Veronica Ngo Thanh Van – multi-talented star of the The Rebel, Clash and the upcoming Furie – is teaming up with former MMA fighter-turned-action star Cung Le (Europe Raiders, Savage Dog) for a Vietnamese martial arts thriller titled The Target (aka Mục Tiêu Chết).
Unfortunately, Ngo will only be producing, and will not appear in The Target. Additionally, Wing Chun practitioner Peter Pham and Jackie Chan Stunt Team member Vi-Dan Tran (The Foreigner) are also part of the production.
According to MAAC, Truong Ngoc Anh (Truy Sát aka Tracer) was previously attached, but dropped out for reasons unknown.
We’ll keep you posted as we learn more. For now, don’t miss a featurette for The Target below (via Alejandro Torres):
Director: Scott Mann Cast: Dave Bautista, Pierce Brosnan, Ray Stevenson, Julian Cheung, Alexandra Dinu, Lara Peake, Amit Shah, Bill Fellows, Aaron McCusker, Martyn Ford Running Time: 104 min.
By Martin Sandison
Not to be confused with the Chris Mitchum-starring Indonesian actioner Final Score – a movie Paul’s review completely sold to me (and doesn’t disappoint in its batshit anything-goes way); this 2018 Final Score is a pretty different beast. Very encouragingly, both this film and Nightshooters are British productions, and they bring the action. While the latter was made for nothing, and delivers one of the best film experiences of last year, Final Score has some more money to play with. Producing and starring is none other than Dave Bautista (Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy), in a role which finds him using hand-to-hand combat more than most other films he’s made, and producing some very convincing acting chops. Oh, and Pierce Brosnan (Goldeneye) is in it too.
Mike (Bautista) is ex-special forces, whose brother was killed in action. His brother’s widow Rachel (Lucy Gaskell, All the Ordinary Angels) tends a bar in London, and Mike visits often and thinks the world of her daughter Danni (Laura Peake, The Marker). The two take a trip to see West Ham United football team play where a gang of Russian terrorists led by Arkady (Ray Stevenson, Thor) infiltrate the stadium to demand the release of Dimitri (Brosnan), their former leader who is attending the game. Mike loses Danni during the game and then learns of the villains scheme, and must save the day.
Final Score unabashedly steals from Die Hard to the point of complete derivation; ideas such as the terrorists demanding the release of Dimitri, the protagonist contacting the goodies and baddies via walkie talkie, the climax featuring Danni being captured by the villains… I could go on. It’s obvious the film-makers are having a lot of fun with this, but unlike the invention of Nightshooters the film doesn’t play with these tropes very cleverly. What the film does have on its side are a blistering lead performance from Bautista, an amusing extended cameo from Brosnan (his accent is a thing of beauty) and a second half that includes full on brutal fights, a motorbike chase that continues out on to the roof of the stadium, and a good turn of Brit wit.
Bautista part produced the film, and you can see why he believes in the material; it’s a good opportunity for him to take the lead in a film that plays to his strengths of action, humour and stretching out with his acting. There are a few scenes in which he deepens as an actor and shows he can carry a film. In one of these he has a huge outburst, impressive in its lack of restraint, then a dialogue scene with Brosnan that sees the two give and take sweetly. Brosnan’s dialogue here is absurdly amusing, and a glint in his eyes seems to say: “I’m here for the pay day, and I’m gonna have some fun”. I’m sure, despite the schmaltzy music, the film makers know how ridiculous this scene is.
To the action. Each duel is choreographed differently, but with Bautista using modern martial arts moves like those in Krav Maga. There’s an authenticity to the depiction of combat that speaks volumes of the commitment of the film makers, and Bautista himself. A highly anticipated fight comes midway through, with man mountain Martyn Ford (Accident Man) taking on our hero. It’s a high impact sequence in which you really feel Ford’s punches, but unfortunately doesn’t last too long. I guess I’m used to, and love, Hong Kong movie fights that go on forever. Come the end we get some neat kicking from Alexandra Dinu (Bullet Head), she even does Cynthia Rothrock’s signature scorpion kick. There is some brutal violence throughout, with fingers sliced off to fall in to a frier, heads submerged in the frier, plenty of heads blown off. For the most part the framing, form and editing of these scenes is above-average, but occasionally there are line breaks and illogical editing that took me out of the film as a viewer.
