Project A

Project A might as well be the quintessential Jackie Chan movie. The film, which he wrote and directed, is filled with all the things that would come to characterise his movies - death-defying stunts, fast-paced action scenes and slapstick physical humour. It might feel a little bit dated in terms of technical filmmaking and some weird cultural quirks appear, but otherwise this is something of an early landmark film in Chan’s career, where he formed his own style of filmmaking that would come to characterise the films he would go on to make.   

 

Jackie Chan plays Dragon Ma, a sergeant in Hong Kong’s coast guard in the 1800s. The coast guard has a strong rivalry with the police force, as while the police keep the streets safe, the coast guard are unable to handle the violent band of pirates which constantly attacks British ships across the South China Sea.

When the coast guard’s ships are destroyed, leaving the large force ineffective, Ma and his team are forced to become police officers, training under his law enforcement rival Officer Hong (Yuen Biao). But apparent corruption in the police force linked to the pirates causes Ma to leave the force and take justice into his own hands. Teaming up with an opportunistic troublemaker named Fei (Sammo Hung), Ma becomes determined to bring the pirates and criminals to justice.

It’s a pretty simple plot that’s more of an excuse for the series of action/stunt/comedic set pieces that are spread throughout the film.

 

The stunts and action set pieces are really great fun, and back then set the bar for what was expected from Jackie Chan action flicks. The fights in this film, compared to earlier Chan action flicks like ‘Young Master’ and ‘Drunken Master’, are far more free and ‘adaptive’. Instead of the stiff sort of combat older chop-socky films employed, Project A shows off the sort of Jackie Chan action he would be come to known for. His fight scenes have him against groups of opponents, where he takes them on simultaneously, alternatively attacking and fleeing, and using a lot of weapons and objects. Chan swings from chandeliers, flips over chairs and throws bottles and pots during the action.

The action isn’t solely made up of fight scenes. Chase sequences and assorted hijinks ensue. One set piece has Chan and his pursuers on bicycles, riding through narrow streets. It’s a lot of fun, leading to some amusing stunts. This main antagonist, San-Po, gives a great final fight, with the combined forces of Chan, Hung and Biao being needed to take him down (though they do cheat and sort of kill him horribly).     

Project A also has one of the quintessential Jackie Chan stunts, the clock tower fall. Chan hangs from the hands of a clock tower face and falls, passing through two awnings, before hitting the ground. Apparently Chan was too afraid of letting go of the clock hand, so he ordered his film crew to continue to film him as he held on as long as he could before his arms got tired and he slipped off. And when he wasn’t happy with the first take, he did it again. And then again. Chan was determined to get his stunts right, even when they were causing him substantial physical pain.

 

 

Dragon Ma is the quintessential Chan character – righteous, well-meaning, often jokey and sometimes foolish (often prone to accidents). It’s a role he plays a lot, in titles like Armour of God, Police Story (and even in his American films like Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon).

If Dragon Ma is the quintessential Chan role, then Fei is the quintessential Sammo Hung role. Sammo Hung is a Chinese actor/martial artist/choreographer and a contemporary of Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao (they trained together as children in the same performance troupe and largely dominated Hong Kong’s action film scene in the eighties and have worked on many of films together – Biao also co-stars in Project A as Inspector Hong). Hung mostly played cheeky, sometimes goofy troublemaker roles (though in his older age he now seems to exclusively play gangsters), and his role as Fei is no different.

This is a personal opinion of mine, but I feel that if Hung made a similar breakout in America around the time that Chan did he could possibly have seen a somewhat similar Western popularity. While he didn’t do the ridiculously dangerous stunts that Chan is famous for, his action choreography is exceptionally solid and his boisterous and cheeky personality is quite funny (though, once again, he has traded that out in his older age).

Yuen Biao, as mentioned before, is a contemporary of Chan and Hung, offering a more acrobatic athleticism. His role as Inspector Hong is, oddly, far different to the sorts of roles he usually played. He tended to play enthusiastic underdog characters (as in The Prodigal Son and Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain), but his role as Inspector Hong is strangely stoic, though he gets his fair share of action. 

 

One issue is the fairly loose and lax plotting, with the moving sometimes feeling a bit aimless and long. While there is a story there, it’s not particularly important, more of an excuse to stage the various action and comedy set pieces throughout the film. The coast guard’s training to become police officers aspect of the plot seems to solely exist for the ten minutes of largely physical comedy and hijinks that makes up their training. The conflict with the pirates doesn’t really come into play that much, while most of the film is a loose collection of slapstick encounters and chase scenes. 

