Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth the Protagonist

Films: Ying Xiong (Hero), Point Blank
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on itty bitty bedroom television (Hero), DVD from Bettendorf Public Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television (Point Blank).

First, a note: this should have gone up last night, but Blogger was down.

When Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon first came out, people either loved it or hated it. I loved it; my mother hated it. I thought it was a beautiful story, and I loved the way it was filmed. I understand the thought that the wire work used throughout made it something of a fantasy rather than a realistic film, but martial arts movies have always contained a sense of the unreal. I wasn’t bothered by it. Instead, I was taken by the beauty of the story.

The same can be said of Hero, which follows many of the same conventions. It also bears a great deal of similarity to Rashomon, in that it tells the same story multiple ways, each slightly different, and each closer to reality than the one previous.

We start with the creation of China as a united nation. In the time of the story, China is actually seven nations. The most powerful is Qin, headed by a powerful king (Daoming Chen) who wishes to unite all seven kingdoms into one. To do this, he has created a large and terrible army capable of destroying anything in its path. He is also terribly paranoid of assassination, and does not allow anyone who isn’t a most trusted advisor within 100 paces.

A nameless man (Jet Li) has rendered the king a powerful service—he has killed the three assassins who have sought the life of the king since the beginning of the war. He arrives at the king’s palace with the weapons of all three as proof of their death. The killing of Sky (Donnie Yen) allows him to come within 20 paces of the king. Slaying the pair Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) allows the nameless man within a mere 10 paces.

Nameless relates his tale of how he destroyed Sky in battle. He also tells that Sky and Flying Snow had a one-night affair, which caused a rift between her and Broken Sword. He used this to push them further apart, causing her to kill Broken Sword. Then, with her distracted, he was able to kill her.

The king sees through this story, however. He realizes that nothing had come between the pair of assassins, since they worked as a perfect team in an attempt to kill him. Instead, he realizes that the nameless man is actually a fourth assassin, who compelled the other three to allow themselves to be killed so that he might have a chance at killing the king himself.

That’s really all there is to this story, but this is not a film so much about story. Instead, it is about love, betrayal, vengeance, and honor placed in a memorable time and location. It’s also about some of the prettiest fight choreography ever envisioned.

The fights are truly spectacular. They are obviously full of wire work, as the characters have a tendency to fly, spin, hover, and are capable of bouncing across water as if treading on trampolines. This doesn’t create something silly, however, Instead, it makes for scenes filled with beauty, as much about the scenery and the movements on screen as they are about the various reasons we are given for the people to be fighting.

It could be argued here that the story, for all its twists, turns, and revisions, is straightforward, almost simplistic. This may or may not be true, but it doesn’t really matter. This is a film to watch for its spectacle rather than the story.

In Point Blank, vengeance is the entire story. A man named Walker (Lee Marvin) agrees to help a friend named Mal Reese (John Vernon) out of a tight spot. Reese needs money to pay off a debt, and the pair plan to get it by robbing couriers making a drop on Alcatraz. The money they get isn’t enough, though, and Mal double-crosses Walker for his share of the take--$93,000. In fact, he shoots Walker a couple of times, leaves him to die, and runs off with his wife, Lynne (Sharon Acker).

Walker survives the ordeal and swims to shore, making him one of the few (if not the only) person to escape from Alcatraz, Sean Connery in The Rock notwithstanding. Nursed back to health, Walker has only one goal. All he wants is his money. He doesn’t care about being set up, double crossed, or two-timed by his wife. All he wants is his cash, but Reese doesn’t want to pay.

As it turns out, Reese works for a criminal organization called simply The Organization. While Walker only wants his money, a mysterious man named Yost (Keenan Wynn) wants to take down the Organization. He seems to know everything about everybody, and he manages to put Walker on the trail of Lynne. Lynne leads Walker to a used car salesman named Stegman (Michael Strong), who leads to Lynne’s sister, Chris (Angie Dickenson). Eventually, his following his money leads him to Carter (Lloyd Bochner) and Brewster (Carroll O’Connor).

Essentially, this is the entirety of this film. Walker wants his money and does whatever he can to get it, up to and including killing everyone who stands in his way. In many ways, Walker is the prototype for the badass looking to get something that was taken from him. This is Mel Gibson in Payback or Liam Neeson in Taken. Walker is the hardest of hard asses, using anyone and everyone he can to get what he wants, at one point forcing Chris to seduce Mal so that he can have a shot at his enemy.