As a lower budget British production, the film can be forgiven for some dodgy CGI, especially in the motorbike chase, and on a whole the effects work is decent. Director Scott Mann helmed an earlier film featuring Bautista, Heist, which also starred Robert De Niro. That one, like Final Score, garnered mixed reviews, but I would catch it now I think the guys got some talent. His directorial debut The Tournament I remember hearing about at the time (10 years ago) and will definitely check out. Any film with a cast that combines my homeboy, Scotsman Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting), Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), Kelly Hu (Maximum Impact) and the one-and-only Scott Adkins (Incoming) must be worth a watch. Final Score has a nicely consistent aesthetic and tone, plus a good line in knowing humour that rises above most straight-to-DVD fare, even though it seems to exist in an alternate universe wherein West Ham United are doing well in European competition.
Final Score lacks the creative spark and is too unoriginal to make a mark beyond lovers of action cinema, football and Bautista and Brosnan, but there is much to enjoy in its tension-filled narrative. One to put on with a bunch of mates, stuff pizza in to your mouth and drink your fill of beer. It’s not memorable, but consistently entertaining, and will fill 100 minutes of your time nicely.
Skybound Entertainment (The Walking Dead) and Korea’s Contents Panda are adapting the 2017 Korean actioner The Villainess into an English-language TV series. Jeong Byeong-gil (Confession of Murder), who directed the original film, is on board to helm the series’ pilot.
According to Deadline, the series, also titled The Villainess, follows Anes, who was kidnapped from her home in Korea and raised as a deadly assassin in Los Angeles. Just when Anes believes she has found true peace, unsettling events drive her to return to Korea to uncover dangerous truths about her home and her past.
We’ll keep you updated on The Villainess series as we learn more. Watch the Trailer for the 2017 film below:
Director: Poon Man-Kit Writer: Johnny Mak Cast: Ray Lui, Cecilia Yip, Kent Cheng, Waise Lee, Amy Yip Chi May, Frankie Chin, Elvis Tsui, Tommy Wong, Kenneth Tsang, Lo Lieh, Paul Chu Kong, Mark Houghton Running Time: 136 min
By Paul Bramhall
The tale of real life gangster Ng Sik-Ho, more commonly known as Crippled Ho, has experienced a resurgence of late thanks to Donnie Yen’s take on the character in 2017’s Chasing the Dragon. Much of the talk around Ho’s latest incarnation, was how it skilfully frames the story so as to massage it through the Mainland China censorship board, which takes a hard line on any movie perceived as glorifying a criminal lifestyle. While Wong Jing’s (and his small army of co-writers and directors) effort is an admirable one, there was more than one occasion on watching Chasing the Dragon, when I found myself thinking how much better it could have been without all the subtle political narrative manoeuvring. Thankfully, such a version exists, and it comes in the form of Poon Man-Kit’s 1991 epic To Be Number One.
Unlike Chasing the Dragon, which gave equal focus to Crippled Ho and corrupt cop Lee Rock, To Be Number One is a pure gangster tale, and all the better for it. Although on a side note, in the same year Lee Rock would also be the focus of 2 movies, the self-titled Lee Rock and its sequel. Clocking in at 135 minutes, To Be Number One is unlike any other Hong Kong movie of the era in terms of its scope and ambition, anchored by a powerhouse performance from Ray Lui as the titular character (so yes, if you want to see Crippled Ho 1991 vs Crippled Ho 2017, check out Flash Point). Made at a time when Hong Kong cinema was very much in its prime, Lui’s take on Crippled Ho was just one of nine movies he’d feature in during the same year. Interestingly he’d play Crippled Ho twice, turning up for a second time in the Amy Yip (who’s also in To Be Number One) vehicle Queen of Underworld.
While all of the subtitled releases of To Be Number One unfortunately neglect to translate the large swathes of text that intermittently appear onscreen, indicative of the passing of time and significant events of the era, luckily this oversight doesn’t prove to be detrimental to the viewers enjoyment. Man-Kit, who up until this point had cut his teeth directing gritty slices of HK Triad life such as Hero of Tomorrow and City Kids 1989, brought in a whole host of top shelf talent to bring his vision to life. Respected cinematographer Peter Pau, who would go onto lens the likes of The Bride with White Hair and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, here shows early signs of his unique eye for framing a scene, working from a script by Long Arm of the Law director Johnny Mak and Stephen Shiu.