Chinese humour is weird. I feel I say some variation of this in every Asian movie I look at, but from a western perspective the humour used is strange. Often the jokes are of the groan-worthy kind or weirdly childish and bizarrely telegraphed. During a bar brawl one guy announces his plan to throw a plate of spaghetti at his opponent. He ends up face-planting into the spaghetti himself because of course he does. A lot of these earlier Hong Kong action flicks have the same sort of weird humour, so I can’t exactly blame Project A too much, but I still feel it’s odd.

 

Project A is a fun movie with entertaining action and stunts. More importantly, it’s a movie that perfectly encapsulates its main star and the shape of the Hong Kong action movie scene at the time. It’s definitely worth watching (and its sequel too), especially if you’re a fan of Jackie Chan, though if you haven’t been exposed to old Hong Kong action films before it may seem a little strange.  

The Host

The Host is a really good Korean creature feature. It adds in so much more than your everyday monster movie, and is ultimately a really strong film for it. It also seems to break from most of the creature feature conventions. You see the creature clearly, in full daylight, going on a rampage within the first fifteen minutes. The focus is on a small family, but the characters are interesting and the acting is good so you actually care about them. The Host is memorable and entertaining, and worth watching.

Lazy simpleton Gang-du works at a riverside food stall in Seoul with his elderly father. He’s an often absent-minded buffoon of sorts, prone to sleeping on the job and who only perks up and shows care and enthusiasm towards his schoolgirl daughter Hyun-seo. His sister is a competitive archer and his brother is an unemployed college graduate/alcoholic/political activist.

One day a creature comes out of the Han River and goes on a bloody rampage, killing dozens of people. Gang-du attempts to fight it off and flee with Hyun-seo, but in the panic and confusion she is taken by the monster as it retreats back into the river. Military forces immediately lock down the city, evacuate the citizens and close off the area while quarantining anybody who remotely came in contact with the creature due to their fears of it possibly spreading a deadly virus. Gang-du and his family are taken to a military hospital where they grieve, but in the middle of the night he receives a brief, panicked phone call from Hyun-seo, still alive and in the creature’s lair, Gang-du and his family must then work together to escape the quarantine, evade the military and rescue Hyun-seo before the creature kills her.

The quarantine aspect of the movie really gives it a different feeling. There are roadblocks, there are armed soldiers, there are doctors in containment suits, there are trucks driving along the river releasing decontaminating steam to ward off the possible virus. As such the riverside and sewers feel abandoned, which makes sense considering. It really feels like what a government/military reaction to the sudden appearance of a monster would be like. The film ventures into the labyrinthine sewers under Seoul (shot there for real), which are surprisingly atmospheric. They’re large, grey mazes of cold, angular architecture and are a pretty interesting locale for a horror movie.

The creature in this feature is an interesting one, a sort of mutant tadpole/frog thing. It’s not as large as many other monster movie monsters (it’s a little larger than a van), but it’s surprisingly agile and versatile, being amphibious and sporting a prehensile tail. It swallows people whole and then vomits out their bones in a grossly awesome bit of monster detail. It looks pretty great all things considered. While the CGI is a bit dated (the film was made back in 2006) the design is still really interesting and unique.

There’s an occasional streak of gallows humour thrown in to add some levity to situations that continue to get increasingly desperate and grim. It’s a pretty good mix all things considered, though as it continues to the end the humour largely vanishes. It’s occasionally a more serious and sombre monster movie than most, and the focus on a single family is surprisingly effective.

 

The acting is quite good, which is something that is usually lacking in monster movies. Monster movies usually fill the non-monster segments of the film with dull characters doing nothing interesting. The Host, more than anything, is about Gang-du’s family and focuses on them. And it really works; the family dynamic is interesting, and they have enough quirks to be interesting. Each family member also has their part to play. You actually end up caring for their plight. It works because they ~ cares a lot about his daughter – she’s his whole world. His desperation and determination, borne from an otherwise simple and lazy individual, really works well. Actor Song Kang-ho is great as Gang-du. He’s a mainstay in a lot of great Korean movies, also starring in ‘Sympathy for Mr Vengeance’, ‘The Good, The Bad, The Weird’ and ‘Thirst’, and he does good work here.
A big ongoing theme in the film is failure, particularly with Gang-du and his siblings. His sister is an excellent archer, but loses competitions as she hesitates. His brother is another sort of failure – an unemployed college graduate/alcoholic and political activist. His father feels guilty for his son’s usual laziness. As the film goes on, they step up and take charge, but sometimes mistakes are still made – that’s just life. Military and government incompetence is a big theme in the movie, with the various soldiers, government officials and scientists being ineffectual and uncaring. Gang-du and his family are constantly hindered by incompetent officials and uncaring doctors.