Point Blank is fairly stylized, and because of this, it’s a little stiff in places. Certainly, since this film came out, the revenge flick has been done and redone over and over hundreds of time, so there’s really nothing new here, despite how it must have appeared in 1967. Don’t let this fool you. While you’ve almost certainly seen this film before with different stars and a slightly different plot, this is a stylish and entertaining movie. It’s very much brain candy, but it’s the good kind that leaves an audience wishing for another helping before the run time is over. Lee Marvin plays this role as well as it can be played, and Angie Dickenson works this role with a near perfect combination of spine, guts, and vulnerability. And Walker never breaks. At one point, Chris goes on a freak out rampage, slapping at him and hitting him. He stands there and takes it, and when she collapses on the floor, he sits down and turns on the television.

John Boorman shows a particular style throughout this film. Early on, we see a montage of events going on as Walker tracks down Lynne. He is walking at a brisk pace down a long hallway, his steps echoing. We continue to hear the steps regardless of if we are watching Walker or not, a nice piece of relentless sound that quickly becomes oppressive. Is it film noir? Sure. It’s also European New Wave with its rapid cuts between present and past. It’s also great fun.

Why to watch Ying Xiong: Fight choreography like no other.
Why not to watch: A simplistic story.

Why to watch Point Blank: Lee Marvin kicks ass.
Why not to watch: You’ve seen this before even if this came first.

Stunts Without a Net

Film: ‘A’ Gai Waak Juk Jaap (Project A Part 2)
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.


Jackie Chan movies are sort of their own category of film. There really isn’t anything else like them. They are part martial arts extravaganza, part comedy, and part sado-masochism. Chan’s films are short on plot and long on ridiculous action sequences that tend to be shown at slightly faster than normal speed and have a lot of interesting props thrown into the mix. Most of his movies really aren’t very good.

It’s sadly still true today. While Chan’s more recent movies have had bigger budgets and have relied much more on obvious wire work, they really haven’t improved. In fact, they’ve gotten a lot stupider. It’s not unlike a lot of martial artists. As they get older, the quality of their cinematic output declines rapidly. Chan’s last bunch of films are more than ridiculous, and he deserves better. Here you have one of the greatest action stars who has ever lived, and he's doing crap like The Tuxedo and The Spy Next Door.

‘A’ Gai Waak Juk Jaap (Project A Part 2, or more simply Project A2) is arguably Chan’s best at least according to the book, although I have a fondness for Rumble in the Bronx. The plot…well, let’s be honest here. The plot really isn’t that important. Chan plays Dragon Ma, a naval police officer who is brought in to help clean up Hong Kong. Specifically, there’s at least one dirty cop on the force, and the authorities want Ma to take him out. There are criminal gangs, evil cops, bad guys, and corruption.

There are crosses, double-crosses, and more throughout the film. The plot gets relatively complicated, especially for a Chan film. Eventually, Jackie Chan and his pals kick a lot of ass, get the bad guys, and the movie ends.

No one watches a Jackie Chan movie for the plot, because the plots tend to be pretty much the same every time. The two paragraphs above pretty much cover every Jackie Chan film ever made, after all. In terms of story, if you’ve seen one, especially during his “Jackie Chan is a cop” phase, you’ve seen them all.

The reason anyone watches Jackie Chan films is for the fights. There are a few good ones, but we sadly go a very long time without a good one. It’s the ending that we want, though. ‘A’ Gai Waak Juk Jaap is perhaps more ambitious than a lot of Chan’s other films. We go for a very long time without a good fight, and that’s the reason I watched. Ultimately, it’s a little disappointing in that there’s far too much concentration on a plot that is more convoluted than it needs to be.

I’d have really rather watched Rumble in the Bronx again, or even Shanghai Noon or Rush Hour. Okay, maybe not Shanghai Noon. It’s also a remarkably bad dub job, at least in the copy I have. It’s not so much that the dialogue is bad; it’s that the actors themselves frequently sound like they are reading the script for the first time. And, for some reason, a bunch of the people have Australian accents. I don’t want Jackie Chan to be relevant or coherent. I want him to do a bunch of crazy shit that no one else can do.