Several reviews out there make comparisons to Brian De Palma’s Scarface, and structurally it’s a fair comparison. As a country bumpkin from the Mainland (remember when Mainlanders where always portrayed as country bumpkins in HK cinema?), Lui arrives in Hong Kong in the 70’s to escape the Cultural Revolution. While he and his friends find themselves slumming it as coolies in a rundown restaurant, they also work odd jobs that toe the line between legal and criminal, one of which eventually puts Lui on the radar of a powerful HK gang boss (played by Kent Cheng), who sees potential in his ambitious personality. Soon finding himself moving up the ranks within the gang’s well-oiled drug trade, Lui’s goals gradually begin to expand beyond the lot he’s been given, and the lust for power leads to a bloody war between the pair that stretches across the next 2 decades.
It’s a structure that’s proved to be tried and tested over the years, with the likes of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Yoon Jong-bin’s Nameless Gangster also adhering to the same framework. One aspect that they all have in common though, is that they never feel derivative of De Palma’s classic, and Man-Kit crafts a tale that’s distinctly Hong Kong in its identity. Of course another aspect of any Hong Kong production from the 80’s and early 90’s that deals with the Triads, is the action. It should be made clear that To Be Number One isn’t an action movie, but during this era in Hong Kong action was such an intrinsic part of its film industry, you could expect at least a couple of stunts or fists to be thrown even in the most unexpected genres.
Here Bloodmoon director Tony Leung Siu-Hung is on action choreography duties, and he does an outstanding job of adapting the classical style of his early career (Tiger of the Northland, A Fistful of Talons) to a more contemporary and realistic setting. I’ve always found Siu-Hung’s late 80’s/early 90’s work on triad potboilers to be underrated. He was one of the few action directors who showed a real understanding of how to still keep the hard hitting aesthetic and flow that’s synonymous with HK choreography, but apply it in the context of a more realistic environment. His work on the likes of Walk on Fire and Rebel from China are also stellar examples. Here the action is frequently bloody and brutal, with lime and acid thrown into people’s faces, brutal beatdowns, and even some flying kicks are sprinkled in for good measure, without ever coming across as gratuitous.
Lui’s rise to power is complimented by a fantastic cast of supporting characters. Just like any movie is a product of its time, so it could be said reviews also offer a unique perspective from the time they’re written. Watching To Be Number One in 2018, there’s an undeniable nostalgia to seeing so much talent from Hong Kong’s golden era onscreen together. Waise Lee, Lawrence Ng Kai-Wah, and bulked up bodybuilders Frankie Chan and Dickens Chan (ironically playing brothers) feature as Lui’s fellow Mainlanders and eventual followers. We have Elvis Tsui as a mute enforcer, who at one point gets to go John Woo with some double handed pistol action, and Cat III icon Amy Yip as Kent Cheng’s moll (both Tsui and Yip would star together in the legendary Sex and Zen in the same year). Throw in appearances from Lo Lieh as a gangster and Cecilia Yip as Lui’s better half, you’re left with a cast that can never be replicated.
Any tale that focuses on Crippled Ho eventually culminates in the ICAC’s (Independent Commission Against Corruption) purge against corrupt members of the police force, one which saw Ho’s network of cops that he had in his pocket fall apart around him. While these days the ICAC is more known as the subject of David Lam’s limp wristed Z/S/L Storm series (not to mention 1993’s First Shot – I guess Lam is an ICAC fanboy, if such a thing exists), in To Be Number One the weight of their crackdown is fully felt, as Lui finds himself in increasingly desperate circumstances. Blinded by his own greed and embattled by other rival gangster factions, the added pressure of having to deal with a police force no longer possible to brush off with stacks of cash, all culminate to show just how fragile it is when indeed, you’re number one.
Despite being an early entry in Man-Kit’s filmography, he’d never top the quality on display in To Be Number One. Perhaps too eager to replicate its success, he pulled together an almost identical cast and crew for the sprawling Lord of East China Sea and its sequel in 1993, which saw Lui step into the shoes of Luk Yu-San, a Shanghai fruit seller who rose to prominence as an opium dealer in the early 20th Century. He’d then cast Lui again in Hero of Hong Kong 1949, also from 1993, for another tale inspired by true life events, with equally uninspiring results. It’s proof that even if you have the same chef and the same ingredients, success is not always a guarantee. But in the case of To Be Number One, everything was left to simmer for just the right amount of time and in the right portions, resulting in a satisfying tale of true life crime.