It’s a well-made film from a technical standpoint. It’s a good looking movie, shot well with a good colour scheme that really sells the atmosphere. Likewise the sound design is excellent, with the instrumental them being particularly noteworthy.

The Host is a good movie and well worth watching. I don’t really know how to elaborate on that.

Suicide Club

It sucks. The premise is interesting at least, seemingly offering a creepy mystery, but then the movie chooses not to make proper use of it. Instead you have an oddly paced, disappointingly sombre and dull J-horror offering that frustrates as it constantly threatens to become interesting but never makes it there. The characters are dull and lifeless, meaning you never care either way. The initially creepy atmosphere is dragged out and then starts to turn outright silly while the movie continues to take itself stone cold seriously. It also never leads anywhere, just plodding along until it eventually stops.

Director Sion Sono is a weird guy. I’ve reviewed a film of his before, the ridiculous ‘Why Don’t You Play in Hell’, and I also enjoyed the oddness of his four hour epic ‘Love Selection’. But I really couldn’t get into ‘Suicide Club’. I just didn’t enjoy it.

Fifty cheerful Japanese schoolgirls commit mass suicide by throwing themselves in front of a moving subway train, causing widespread panic and a sudden suicide epidemic across the country. Left at the scene, and at every other scene of such significance, is a bloodied bag containing a rolled up length of stitched-together human skin taken from the victims before their deaths.

A mysterious website which keeps a tally of the suicides by gender (though the tally increases before the suicides), small children who start calling the police and giving them cryptic warnings and a violent glam rocker/cult leader named Genesis all seem linked to the ‘Suicide Club’. Seemingly connected to all of this is the cheerful pop band ‘Dessart’. The bewildered police, a hacker named the Bat and a schoolgirl all get caught up in the mystery behind the suicides.

Now all of this sounds interesting, but never manages to actually be interesting. It’s never given adequate treatment, most of it being odd sort of details that don’t add anything. It’s all sort of a dull mess, with every new revelation fizzling out as the movie refuses to delve deeper.

The movie’s pacing is also off. After the gory opening subway scene, there’s an oddly prolonged, entirely unrelated scene in a hospital that attempts to build atmosphere but just slows the movie down suddenly. And it continues like this for most of the movie actually – there’ll be an interesting, intriguing scene that’ll push the story forward, followed by a long sequence of nothing important (usually leading up to a suicide). The slow building atmosphere doesn’t do much, especially towards the end when things get downright silly. But the movie refuses to budge from its squalid pace, dragging on in this fashion, getting weirder (but never interesting) as it trudges on to a non-ending that doesn’t satisfy.

It’s really hard to care about what’s going on, as we aren’t given any characters worth caring about. None of them have any depth, and they only get given occasional focus. The movie spends much more time showing slow burn scenes of people randomly killing themselves. The few main characters mostly don’t have anything going on (especially the schoolgirl), and most of them kill themselves anyway. I guess one could argue that, thematically, it’s about the real-life unexplained high suicide rate in Japan, but that feels like a copout.  

It’s never as interesting or entertaining as its premise threatens to be. Part of the reason is the really dull and serious tone it takes, even when ridiculous things are happening. Genesis hangs out in an abandoned bowling alley with large sacks full of writhing animals and girls he and his gang routinely murder. Yet it’s never creepy or ridiculous enough to be entertaining. The cryptic children talk in nonsense riddles and speech, doing nothing more than being clichés, and a lot of the supposedly ‘chilling’ imagery is nonsense.

                                         

It’s often downright silly (everything about Genesis), but it takes itself so seriously there’s no fun to be had. It’s too silly to take seriously, and too serious to be fun. It just sort of exists in that vague middle space. The effects all look ridiculously fake, with CGI nonsense for most of the explosive gore, and large sprays of fake blood gushing around in the bigger scenes. The filmmaking is also quite simple for the most part, almost made-for-TV at times (everything in the hospital could pass for something shot for a TV drama).