I found this film today in a used DVD store. Since it was on my list of “I can’t find them” films, I bought it. Based on that, it was a good $6 spent. Otherwise, I’ll likely only watch the kick-ass fight scenes again, skipping the middle hour or so.

Why to watch ‘A’ Gai Waak Juk Jaap: Because Jackie Chan is unique in this world.
Why not to watch: Because his movies aren’t always that good, and this one really isn’t either. Jackie deserves a better film on this list.

Chop Socky!

Films: Enter the Dragon, Shao Lin San Shi Liu Fang (The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Shaolin Master Killer)
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television (Dragon), DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop (36th Chamber)


Ask people who the greatest cinematic martial artist in history is, and you’ll get one of two answers. Here’s a hint—no one ever says Jeff Speakman or Steven Seagal. Many will say Jackie Chan, and that’s not a bad vote. Many more will say Bruce Lee, which is certainly the more popular and classic answer. Chan is far more acrobatic and comedic than Lee ever was, while Lee appears more classically trained and straightforward. Chan is all about the amazing stunts and set pieces. Give him a set of nunchaku, and he’ll battle two guys for six minutes, doing wild and crazy stuff. Give them to Lee, and he’ll beat the snot out of 50 guys in a couple of minutes with one efficient strike on each one.

Lee’s most famous film is Enter the Dragon, and with reason. It’s not only a great film, it’s had tremendous influence on martial arts films and action movies since 1973 when it was first released. We start with an opening fight between Lee (Bruce Lee) and an uncredited Sammo Hung, who gets his butt stomped in short order. A short dialogue scene tells us that Lee has progressed in the Shaolin temple to the point where his skills are more than physical. He demonstrates this by espousing his philosophy both to his master and his student.

We also learn of a man named Han (Kien Shih) who has disgraced the Shaolin temple by involving himself in the drug trade. Both the British rule in Hong Kong and the temple would like Han taken out, and Lee is the man to do it. The British are represented here by Mr. Braithwaite (Geoffrey Weeks), who gives Lee the information he needs to know about Han. It’s worth noting, since it’s unintentionally funny, that Lee really can’t say “Braithwaite.” Regardless, Lee’s cover is that Han is holding a martial arts tournament, and Lee will be going.

As Lee sails out to the junk that will take him to the island of the tournament, we learn that he’s already got a connection to Han. Han’s bodyguard, Oharra (Robert Wall), killed Lee’s sister a number of years ago. We’re also introduced along the way to our two other heroes. Roper (John Saxon) is evidently some sort of businessman. He’s also a relentless gambler, owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to the mob, and is broke. He leaves for Hong Kong as a way to get away from his problems. We also encounter Williams (Jim Kelly), who is hassled by the police as he heads off to the tournament. Evidently, Kelly’s crime is that he’s tall, black, and going to Hong Kong. The three arrive on the same boat, and we learn that Williams and Roper evidently know each other from Vietnam.

What we find on the island is a stately pleasure dome run by Han. The competitors are wined and dined in preparation for the big tournament. Williams gets bored and goes exploring, as does Lee, although Lee’s exploring is more about finding out what is going on. Han decides to bump off Williams, tries to recruit Roper, and tries to make an example of Lee, which sets us off on a massive battle royale around the island that culminates in a fight between Han and Lee set in a hall of mirrors. Once the tournament really starts, it’s ass kicking from start to finish, and that’s really what you came to this movie for, isn’t it? We’re here to watch Bruce Lee destroy people quickly, painfully, and with a purpose.

The fight scenes, really, are great. There are several exceptional ones. The first, when Lee breaks out of his room and is discovered by guards, goes on for much longer than it feels like it can, but never gets dull. It’s also the only time in screen history that both Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are on screen at the same time. Chan is one of the guards who attacks Lee; Lee grabs him, kills someone else, then kills Chan by breaking his neck.

Another is Roper’s fight against Bolo (Bolo Yeung), one of Han’s main goons. Roper devastates him repeatedly, both destroying him physically and humiliating him at the same time. Lee does the same to Oharra, a scene that culminates with some classic martial arts brutality. The great set piece, though, is the giant battle in the courtyard and the fight between Lee and Han. Like Lee’s second battle against Han’s guards, it goes on for a very long time, but remains consistently exciting, tense, and riveting.

