveler” Theatrical Poster

AKA: Iceman 2
Director: Raymond Yip
Cast: Donnie Yen, Eva Huang, Wang Bao Qiang, Simon Yam, Yu Kang, Yasuaki Kurata, Maggie Jiang, Hans Marrero, Hee Ching Paw, Minowa Yasufumi, Chen Kuan-Tai
Running Time: 88 min.

By Paul Bramhall

It’s been a long time since I watched a movie that left me so dumbfounded, I found myself staring at a blank screen for 10 minutes, struggling to figure out how best to begin a review of it. Iceman: The Time Traveler has the honour of being that movie, a sequel to 2014’s Iceman 3D, which is no longer 3D or directed by Law Wing-Cheong, despite being filmed at the same time as the first instalment. Ironically, 10 minutes is also how long the sequel spends giving us a recap of what happened all those years ago, which serves as a kind of Iceman 3D best of, as we get to relive the infamous shield snowboarding scene and bridge battle. Such a recap should be welcomed, except when you realise that the runtime is a measly 87 minutes, which means that what’s left could well be classified as “a little over an hour”.

Allegedly it wasn’t always that way, several sources (including IMDB) list the runtime as 104 minutes, which begs the question of how almost 20 minutes went missing in action? According to a post on the movies official Weibo blog, posted in November last year, it was because Yen “deleted scenes of various actors to highlight his status as the absolute main character, and that the deletions led the film to run only 87 minutes with a scattershot plot.” Not only that, the post also pointed the finger at Yen for interfering with the work of the action director and production crew, changing dialogue, refusing to do re-shoots or wear wigs, had an arrogant attitude, and didn’t help with the promotion. Not exactly glowing praise, but at the same time somewhat familiar, with Yen having similar well documented production strife on the likes of Wing Chun, Iron Monkey 2, and Special ID. How much of it is true? We’ll likely never know.

So as Yen’s legal team went into battle with the producers, the movie itself landed on cinema screens with a resoundingly dull thud. While Iceman 3D was critically mauled, I actually found it to be a charmingly dumb throwback to 80’s HK cinema (lest we forget the whole sorry saga is supposed to be a remake of The Iceman Cometh). Amidst Yen’s flowing locks, rocket powered piss, and exploding feces, its unashamed ridiculousness somehow won me over. For the sequel, gone is director Law Wing-Cheong and his writing team, and in their place is director Raymond Yip (Anna in Kung fu Land) and writer Manfred Wong (who’s no stranger to working with Yip, they co-directed Bruce Lee, My Brother together). The change in creative forces behind the camera have also made Iceman: The Time Traveler a completely different genre, with the zany comedic tone replaced with heavy handed drama and half baked romance.

You may have noticed by now that I’ve been avoiding a plot description, and you’d be right. In the closing of my review for Iceman 3D I’d mentioned how ”there’s a hint that the whole thing could be wrapped up by the arrival of some evil Japanese again. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t go down that path.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, my fingers were crossed in vain. As expected, Simon Yam’s greedy general turns out to be in cahoots with a Japanese warlord played by the legendary Yasuaki Kurata, and together they murdered everyone in Yen’s village (and framed him for it). Yam goes back in time from present day Beijing (yes, not HK anymore, I’ll get to that soon) along with Yu Kang, with Yen and Eva Huang hot in pursuit. Well, in pursuit at least. Frankly, the plot is so obviously incomplete that it feels like a pointless exercise to attempt to make it sound coherent.

In place of a plot, the audience is bombarded with a number of surreal and brow furrowing moments. Yen’s sudden change of hairstyle is conspicuously drawn attention to by Huang announcing when she sees him, ”Hey, you cut your hair!” His modern hair then becomes a sort of running joke when he goes back to the past, except that none of the jokes are funny. At its most strange, when Yen travels to Beijing to track down his old cohorts, on driving through Tianaman Square he notices the large portrait of Chairman Mao, and salutes it! It’s a cringe worthy moment, not just because of its obvious NRTA pandering connotations, but also in the context of the plot, Yen should have no idea who he is. But in the broader scheme of things, these are the least of Iceman: The Time Traveler’s problems.