At the end, like most J-Horror, the mystery goes largely unresolved. The best J-Horror has always had a vein of ambiguity and mystery, where not everything is explained. But while this works in adding to the creepiness of many J-horror classics, like The Ring or The Grudge, here it just ends things unsatisfactorily. The movie just sort of finishes at that point, with most of the characters dead, the mystery continuing and the audience feeling apathy. It doesn’t even have a final scare, it just ends vaguely.

                                              

Suicide Club isn’t worth it. It has an interesting premise that it never capitalises on, being a disappointing, meandering slog of nonsense and frustration as good ideas go squandered. Don't bother. If you want a creepy J horror movie that’s actually good, there are plenty of better titles to check out, like the Ring, the Grudge, One Missed Call and the Eye (all of which have received American remakes btw).  

Wild Zero

What the hell can one say about Wild Zero? Depth and substance are mostly abandoned in favour of explosive style, overwhelming coolness and extreme loudness. Wild Zero doesn’t give a fuck about what you think, it just does whatever the hell it wants to. Rock and Roll? Hell yeah! Zombies and aliens? Sure, why not! Guitar Wolf angrily sculls a beer a few times for no reason, some guy’s head explodes just because and the main villain runs around in his underwear. Jets of fire come out of motorcycles, microphones and just about everything, there are about two dozen explosions, most of them random, some zombies can talk and one guy starts shooting lasers out of his eyes. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why.

It’s loud, it’s ridiculous and it’s sort of all just about J-Rock band Guitar Wolf looking cool. But that’s perfectly fine. The sheer energy this film has is overwhelming and infectious. Wild Zero is a really fun movie.

 

Ace is the Number 1 Super Fan of J-Rock band Guitar Wolf. He follows them when they’re playing in seedy clubs and is determined to become a rock and roll superstar to rival them. When he accidentally aids them in a violent standoff with a deranged club manager named Captain, he becomes blood brothers with Guitar Wolf, who gives him a whistle to blow (which might be magic) if he’s ever in need of help.

Meanwhile, a meteorite shower in the desert (caused by aliens) has caused an outbreak of zombies that are slowly spreading towards Asahi city in Japan. Ace falls in love with Tobio, a gas station clerk who isn’t what she seems, after accidentally foiling a robbery attempt. As the zombie onslaught gets into full swing, Ace needs Guitar Wolf’s help to fight the zombies, rescue the girl (?) and save the day. He blows the fabled whistle and Guitar Wolf comes to help out, while also being hunted by the psychotic Captain, determined to get revenge. 

The enigmatic Guitar Wolf, with his bandmates Drum Wolf and Bass Wolf (who look exactly the same), are portrayed as wandering badasses. They never take their sunglasses off, aren’t phased at all by zombies, aliens or danger and are always cool regardless of the situation. Guitar Wolf himself is some sort of awesome badass of ultimate coolness. He yells and howls all the time, rides a kickass motorcycle (in the shape of a wolf), constantly drinks (there are like three scenes of just him drinking a beer), kills zombies by throwing guitar picks ninja-style and eventually pulls a sword out of his guitar. He also has a weirdly strong commitment to helping Ace, despite only meeting him once (though his ‘help’ seems to consist solely of finding him). At one point Guitar Wolf jumps from an exploding building, strums his guitar in mid-air, lands perfectly and then instantly tunes it as though nothing had happened. It’s that sort of movie.

‘There are no boundaries in Rock and Roll!’ yells Guitar Wolf at one point. It’s one of many such Rock and Roll based pronouncements he makes in the movie. There are a few scenes just of Guitar Wolf (the band) playing songs (often with silly electric special effect shooting out of their guitars, and flames out of their microphones). Their music is comprised entirely of loudness, reverb and yelling – all of which fits with the rest of the movie. This is, all things considered, their movie.

 

Ace is a likeable idiot whose enthusiasm for rock and roll is all-encompassing. Unlike most characters from zombie movies, he actually has something of a character arc and an internal conflict he has to get over (So what if the love of your life turns out to be a shemale? Be courageous and save her! Rock and Roll is love and life!). He constantly sees images of Guitar Wolf egging him on throughout the movie, yelling about Rock and Roll. In fact the words ‘Rock and Roll!’ get yelled out constantly.

