Kang Je-Kyu's MY WAY

 
Did I like Je-kyu Kang's My Way (Mai Wei; 2011) as much as his Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War (2004)? Not as much. But I was still very impressed.

I feel fortunate to have seen the film at LA's CGV cinemas. These Korean cinemas, recently built, are owned by CJ Entertainment, the producers of My Way and some of Korea's biggest movies. As cinemas go, these are the cat's meow. Incredible digital presentation. Ear-bending accoustics. Great seats. A far cry from the last Asian-focused cinema I sat in (Melbourne's Chinatown Cinema), that's for sure. Situated in Koreatown (a mile and a bit off the 10 freeway), the cinema (there are four screens) is also screening Nameless Gangster and Helpless, both worthy efforts -- and very recent releases in Korea. Some weeks see popular Hollywood releases filling the screens also.

In the US and elsewhere, My Way has been butchered by critics for its alleged excesses. Having seen it, this criticism seems undeserved. The film is big and loud and glossy. The dramatic situations are ultra-dramatic and ultra-emotional. Like any film, it manipulates your feelings and runs you through a gamut of emotions. Is it excessive? No. Is it violent? Yes. In fact, it feels somewhat like an old John Woo film with more money and resources. A Bullet In The Head with a little less darkness. Beginning well prior to WW2, the story involves two privileged athletes, a Korean and a Japanese, who find themselves reluctantly fighting side-by-side in several of WW2's bloody arenas. Like Tae Guk Gi, it is driven by themes of patriotism, xenophobia, and brotherly conflict. As I'm reluctant to give the movie's many surprises away, I must mention that there's much to "enjoy" and  marvel at as our hero, Jun-shik Kim (Dong-gun Jang, who was so good in Tae Guk Gi) finds himself pressed into service for the Soviets, the Japanese, and the Nazis.

How historically accurate the whole shebang actually is is not of immense interest to me. I was sucked into the film's violent maelstrom and engaged by its relentless drama. There are several extraordinary set pieces, and a generous serving of true cinematic poetry.

Said to be the mostly costly Korean movie ever made, it is certainly a major achievement. And though it doesn't rise to the level of  Tae Guk Gi's command of all cinema's disciplines, it delivers old-fashioned entertainment on a scale that never erupts into excess.

If you can make it to CJ's new cinemas in LA, you're in for a treat.

 

The Source of Woo's The Killer

 Just as John Woo's Bullet in the Head is a very obvious remake of Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (right down to its lighting setups), his The Killer is a less obvious remake of Teruo Ishii's An Outlaw and, of course, Melville's Le Samourai. I'd throw Nicholas Ray's truly amazing crime melodrama  They Live By Night into the fray also.


I've raved about Ishii before on this blog, usually having unreasonable cinematic orgasms about his freak-oriented material such as Horrors of Malformed Men, Love and Crime, and Orgies of Edo. But Ishii also directed thrillers, outrageous erotic comedies, and torture-themed epics.

An Outlaw, with Ken Takakura, is an Ishii thriller. Takakura plays a killer (very well) contracted to take out a scumbag; turns out the scumbag is a good guy. Angered by this betrayal, the killer sets out to expose the maggot-infested filth behind the ruse. Along the way, he becomes attracted to an innocent girl, helps a pretty prostitute with tuberculosis, and finds he shares a common sense of morality with a cop. At one point, he and the cop exchange gunfire with their common enemy.

Sound familiar? It screams familiar.

Yes, it's The Killer without the heavy stylization, but with the doubledecker trams and visually spectacular exploitation of Hong Kong's Victoria Peak. Mr. Woo must have been quite a fan of the film.

Thankfully, Ishii's bizarre trademarks rupture the film's surface now and then like welcome blisters. An old woman's wonderful facial scar (or is it a tattoo?) is a classic touch. Also true to Ishii is a bloody brilliant scene in which our hero saves a woman from vomiting on her own blood by deep kissing her and sucking the blood from her throat. It's super erotic, loving, and grotesque at the same time. I was in heaven!

I've waited eons to see this film and I was not disappointed.

Another triumph from Toei, the people who would one day bring you Battle Royale.

The Glory Days of Hong Kong Exhibition

Hong Kong movies were exploding in the late 80's and early 90's, and Melbourne was a great place to be if you wanted to catch some of the debris.

The two key exhibitors, the Chinatown Cinema (run by Joe Siu Internationalrun by Joe Su International), and the Capitol Cinema (run by the late Raymond Wu), were screening close to a dozen new releases a month. Yes, folks, a month!

Unfortunately, they didn't market their wares in English language newspapers because they had no confidence in the English speaking market, but you could find their flyers floating around inside and outside their cinemas.

Somehow, I managed to see about four Chinese films a week back then; the main shows were always double featured with something just as interesting or rare (I caught up on stuff I'd missed from the 70's and early 80's this way). I was directing TV commercials then, so I must have driven straight from the location or edit suite to catch the later shows. I doubt I got much sleep.