Not only has the comedy gone, but bizarrely, the sequel is for the most part actionless. There’s a bewildering sequence when Yen and Huang first travel back in time, and instead of landing back in the Ming era, they arrive on a train in 1927 just in time to stop those damn Japanese from interrogtating the passengers. Soon there’s yells of ”Get out of China!”, and Yen manipulates Huang’s body to take out the troublesome Japanese invaders, in a sequnce which is more Jimmy Wang Yu flailing arms than it is the work of this era’s most innovative fight choreographer. Then just like that, they use the device to go back in time to where they’re actually supposed to be going. What was the point of this whole rail themed Republic era detour? None whatsoever, exept that it filled another 5 minutes, and proves that Yen is capable of kicking Japanese posterior regardless of what era it is because, you know, he’s The Time Traveler!

Things go from bad to worse once proceedings locate back to the past, as Yen returns to his village with Huang in tow, and the already short runtime gets bogged down by the fact that he has a girlfriend there from his own time (played by Maggie Jiang, Call of Heroes). Yes, there’s no better way to maintain the pace of this final chapter to the epic Iceman saga, than by introducting a love triangle! Huang and Jang form an amicable friendship, and are soon teaching each other dance moves from their respective times, however as they both only have eyes for Donnie, how long can it last? The answer comes, but not before we’ve had to sit through not 1, but 2 ballad driven musical montages, as we witness such iconic scenes as Yen and Huang taking a selfie in a bubble filled street for the 2nd time in less than an hour.

At some point around the half way mark, Wang Bao Qiang shows up, presumably because the producers realised he had a significant role in Iceman 3D, so should probably appear somewhere in the sequel. Bao Qiang’s appearance heralds the action highlight of Iceman: The Time Traveler, in a sequence that has him realise he’s been betrayed by his buddy Yu Kang, and the pair face off in the only grounded fight during the whole movie. Their showdown provides a brief moment of hope that things are going to pick up, before proceedings slip back into montony, with the irony not being lost on me that the best action scene doesn’t even have Yen in it. Bao Qiang looked like he was going to form a potential Yuen Biao/Yuen Wah style pairing with Yen back in 2013/14, with them facing off both in the original instalment, and Teddy Chen’s Kung Fu Jungle, however in recent years he’s tended to stick with comedic roles rather than action.

For no logical reason, the finale springs up out of nowhere, with Yen employing a baffling costume change which is never explained, and Huang tagging along (as she’s done for pretty much the entirety of both movies) to face off against Kurata, Yam, and Kang. After an entertaining sword battle (disclaimer: it may only have been entertaining due to everything being so dull previously), the sequence quickly begins to go off the rails, as Kurata and Yen battle it out in space and time on a train. Is it the same train from the random scene earlier on? I have no idea, but for whatever reason, they end up on a train hurtling through the space time continum. It’s right up there with The Myth for finales that completely lose the plot, but I have a feeling they were trying to go for some kung-fu meets Interstellar style vibe. They failed.

All of this nonsense turns out to be a preface for Yen to explain, in voiceover, that he’s basically become the Neo of timetravel. It’s poorly conveyed and makes almost no sense whatsoever, but somehow Yen has become someone who now controls the ability to influence time, hence, he’s ’The Time Traveler’. In all truthfulness, many viewers that embark on watching this trainwreck of a sequel (pun intended), will likely turn it off well before the end, and nobody can blame them. Featuring a plot with more holes than a golf course, action that feels both uninspired and lazy, and characters that feel like they were written on the back of a coaster, Iceman: The Time Traveler is a curious exercise in how wrong a film can go when the vision isn’t clear from the start. If you’re a diehard fan of Donnie Yen, check it out, if anything, it’ll most likely make you feel more forgiving towards Iron Monkey 2. For everyone else, approach with caution.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3.5/10