Captain, the main villain, has a ridiculous wig and wanders around in his underwear discharging a shotgun constantly. He actually removes his pants expressly so he can go hunt down Guitar Wolf. Eventually he starts to fire lasers out of his eyes, just because it looks cool. All this weirdness makes up for the fact that he lacks any sort of characterisation other than ‘crazy weirdo’.

Other characters include a bickering couple who eventually find true love (as zombies), their somewhat psychotic (and useless) would-be-robber friend and a super angry arms dealer (who gives the movie its brief glimpse of female nudity). One again none of these characters have much characterisation, pretty much being given a single personality aspect and that’s it.

 

Wild Zero is a loud and dirty movie, and this extends to the plotting, directing, effects and cinematography as well. The movie has its issues, but ultimately you probably won’t notice or mind them. Wild Zero is like an explosive music video that goes all out, pumping you full of adrenaline and not giving a damn about the consequences.

At the time of release (1999) there hadn’t been too many Asian zombie flicks, so the zombie make-up is actually pretty good for the time. They have green skin and sallow eye sockets, and look a bit decayed. They act zombie-like and eat a few people, but to be honest they’re not much of a threat in the movie. The zombies are more of a detail than the focus. Same with the flying saucers. Cheesy effects abound. The flying saucers looks super fake to a ridiculous degree. While most gore is prop work, every head explosion (there’re actually quite a lot) is silly looking CGI. The explosions are fun though.

The plot, despite all of the nonsense going on, is really thin and most characters don’t have anything to do with the overall story. In particular Ace’s story with Tobio is completely separate from Guitar Wolf dealing with the zombies, aliens and Captain. Ace himself doesn’t really do much at all, and many of the smaller side characters don’t feature into anything. At times the movie is just a bunch of cool things happening, mostly involving Guitar Wolf. Many scenes with Captain also seem out of place with the rest of the film, particularly the opening which involves drugs and a woman being beaten, and at one point they have a purposefully dull pop idol-wannabe sing a really crappy song for no reason. A lot of the movie has characters either stranded somewhere or returning to the same few locations (everybody keeps going to the gas station).

With so much noise and energy, it’s bound to let up at some point. And it does, with Tobio. Tobio is a bit of a weak point in the movie, not having much to say or do and being more of a plot device than a character. Ace’s character arc and plot with her slows things down a little, particularly towards the end, and his scenes eventually all tend to be about her. Once again, Ace and Tobio don’t actually do much at all in the bigger scheme of things. That being said, these segments do give a little bit of a breather.

From a technical viewpoint the movie isn’t the best. Underneath all the style is competent filmmaking, but it’s not the best looking movie. It’s all style and no substance. It's often quite dark. There are a few inconsistencies and mistakes throughout. The camera crew have a real problem with reflections – in a few scenes you can actually see the camera, and even some of the film crew, reflected in mirrors and windows. In one scene ravenous zombies are trying to get through a large factory sliding door, which has a gap you can see under. Once it’s closed, underneath you can see the feet of the zombie actors who immediately stop being zombies and start walking off. These errors are incredibly minor though, and most probably won’t notice them under the high-octane craziness.

One warning - the Eastern Eye DVD at times can look very pixelated on a large television (though that might just be my copy).

 

‘Love has no boundaries, nationalities or gender’. That’s the ultimate ‘message’ of the film, which is really strange if you think about it. Underneath all the explosions, zombies and rock and roll is a message about love and acceptance. Of course this gets sort of sidelined and overwhelmed by all the explosions, zombies and rock and roll, but that’s all part of its charm.

Wild Zero is crazy fun, where sound and fury explode on the screen.

Magnificent Bodyguards

 

An early Jackie Chan chop-socky flick made at the tail-end of the seventies. While the movie is, for pretty much all intents and purposes, just a footnote in its lead actor’s career, I really like it. It’s fun, it’s goofy (though perhaps unintentionally so) and the action, while as traditional as can be, is entertaining.

Jackie Chan plays Ting, a famous fighter known to have the fastest punches in the land. He’s hired by the wealthy Lady Nan as a bodyguard to help transport her ill brother across the dreaded Stormy Mountain, a place filled with roving bands of violent bandits, led by the notorious Lord Chu. To aid him in his quest, Ting enlists the help of two others, a deaf tailor with powerful kicks named Chang and Master Tsang, a notorious gangster who rips people’s faces off. Together they trek across the Stormy Mountain, wary of Lord Chu’s forces, which include angry bandits and evil shaolin monks.