While Chasing the Dragon did its part to prove it’s still possible to tell these tales in today’s SARFT friendly environment, watching Man-Kit’s magnum opus makes you realise just how many sacrifices have to be made in order to do so. While many would say they were worth it, watched against a movie like To Be Number One, there can be no denying, any other attempt could only be a distant number two.
Mak and Pun – the directing duo behind the Infernal Affairs sequels, the Overheard saga, and Donnie Yen’s The Lost Bladesman – are back with an action thriller that follows an undercover police officer who attempts to take down a drug trafficking syndicate from the inside.
Director: Albert Pyun Writer: Albert Pyun Cast: Linden Ashby, Rutger Hauer, Kimberly Warren, Tim Thomerson, Norbert Weisser, Andrew Divoff, Yuji Okumoto, Vincent Klyn, Tim Thomerson, Sonya Eddy, Shannon Elizabeth, Jill Pierce Running Time: 159 min.
By Z Ravas
When I was 10 years-old, I thought you couldn’t get any cooler than Linden Ashby. That probably sounds amusing now, but I still think the actor was able to combine the amiable charm of someone like Owen Wilson with a bonafide martial arts background (Ashby studied karate, tae kwon do, and kung fu from the age of 21 onwards). Although he portrayed the parody of a martial arts star as Johnny Cage in 1995’s Mortal Kombat, one gets the sense in another life Ashby could have been the genuine article. More than anything, it was likely time working against Ashby: by 1997, the year he starred in Blast, the action movie boom of the Eighties and Nineties had more or less dried up, and former superstars like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal were on their way to direct-to-VHS fare like The Legionnaire and The Patriot, respectively.
The shrinking market for traditional action fare is keenly felt while watching Blast, a movie you might call ‘Die Hard in an Olympic training pool.’ The film arrives from notorious B-Movie king Albert Pyun, whose career trajectory more or less mirrored the dwindling favor of the action genre. While the Eighties saw him pair with Van Damme for Pyun’s biggest hit, Cyborg, and the early Nineties brought the likes of his visually impressive cyber-punk feature Nemesis, by ’97 it appears Pyun barely had a few pennies to rub together to make a film like Blast. In an echo of his later work like Ticker, Blast consists almost exclusively of tight close-ups on actors’ faces, as though the cast was never in the same room at once, and continually uses the same nondescript hallway to stand in for the entire floor of a building. On one hand, you have to feel for Pyun: there’s almost no conceivable way you could make a solid Die Hard knockoff on a shoestring budget. At the same time, watching Blast can be a dire viewing experience, the kind that only makes you sorry for yourself.
Blast’s (frankly bizarre) opening titles acknowledge the Centennial Olympic Park Bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, and posit the movie as something like a dramatic reenactment of “what could have happened” if a band of terrorists had attacked during the games. This stab at docu-drama realism is an attempt to keep the movie grounded, but feels like a mistake as it lends the movie the feeling of a dull procedural. The first thirty minutes of the movie involve a whole lot of security checks, automated doors, and CTV monitors as the women’s Olympic swim team head to their Atlanta training facility. Thanks to a mole on the inside, Andrew Divoff’s (Wishmaster) heavily armed terrorists take over the pool and end up holding the entire swim team hostage. If their demands are not, the young women (featuring a 24 years-old and undiscovered Shannon Elizabeth of American Pie fame) will be executed one by one.
Enter our John McClane-style “wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Linden Ashby, who’s a janitor(!) at the facility. Don’t fret: Ashby’s character is actually a former tae kwon do champion, now disgraced after a debilitating injury led him to a life of alcoholism. At first I was worried when Ashby was introduced with a hobbled leg, but the movie more or less forgets about his injury whenever it’s time for Linden to kick some ass. Unfortunately, it takes a solid forty minutes before Ashby’s character even realizes a terrorist plot is afoot, so those expecting an action-packed 99 minutes might find themselves disappointed by scenes of Divoff preening for the cameras as he rattles off his demands on national television, or Ashby’s poor co-worker (a charming Sonya Eddy, of TV’s Fresh Off the Boat) fleeing Divoff’s armed goons down that same repeating corridor.