Enter the Dragon was Lee’s last film; he died about three weeks before it was released. Much like James Dean, a huge part of Lee’s legend is that he had such a relatively short career. It’s entirely possible, likely even, that Lee’s star would have eventually faded, and like most martial artists, he’d have ended his career in low budget, direct-to-DVD releases. Hard to say. Here, he is immortalized as an ultimate, complete warrior unlike any to cross the screen before or since. If for no other reason—the martial arts tournament, the giant battle, the secret Kung Fu island—this film will live forever.


Of course martial artists have to come from somewhere. When we first meet Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, he’s already fully trained. One of the most basic, fundamental truths of the martial arts film is that the training comes from somewhere. Most martial arts films include a training sequence that takes from the novice trainee to bad ass kung fu master. No film takes that concept more seriously than The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. This movie goes by a few hundred names it seems like, and is also commonly known as Shaolin Master Killer and known in China as Shao Lin San Shi Liu Fang.

The film is broken into three main parts, with the middle being by far the longest. We start with life in a Chinese village in a part of the country that has been overtaken by the Tartars. They oppress the people mercilessly, and there are those who would like to fight back. One of them is San Ta (Gordon Liu), who is a student at a local college. He and his friends are pulled in by their teacher (Siu Tien Yeun), who enlists their support in rebellion.

Sadly, the Tartars know what’s going on. They kill off the leading rebel general, then start going through the town, killing off anyone they believe is part of the rebellion. The teacher and one of San Ta’s friends are killed. Then the Tartars start to work on families, killing off San Ta’s and his friends. They run, hoping to reach the Shaolin temple to learn Kung Fu so they can defend their people. The friend is killed, and only San Ta, wounded and in a coma at the end, makes it to the temple. He fights for his right to stay, and is allowed to train as a monk, ending the first part of the film.

In the second part, San Ta complains that he wants to learn Kung Fu, but all he does is clean things. He is told that he can train whenever he is ready. He wishes to start at the most difficult level, and he fails miserably. He then decides that he will start at the bottom and learn Kung Fu the way it should be learned. This means that he starts at the lowest ranking chamber, the 35th.

As San Ta progresses from chamber to chamber, he learns valuable and powerful lessons about how to move, how to stand, gains strength, learns to coordinate mind and body, and finally gets to learn boxing, kicks, and weapons. This sequence, starting from the 35th chamber and returning him back to the 1st takes the middle hour of the film. Yes, that’s the middle hour.

Here’s the thing: I love this stuff. While it’s arguable that San Ta progresses too rapidly and learns too quickly, and that some of the lessons seem to come too easily to him, I find these training sequences absolutely entertaining. At one point, I half feared, half hoped that we’d get to see all 35 chambers as he progressed, but even with just 5 minutes per chamber, that would take three hours. And yet, I would have watched it. I understand that for many people, this section of the film can be incredibly tedious, slow, and boring, but I am not one of those people. The only thing I was disappointed in here was that he never used the arm rings shown in the opening credits; those things are bitchin’ cool.

Once his training is done, San Ta is given the choice to control any of the 35 chambers he wants except for the top one. He instead asks to create a new lowest chamber—the 36th—to take Kung Fu to the masses to help the people outside the temple learn to defend themselves against oppression. He is denied (we are led to think) and kicked out of the temple, only allowed to return with a filled prayer book. Instead, he goes to fight the people who drove him to the temple in the first place, picking up new recruits along the way. Incidentally, he’s also credited in this film with inventing the three-section staff, which is a hard weapon to use.

I love the training stuff. I could stand more of it. If I have a complaint here, it’s that in the translation to English, the main character’s name in the version I found is San Ta. I kept wondering if, like the Wrist Chamber, the Eye Chamber, and the Leg Chamber, there would be a Toy Chamber.

No matter. For me, it all goes by too fast. I’d have preferred more of a montage here. It simply should have taken San Ta longer to reach the final chamber. It doesn’t hurt that my first teaching job was teaching self defense, so the more weapons stuff, the better in my opinion.

Why to watch Enter the Dragon: The quintessential Bruce Lee film, and massively influential on martial arts movies and action films.
Why not to watch: “Hewwo, Mistah Bwaithwaite!”

Why to watch Shao Lin San Shi Liu Fang: Training and ass kicking, ass kicking and training.
Why not to watch: There’s a temptation to say “Ho ho ho!” every time someone says “San Ta.”