Jackie Chan, asides from his acrobatic kung-fu skills, is pretty unrecognisable to the action superstar he’ll become (though that might be because of his ridiculous hairstyle). This is early, pre-explosive-popularity Chan, so instead of the usual somewhat-goofy-but-can-kick-your-ass Chan we get confident asshole Chan. Ting has no qualms in outright insulting people he thinks are weaker than he is. It’s fun seeing him in an early role like this, but – interestingly enough – Chan doesn’t steal the movie. While he’s the main character, he doesn’t overshadow anyone else and isn’t constantly the centre of attention. Many of Chan’s movies, especially his duds, traded solely on his presence, but this pre-fame Chan film succeeds independent of him, though he does help thanks to his energy.

                                                                Note Jackie Chan's glorious hair

Master Tsang might as well be a villain. He’s a dude who goes around ripping people’s faces off for fuck’s sake. He harasses thieves by demanding that they pay tribute otherwise he’ll skin them and only joins Ting after he promises him a bunch of money. Within a minute of screen time he cuts a guy’s arms off and then rips off his face, and then for the rest of the movies all he does is talk about skinning people. 

This movie is, at times, surprisingly violent. A lot of the early chop-socky flicks were, often with characters spitting up blood, but Magnificent Bodyguards takes you off guard suddenly. Basically any action scene involving Tsang will end with somebody’s face getting torn off. Doesn’t matter if it’s a woman either, the dude just likes tearing faces off. The action scenes are all that old sort of choreography, with punches, kicks, flips and a rather large variety of weaponry being used. It’s all pretty fun, especially when the weapons start coming out (towards the end deaf Chang pulls out some knives and kicks serious ass, making one question why he never did it earlier). There's also some hilarious nonsense thrown in, like a scene where Jackie Chan is karate chopping snakes that are flying at him.

                                                 This is apparently the correct stance for battling snakes

The movie is also really weird. There’s a dramatic song partway through with lyrics that just describe who the characters are and what they happen to be doing at that moment (walking through a forest). In a few scenes they actuallt use music stolen from Star Wars. At the end they bizarrely do a Scooby Doo styled mask-pulling reveal of the villain that’s completely ridiculous in every way, which is preceded by a twist that’s equally stupid. There’s also a streak of that odd sort of sometimes out-of-place Chinese humour that pops up every now and then, usually in direct contrast to something violent or serious happening. The aforementioned scene of Master Tsang severing both a guy’s arms and ripping his face off (I keep bringing it up because it’s so suddenly brutal) is immediately followed with light-hearted quips at the expense of the dead guy. It’s weird, but not as brutally out-of-place as other similar films from the same time (Iron-Fisted Monk goes from a surprisingly horrific rape scene to some goofy hijinks in a brothel without batting an eyelid).

It was an early 3D movie (the first Hong Kong movie filmed in 3-D apparently), which means that there are a lot of scenes of people punching, kicking or thrusting weapons at the camera (and snakes, lots of snake lunging at the camera). It’s often quite funny, such as watching Jackie Chan suddenly turn to the camera mid-fight to unleash a flurry of punches at you.

A lot of the old chop-socky flicks ended the same way, with a freeze-frame and the words ‘The End’ appearing the second the main villain is defeated. There’d be no epilogue and whatever story threads there were left went completely unanswered. Magnificent Bodyguards does this too, but also jumps the gun, ending with a freeze frame before the heroes deliver the finishing blow. It’s a bit disappointing, but a sign of the time I guess, not that there would have been much of an epilogue (by the end anybody who was even remotely evil dies horribly).

                                 Master Tsang seems a bit obsessed with skinning people

Magnificent Bodyguards is a highly entertaining, though pretty standard old-school kung-fu flick that’s elevated by its weirdness. I can’t say that it’s the best of its kind, but it’s a massive amount of fun.

The inexplicable 'Dragon from Russia'

 

What the fuck is happening? Who the hell is this guy? What happened to that other guy? Is that the same chick from before? Wait, what was all that about? I don’t understand any of this.