Considering Pyun’s experience working with martial artists like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Olivier Grunier, one would hope the action in Blast doesn’t disappoint, and thankfully what little hand-to-hand combat occurs proves well executed. There’s a kind of R-rated nastiness to the violence you don’t often see in these ‘Die Hard’-lites, with Ashby bashing bad guy’s faces into sinks or stabbing knives through throats. Ashby acquits himself well as an onscreen fighter, his background on display with a couple of high kicks and a flurry of punches. The real problem is that Linden Ashby doesn’t have much screentime and, worse yet, no one to play off of. Whereas Bruce Willis was able to interact with the likes of Al Powell and even Hans Gruber himself, Ashby spends most of the movie on his own, silently dragging his increasingly beat up body down hallways and stairwells. Whether this was due to a lack of imagination during scripting or Ashby having a limited number of days on set, we can only guess. Blast frequently cuts to the actions of a few of Pyun’s other stable players, including Tim Thomerson (Dollman) and Yuji Okumoto (Nemesis), as they work to defuse the situation from the Mayor’s office, but these scenes fall flat thanks to the movie’s ambition to realism. Pyun’s attempt to simulate a crisis management situation feels antithetical to the entertainment value of a B-level action movie; the wit and oneliners of Die Hard are solely missed.
I should probably mention Rutger Hauer is in this movie. The Blind Fury actor plays a counter-terrorism expert left a paraplegic after a previous run in with Divoff’s baddie. This basically means he appears periodically in a darkly lit room, offering advice on hostage negotiation to the police. I should also probably mention that, in a baffling move, the Dutch actor was hired to portray an American Indian, complete with some kind of fake tanner and long braids. It’s something you have to see to believe, much like the ending of the film when Hauer and Divoff finally come face to face. All I’ll say is that it involves a swimming pool and a bomb inside a wheelchair.
Blast is a strange one. The film arrives on Blu-ray from MVD Entertainment Group, a distributor who has recently made a name for themselves with their MVD Rewind Collection featuring Nineties guilty pleasures like Nemesis and Double Dragon. MVD have chosen to pluck the movie from obscurity and I’m not entirely sure why, unless they’re looking to fill out Albert Pyun’s filmography – a move I’m in full support of. While the scripting here feels dry and uninspired, I do get the sense that Pyun is straining to make an outsized project work on a miniscule budget. Pyun’s efforts can’t quite overcome a drab location, the lack of action sequences, and a charismatic lead who is conspicuously absent from much of the movie, but I can’t fault him for trying. If you’re feeling particularly charitable, or you’re a Linden Ashby superfan like I was at 10 years-old, Blast might provide a night’s modest entertainment. For everyone else, you’re probably better off rewatching Under Siege or Sudden Death for your inferior Die Hard fix.
On March 5th, 2019, Samuel Goldwyn Films is releasing the DVD for Buffalo Boys, an actioner set during the Dutch occupation of Indonesia.
When all seems lost in a small town overrun by colonialist violence, two revenge-seeking brothers arrive, meting out bloody justice that leaps effortlessly between brutal Western gunslinging and stylized Eastern swordplay.
Directed by Mike Wiluan – producer of Macabre, Headshotand Beyond Skyline – Buffalo Boys stars Ario Bayu (Macabre), Tio Pakusadewo (The Raid 2), Pevita Eileen Pearce (Single), Happy Salma (Capres), Donny Damara (2014), Mikha Tambayong (Fallin’ in Love) and El Manik (Carok)
Director: Wang Lung Wei Producer: Jackie Chan Cast: Ben Lam Kwok Bun, Jackie Lui Chung Yin, Sun Chien, Leung Yuen Jing, Mai Kei, Edward Mok Ga Yiu, Benny Lai Keung Kuen, Danny Chow Yun Kin, Johnny Cheung Yiu Wah, Anthony Carpio, Christopher Chan Sai-Tang, Mai Kei Running Time: 87 min.