Wu Du, That Voodoo That You Do So Well

Film: Wu Du (Five Deadly Venoms)
Format: VHS from personal collection on big ol’ television

















A dozen years or so ago, my first teaching job was in a martial arts school. This makes me officially a bad ass and able to kill you in more than a dozen ways in under 10 seconds. Strangely, despite my love of such things, I’m not a huge aficionado of martial arts movies. I don’t have a huge collection of Jackie Chan films, haven’t seen more than a small handful of movies starring Chuck Norris, and don’t have a shrine to Bruce Lee in my house.

However, there were exceptions, and for years I said that my favorite chop-socky film was Five Deadly Venoms, also known by its Chinese name, Wu Du, and I picked up a copy of it years ago. So it was incredibly shocking to me to discover that this film has appeared in every published version of the 1001 Movies. Evidently, even when I don’t really know anything, I still have the ability to pick out a winner.

Wu Du is unusual in the martial arts genre for its complicated plot and extensive number of excellent martial artists. See if you can follow this: An old master is dying, and he sends his young student off to the city to track down his other five students. Each of these men was trained in a martial arts style defined by a poisonous creature—centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard, and toad. Each has his own particular strengths. Evidently, the master’s friend has a large chunk of money collected by the Poison Clans (same poison creatures as above) that the five former students will want. However, the master wants the money given to a charity. So, the plucky kid, trained to some extent in all five styles, must track down the others, find the money, defeat anyone who is using his Poison Clan style for evil, and, hopefully, survive.

Now it gets complicated. We switch to the city where the kid (Sheng Chiang), almost without trying, encounters the entire clan. Two, Centipede (Feng Lu) and Snake (Pai Wei) are after the money for nefarious ends, and kill the old man and his entire family in an effort to find the money. The third, Scorpion (Chien Sun), wears a mask, and his identity remains a mystery until the end of the film. The last two, Lizard (Philip Kwok) and Toad (Meng Lo) are also teaming up to find the cash. No one really knows anyone else’s identity, but they all know that the others are in town.

Centipede is spotted leaving the murdered family’s house and is arrested by Lizard, other police, and Toad. However, the gambler who identifies the killer is bullied into identifying Toad as the real killer. Eventually, the Scorpion reveals himself, the Lizard and the kid team up and kick ass, and pretty much everybody dies.

This isn’t a movie to watch for the plot, though, because the plot can be difficult to follow, particularly with the odd dubbing in the film (it’s all I have…sue me). The real reasons to watch are the interesting martial arts battles and the even more interesting ways people are killed throughout. For instance, one person is silenced when a large hook is shoved down his throat and his esophagus ripped out. Another has a needle pushed through a nostril into his brain. My favorite, though, is a drugged prisoner is asphyxiated by covering his face with dampened cloths that eventually cut off his breathing—and no evidence of the crime! These killings aren’t carried out with the same joy of a typical martial arts film; in each case, the camera lingers a little over the fallen, and the audience is left with a feeling not of joy or righteousness, but of sorrow for the death.

The martial styles here are inventive, and there’s an entertaining montage (that is frequently recalled) at the beginning to differentiate the five. The Centipede, for instance, is blindingly fast and strikes frequently. The Snake uses a two-handed technique with one hand shaped like fangs and the other like a tail. The Scorpion concentrates on weapons and kicks, and also keeps his hands shaped like Scorpion pincers. Lizard can climb walls and defy gravity while Toad has an iron skin and can bend metal with his fists.

Most impressive here are the actual fights. There aren’t too many of them for a movie of this style, but it’s definitely quality over quantity. The choreography is excellent, and except for the Lizard and the kid standing on the walls parallel to the ground, there’s no wire work here. There are a ton of acrobatic stunts being done for real—jumps, kicks, flips, and more, and it’s the real deal.

So, while the plot is overly complex and too talky in places, this is a film that does need to be seen to be appreciated. Great Kung Fu, great fights. The acting is weird in spots, characters react bizarrely to things, and the dubbing is terrible. This film contains one of my favorite weird lines of dialogue when the kid shouts at the Lizard “Poison Clans rock the world!” Weird…but it’s true. They rock the world.

Why to watch Wu Du: Six extremely talented martial artists beating on each other.
Why not to watch: Ridiculous dialogue, bizarre reactions, and bad dubbing.