I haven't seen Satin and Steel since it's '94 release, but I remember it having some good stunt work and a very sexy leading lady (Jade Leung of 'Black Cat' fame).

A new Woo and I was there on the first night, of course, with my brother. I walked away a little disappointed with its uneven tone, but, hey, it was a Woo film, and the man was hotter than hot in those days.

I'm not a big fan of Taxi Hunter now and I wasn't a fan of the film when I saw it at the Chinatown in '94, either. Admittedly, I was expecting something quite hardcore, but it didn't deliver the exploitation elements I craved and it faltered as drama, too.

Wong, however, was good. Still is. Always was.

This was one of the few monthly calendars that the Chinatown Cinema released.

A scan of the titles that were playing is proof that it was an absolute golden era for the Hong Kong film fan. I mean, seriously, take a decent gander (click on image to enlarge) at this mouth-watering line-up.

Naked Killer and Doctor Lamb were doubled up for maximum enjoyment. They've got Bullet in the Head, Erotic Ghost Story, and the relatively obscure Day Without Policeman (sic), an uncut version, playing on the same day. Who'd ever leave the fucking theater?

Further down you've got Swordman II, Peking Opera Blues, and the classic Snake in the Eagle's Shadow.

If you'd never seen a Hong Kong movie, this would have been the best opportunity to get seriously started.

Oh, yeah, Laboratory of the Devil, the unofficial "sequel" to Men Behind The Sun, was back for a second look, too. I clearly recall pestering the Chinatown manager for their only one-sheet of Laboratory. He finally gave it to me on the last night of a short season.

Because I was an obsessed nut, I was there for Simon Yam (as a gigolo) in Hong Kong Gigolo. After seeing him for the first time in Bullet in the Head, I was up for any rubbish he was in. This had lots of nudity, but was slow and moronic.

Playing a gigolo also was Alex Man, a Hong Kong actor I never liked. He was in a shitload of movies in the 80's and 90's, but I could never figure out what his appeal was. He didn't fight well, he didn't do action like Chow or Jackie did, and he was kinda unattractive. Actually, he did do some action stuff in the early 80's, but he was never too impressive.

And speak of the devil, here he is again in the bloody silly Crocodile Hunter, an '89 pile of crap.

Sure I saw it. I saw anything with rice and chopsticks back then.

Finally my beloved A Fishy Story (Bu Tuo Wa De Ren; '89), a mostly forgotten masterpiece that was produced by Jackie Chan's company.

It has nothing in common with Jackie except that it was distributed by Golden Harvest.

One of my Top 10 Hong Kong films of all time, it is unbelievably beautiful and directed with enormous skill and feeling by actor Antony Chan.

The director of photography, Peter Pau, went on to shoot a number of Hollywood movies, but nothing he's done since is as ravishing and amazing as this.

I'd like to stick my head out here and say that if someone of substance at Criterion saw this movie, they probably begin negotiations to restore it and release it on Blu-ray. It's that stunning.

I didn't see it for the first time in Melbourne. I saw it in Sydney with old friend and fellow Hong Kong-a-phile Tony Egan. Both of us were blown away by it.

I returned to Melbourne seven days later saw it five times in one week.

Naturally, because the film is so goddamned fucking amazing, it flopped in Hong Kong and did little business at global the Chinatown venues. I don't think the Chinese knew how to market something that was closer to a Carey Grant Hollywood love story (with politics!) than anything remotely like what they'd distributed before (Song of the Exile excepted).

I hope it is given the recognition it deserves one day.

Red Cliff of Boredom

Saw this close to a year ago and wasn't impressed at all -- in fact, it made me sad.

I was one of Woo's biggest champions back in the mid-80's and 90's when I wrote my Chinatown Beat column for Michael Helms' wonderful FATAL VISIONS magazine. I still think Bullet in the Head, A Better Tomorrow, Just Heroes, The Killer, and Hard-Boiled are masterpieces. I have countless DVD's, LD's, and VHS versions of all the director's works. My love for these films will never evaporate.

Watching Red Cliff, I found myself bored. So incredibly bored. For some reason, Woo has gotten it into his head that endless battle sequences are entertaining. Why have one hundred warriors when you can create a million more in a computer? Why shoot fifty flaming arrows when you can shoot fifty thousand?

That's it, I'm done with "epic" battle sequences. They're so repetitive and boring and uninteresting. It started with Troy and the Rings films and it hasn't stopped since. Half the action pics out there are just collections of battle sequences that go on and on and on and signify nothing but noise and chaos.

Red Cliff, apparently, has a story, and, according to John Woo, fascinating characters. Really? I didn't care. I felt twenty times removed from everybody in the movie. The arch, stuffy style applied to the so-called drama left me cold. Impossible, right, with actors like Tony Leung? Apparently not. I wanted everybody to die so the movie would end.