By Martin Sandison
Once one of the premier members of the Jackie Chan stunt team, whose greatest role in a Chan movie came with the classic Police Story 2 (he actually appears in two roles, one as an innocent fireman and the other as nasty villain Hung), Ben Lam is one of the great unsung heroes of Hong Kong cinema. Like Yen Shi Kwan (Once Upon a Time in China) or Kim Wong Jin (Operation Scorpio), he appeared in numerous classics such as Legend of the Wolf and Love on Delivery, but unfortunately didn’t make the transition to leading man. There is one movie, however, in which he starred and conveyed his true talent as an onscreen fighter, and as an actor: Angry Ranger. The film has all of the elements that we all love about golden age Hong Kong martial arts cinema, and is also notable as being one of the few movies that legendary Shaw Brothers villain Johnny Wang Lung Wei (Martial Club) lent his directoral hand to.
Peter (Lam) is an ex-con just released for hospitalising some thugs who attacked his friend Hsing (Bruce Mang Lung, Stool Pigeon) and gets a job as a fish vendor. His wild and reckless ways have not been put to bed, and one night him and Hsing steal a car belonging to gangster Lun (Jackie Lui Chung-yin, The Mission). Soon Peter becomes embroiled in a web of gangster double crosses, mainly because, as he puts it, he will beat up anyone that bullies him. It doesn’t help that he becomes romantically involved with gangster Han’s (Sun Chien, Five Venoms) girlfriend Jane (Leung Yuen-Jing, Hard to Kill). Soon the situation comes to a head with what we all wanted: a huge martial arts showdown.
Previous to Angry Ranger, Lam had shown sparks of greatness in his onscreen fighting abilities, but they were all too brief. From the off, Lam’s controlled ferocity, martial arts chops and technique in the film are truly impressive, and make the viewer beg for more. It helps that the film was made right at the heart of the golden age, in the early 90’s, and that choreographing are the Jackie Chan stunt team, coming off the back of Chan’s classic Operation Condor. There are three stand out fight scenes, all mini masterpieces in themselves. The first is the most vicious and cathartic, as Peter has been wronged by the gang for the first time and must bring the smack down. The impact of his punching and kicking places him high in the pantheon of screen fighters; every blow connecting with such power that it jumps off the screen.
The most sustained one-on-one fight comes next, with Lam facing off against gangster Macau Hua (Cheung Kwok-Wah, Shaolin Prince) in an intense duel that sees Cheung using some traditional kung fu techniques against Lam’s kickboxing. The give and take, petering off of the styles here is a wonder to behold, with both fighters adapting brilliantly.
Unfortunately the end fight between Lam and Sun Chien, a mouthwatering match up on paper, is short and scrappy. It’s the most disappointing aspect of the film. But previous to that Lam takes on a bunch of fighters, most tellingly Benny Lai, who kicked Jackie’s ass at the end of Police Story 2. The build up to money shots here is truly transcendent, with two shots especially that blow my mind; one has Lai side kicking Lam, with the latter flying through the air like a rag doll. The next features Lai again showing his masterful kicking, as he performs some wire assisted kicks that fuck up Lam big style.
Aside from the action, Angry Ranger is surprisingly strong in other departments. Lam is a decent actor, and the role brings out his strengths in this regard, with a quietness that erupts in to wildness and violence. Jackie Lui (whose full name in the film is AIDS Lun! Come on, this is early 90’s Hong Kong cinema, so anything goes!) commits to an interesting part, and lends depth to what could have been a very one-dimensional character. A movie like this wouldn’t be complete without a hefty dose of cheddarish romantic montage, terrible-but-charming music, and Leung provides the romance in a sexy and arresting way, despite having no depth to her character at all.
Unfortunately there is a blandness to the aesthetic at times, with little thought being put in to the camera set ups and lighting. It is a case, at times, of the screen going dead when there’s no action. Perhaps it’s not surprising Johnny Wang only directed one movie subsequently, the trash classic Escape from Brothel. That film’s most notable achievement is a scene when a completely starkers Sophia Crawford (Beauty Investigator) fights Billy Chow (Miracles: The Canton Godfather).
Angry Ranger can be forgiven for its lapses in to bad taste, but a scene wherein frogs are stomped to death goes too far, and is completely unnecessary. The execution of the fight sequences is what we’re here for, and with such a high quality on offer, any martial arts movie fan will be in seventh heaven. Seek it out, my brothers and sisters!
As Paul Bramhall says in his 2017 article: Just like Hollywood believed that a western audience would rather watch a western (re: Caucasian) cast, so countries like Japan, Korea, and India have followed the same thinking, that local audiences would also be more likely to watch local stars than check out the foreign original.
The original, which was directed by Ding Sheng (Railroad Tigers), is based on the 2004 real-life celebrity kidnapping of Mr. Wu (played by Andy Lau), who was kidnapped by six criminals disguised as police officers.
At this time, no other stars or directors are attached to the project, but as soon as we learn more, we’ll update you.
Filmmakers Alan Mak and Felix Chong – the duo behind Infernal Affairs and The Lost Bladesman – have a new crime film in post-production titled Integrity (read our review), which will be the first installment in a planned trilogy.
The story follows a leading anti-corruption agent who is forced to team up with his ex-wife to salvage an investigation in which both the defendant and the whistleblower have disappeared (via SD).
Integrity hits domestically on February 5, 2019. Don’t miss the Trailer below:
Today’s Deal on Fire is the Blu-ray for Jingle Ma’s The Assassin’s Blade (aka The Butterfly Lovers), starring Wu Chun (14 Blades), Charlene Choi (The Twins Effect), Hu Ge (1911).
In The Assassin’s Blade, Zhu Yanzhi (Choi), disguised as a man, seeks to learn martial arts with an elite clan. Once she begins her intense training, Zhu finds herself at odds with her trainer and superior, Liang (Chun).
A darkness looms over ancient Korea: murderous creatures known as Night Demons have overrun the country. Returning from a long imprisonment abroad, Prince Ganglim discovers that it will take the strength of his entire kingdom to stop the bloody rampage spreading across the nation.
On February 26, 2019, MVD Rewind will be releasing the Special Edition Blu-ray for Showdown, a 1993 martial arts flick directed by Robert Radler (Best of the Best).
Check out the official details below:
Ken Marks (Kenn Scott, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze) finds a dangerous enemy on his first day at his new school; an enemy who makes his living as the champion of an illegal fighting operation. School janitor and ex-cop Billy Grant (Billy Blanks, King of the Kickboxers) trains Ken to defend himself. What Billy doesn’t know is that the man behind it all is the one man from his past who wants him dead.
This VHS favorite features an all-star cast that includes Christine Taylor (The Wedding Singer), Patrick Kilpatrick (Death Warrant), James Lew (Ninja Turf) and Brion James (Blade Runner) in the movie the proves there’s not a problem in the world that a good roundhouse kick to the face can’t solve.
Bonus Features:
Original R-Rated version of the film (98 min.)
Interviews with Director Robert Radler, writer Stuart Gibbs, and star Billy Blanks & Patrick Kilpatrick (more to be announced)
Director: Malene Choi Writer: Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen Cast: Thomas Hwan, Karoline Sofie Lee Running Time: 85 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Out of all the many characters that frequent Korean cinema, the one which is arguably the most underrepresented is that of the international adoptee. So it came as quite a shock when I watched the recently released Champion, a mainstream production starring Ma Dong-seok as an adoptee raised in the U.S., who returns to Korea both to take part in an arm-wrestling competition (yes, it’s an arm-wrestling movie) and also attempt to find his biological mother. Champion marks the first time for an international adoptee to be the lead character in a Korean movie, with most other examples relegated to either minor roles (Choe Stella Kim in Ode to My Father), or stories that focus on life before the adoption takes place, such as the Kim Sae-ron starring A Brand New Life and Barbie.
The wider issue of international adoption in Korea is a much more complex one. Originally triggered after the Korean War in 1953, the practice is attributed to a gentleman named Harry Holt, who adopted 8 so-called ‘G.I. Babies’ in 1955 after seeing a documentary on TV in the States. However there’s a darker side to Holt’s good intentions, one he could never have been aware of at the time, which is that of Korea’s obsession with racial purity (a facet of their society which, while significantly less prominent than it was 65 years ago, still remains). A huge percentage of the babies adopted overseas, in the years immediately following the Korean War, were fathered to American soldiers who left once the war ended. Usually leaving a mother and child in poverty, the Korean government was happy to offload these mixed race babies back to America.
In the decades that followed things changed a lot. The mixed-race issue faded away as a bi-product of the armistice, and instead most babies put up for adoption were from single mothers, still unfortunately viewed as a source of shame in Korea. With a Confucian society so focused on ancestral bloodlines, domestic adoption has never been much of a viable option, with the concept of raising someone else’s child seen as an alien one. By the mid-1960’s, Korea wasn’t just sending babies to the U.S. but also Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, and Germany. It became a common quip to say that Korea’s biggest export was babies, and it was only in the mid-80’s that the government looked to start quelling the amount it was sending overseas, with the most recent law putting further restrictions on international adoption introduced in 2013.