Woo's best films bleed with emotion because the characters are the focus. There is plenty of action, sure, but within the action (especially in Just Heroes, The Killer, and Bullet...) the characters are still the point of the movie, and their journeys are fascinating.

In Red Cliff, Woo tries to dazzle us and assault us and overwhelm us with non-stop "action" (which now equals high end computer game graphics) because he's convinced we want that. This approach is akin to a baby screaming into your ear for the entirety of a flight from LA to Melbourne. Half an hour in the air with that baby is enough. Three hours is a nightmare, and you want to kill the kid and kill yourself. Woo is so impressed with Big and Epic and Long and Loud it makes me wonder what drugs he's taking these days.

Scenes in which the camera/computer follows a perfect arrow on its perfect course towards a perfect target lack any sense of spontaneity or unpredictability. Everything is so carefully staged and executed, it's like watching a cartoon. I hate it with a passion. And I never thought I'd say that about the major elements of a John Woo movie. Doesn't Woo recall what made his Hong Kong movies so great? Doesn't he remember why he fell in love with the work of Jean Pierre Melville? It was the characters, John, the themes, the focus on feelings, the alienation, the war within themselves.

Every time I read an interview with Woo these days, he talks about future epics, thousands of extras, huge budgets, and how getting Red Cliff financed was a cinch. Seems the Chinese investors fell over themselves to throw money at this overstuffed epic.

I officially hate CG-enhanced, epic fight scenes, and I no longer await the next John Woo film with an anxiousness once reserved for Santa.

The Preferred Bullet in the Head (VCD)

Inspired by a post from Jack on enlejemordersertilbage.blogspot.com, I whipped out my VCD of Bullet in the Head and scanned the crap out of it.

For many fans, this OOP (Out Of Print) VCD from Mei Ah Laser Disc Co., Ltd. is the preferred version of Bullet.

Most importantly, it is the only version available legitimately that contains all the original music cues.

Even the Hong Kong Legends DVD, which has a great picture, does not have the music cues that this version has. The absence of important music cues on the HKL version is the reason why I never screen it to anybody.

I don't know what happened to the original cues between this release and the HKL one, but they've never surfaced on any edition since (not even the Japanese or the French).

I was a complete Bullet nut after I caught the very first Melbourne theatrical screening at the Hoyts Cinema Center on Bourke St.

It was an experience that my brother and I will never forget.

I headed straight for a Chinese CD score to search for the album that contained the beautiful, heart-wrenching song that Yolinda Lam (Sally) sings in the Bolero Club in Saigon.

I didn't even know if it existed.

After pointing, nodding, scratching my head in abject frustration, and scanning through dozens of CD's with a Chinese man who did not speak a word of English, I hit paydirt.

In the years to follow, I would spend close to a thousand dollars on Bullet VCD's, laserdiscs, DVD's, DVD-R's, VHS's, gray market sorry excuses, and half a dozen posters in various languages.

The film became a ridiculous obsession.

It is a shocking irony that one of the first VCD's of the film is the best and most coherent version of the film.

I keep hearing that the Weinstein Brothers now own the US rights.

That's all well and good, but I'm not at all excited by the prospect of them releasing it because you can be pretty sure that their materials are incomplete and unacceptable.

Perhaps the original music cues, the piss drinking scene, and sundry other pieces of the film's magic will turn up one day just as Ben (Tony Leung) turned up in Paul's (Waise Lee) office with Frank's (Jackie Cheung) skull in a cloth bag.

And proceeded to put a well-deserved bullet in the fucker's head.

Caught Between A Killer And A Bullet

Between The Killer ('89) and Bullet in the Head ('90), John Woo co-directed (with Wu Ma) Just Heroes, easily his most underrated film.

A bloody, romantic actioner with a dense plot, it was made by a bunch of ex-Shaw luminaries such as David Chiang, Danny Lee, Phillip Ko, Lieh Lo, Ti Lung and Kuan Tai Chen; it was intended as a retirement fund for the great Chang Cheh, mentor to Woo and many others.

Legend has it that the elderly director took the takings and used them to finance another film.

Great directors never retire.

Personally, I think the film is exceptional, and it has one of the equal greatest musical scores ever written for a Hong Kong film; the other is Richard Yuen's score for A Fishy Story, an exquisitely beautiful romance.
The action sequences are of a smaller scale than, say, Hard-Boiled

...or Bullet in the Head (my favorite Woo film)

...but they are beautifully choreographed and unusually brutal.

The film's romantic subplot has a powerful impact on the viewer and is definitely not filler.

The original theatrical print was cut.

A shot of Chiang sliding across a factory floor and shooting a gunman at point blank range in the chest was excised. So were some additional dramatic sequences and a number of gory close-ups of the death of Shing Fui-On.

Happily, these censored sections are re-instated in the stunning French DVD from Christopher Gans' releasing company, HK Video (w**.metrofilms.com).

The film is buried inside the French DVD casing of Woo's Once A Thief (Les Associes); it has no English subtitles.