Which brings me to director Malene Choi’s feature length debut with The Return. Choi is an international adoptee raised in Denmark, and has created a unique docu-fiction hybrid that speaks on a level beyond the subject matter on the surface.The loosely structured plot focuses on Karoline, a thirty-something adoptee raised in Denmark, who comes to Korea hoping to track down her biological family. She stays in the Koroot guesthouse, an actual guesthouse in Seoul, dedicated to introducing Korean culture to adoptees wanting to know more about their home country. While there she meets another Denmark raised adoptee in the form of Thomas, also in his thirties, and the pair form a kind of bond as they explore a land and culture which feels completely alien to them.
What makes The Return so unique is that both Karoline and Thomas are not only characters, but rather the actual actors playing variations of themselves. Karoline Sofie Lee and Thomas Kwan are both actors who came to Denmark as children adopted from Korea, and their roles in The Return embody both the directors own experiences, as well as their own, blurring the line between fiction and reality. Blurring the line even further, is that the supporting characters we meet in the guesthouse are actual guests that were staying there at the time of filming, their own stories interwoven into the narrative. This decision gives The Return an inimitable sense of authenticity, with moments of unexpected poignancy often arising out of simple conversations that take place within the comfortable surroundings of the guesthouse.
An adoptee from America explains how he instantly felt at home in Korea as soon as he arrived a couple of years prior, but it strained relations with his adopted family to the point that they asked him to choose between them and relocating there. A lady explains the complete lack of emotion she felt upon meeting her birth father for the first time, while everyone else that was in the room was reduced to tears, but how the opposite happened when she met her birth mother. An artist explains how she uses her experience as an adoptee to create. All have a different story to tell, and while the scenarios themselves are specific to their own experiences, the emotions behind them are relatable to everyone, as feelings of both regret and reconciliation bubble to the surface through their words.
Choi takes a leaf out of Park Chan-kyong’s Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits in her choice to employ a fictional framework rather than make a full-fledged documentary, allowing for a much broader range of creative freedom than the talking head format would have allowed. The feeling of disorientation that both Karoline and Thomas carry around with them is playfully achieved through both the visuals and sound design, as scenes are rapidly edited together allowing for brief glimpses of someone just walking out of shot, around a corner, or closing a door. Meanwhile playful blips and the sound of a disconnected phone line whir over them, invoking a feeling of disjointedness and dissonance.
Indeed the most awkward scenes in The Return are those that involve the Korean language. Watched on mute it could well look like any other Korean production, however with sound there’s a discomfort in watching Karoline’s attempt to help the guesthouse cook make a meal, who only speaks Korean, as she struggles to maintain the balance between patience and frustration. Only when the common languages of English and Danish are spoken does the tension dissipate, with the scenes between Karoline and Thomas having an air of natural realism about them which is pleasant to watch. At one point Thomas candidly admits that he has much less in common with the other guesthouse adoptees than he expected to, while Karoline is visibly happy to have another Danish person to talk to, leading to both giving the other a small part of what they feel they’re missing in Korea.
Events culminate with Thomas being notified that his birth mother has been located, and that she’d like to meet him the following day. Choi’s handling of the meeting is masterful, opting to forego the easy route of a tearful reunion, instead the meeting begins awkwardly, in a scene that almost feels drowned out by the silence, with only the accompanying translator intermittently translating the odd moments of small talk. Played out in real time, when the questions do finally come up about the past, the emotional weight they carry with them is fully felt, and just like in reality, the full impact of them isn’t felt on Thomas until the meeting is over, and he reaches a decision on what he’ll do with the rest of his time in Korea.
While The Return speaks powerfully to the experience of being an international adoptee from Korea, its triumph really is that it achieves much more than that. For anyone that’s lacked a sense of closure, or sought somewhere to belong, the understanding of the lengths we’ll go to as humans to seek a resolution to such longings, is perhaps what it speaks to the most. In the final scenes Karoline hasn’t found exactly what she came to Korea for, but in the unspoken final moments, it could just be that she’s found something more.
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