Those were just a few of the thoughts passing through my mind as I watched Dragon from Russia, a Chinese action flick that is so damn confusing I almost couldn’t handle it. It’s a rash mess of abrupt editing, rapid action and obtuseness that is difficult to follow. It’s often almost impossible to comprehend, moving at a breakneck pace without regard to sense or reason. Inexplicable is a good way to describe it.

So there’s this group of assassins called the 800 Dragons. Their leader, the deformed Dragon Master, is pissed off because one of his disciples, Kishudo, has gone rouge and has been training his own group of assassins. He’s also run off with a book that lists the identities of all the 800 Dragons and their various abilities.

The Dragon Master comes up with a weird plan – he kidnaps and brainwashes a street performer named Yao to become his new protégé with the express purpose of hunting down Kishudo and killing him. The plan works pretty well as Yao – his memory forgotten (through acupuncture) – is super-loyal and pretty good at murdering dudes. There’s only one rule he has to follow – if anybody sees him during an assassination, he has to kill them.

Predictably, he gets seen by his former girlfriend May, who has spent years trying to find him after his kidnapping. When Yao goes to kill her, she sparks his memory and he becomes determined to protect her and regain his old life back. But the 800 Dragons find out and become determined to kill May and get Yao back. Also there’s this weird thing going on with the Yakuza that might be important, maybe?

Due to the rapid editing and the constant rush the movie seems to be in, events come and go forgotten and ignored with minimal impact. Rival assassin Kishudo barely figures into the plot after the opening, a fair few characters just outright disappear and are never mentioned again, and the Dragon Master goes missing for a massive chunk of the film. The editing is the biggest problem. It makes massive, sudden cuts all the time with no explanation. Sometimes freaking years or months pass in an instant with no warning. Edits are rapid, constant and sudden, often abruptly switching from scene to scene with no context or explanation in between. For example, one character is shot twice and is seemingly dead, but then the next scene they’re perfectly healthy and fine as though nothing happened.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of, many of whom look very similar to each other. There’s a whole bunch of them that wear masks or hide their faces so it’s impossible to tell who is who. Most characters (particularly the women) constantly change clothes and hairstyles, so they look completely different between scenes. There is one character in particular who I am completely confused as to who they were meant to be. There also seems to be a whole bunch of side plots going on involving minor characters that have nothing to do with anything. There’s some nonsense romance between a Yakuza lady and her subordinate (who might be a police detective?) that’s completely out of place with everything else and doesn’t go anywhere. They even have a totally serious sex scene despite neither character being important or featuring into the main plot at all.

The tone is so freaking inconsistent it’s astounding, flitting uselessly from serious, to goofy, to overly dramatic, to sickly saccharine – you can never get a proper handle on anything. It starts out ridiculous, pulls back to somewhat serious, then flits between goofy to dramatic to retarded at will. Every scene with May is played seriously, while the Dragon Master comes across as goofy (despite being the main villain), and that weird business involving the Yakuza feels like it’s from a different movie entirely.

It’s a profoundly stupid movie with ridiculous inconsistencies. Brainwashed Yao is meant to kill anybody who sees him on assassinations, but he constantly gets seen by dozens of people. All his assassinations (shown in a montage) are in public, in broad daylight, with dozens of spectators. Why he only goes after May is nothing more than story-telling coincidence. Another inconsistency is the locations; characters seem able to travel from central Russia to the 800 Dragon’s forest lair in China within an hour or so.

Now the abrupt and confusing nature of the film could be excused if the action was great. It isn’t. It’s actually pretty standard stuff as far as this sort of movie goes, but it’s given odd, and sometimes lazy, attention. Most scenes have characters either throwing daggers and knives or flipping through the air constantly - sometimes they're doing both at the same time. Most action scenes are sped up which, coupled with the rapid editing, makes it seem like the movie is being fast forwarded. You can visibly see the wires used when characters flip through the air, and stuntmen have obviously different physiques and hair than their originals.

Sometimes the action is somewhat realistic and consistent, but then in most scenes assassin characters are flying through the air, catching daggers with their ponytails. A ridiculous car chase scene has bullets flying everywhere and more explosions than one would think necessary. The weird inconsistencies are here as well – some scenes have characters throwing ninja stars and daggers, but you never see where they go or what they were being thrown at.

The editing issues are here in full force. Sometimes it will suddenly cut to another take of the same action or stunt. So if Yao flips over a table to kick somebody, it’ll instantly show another, different take of him flipping over the same table and kicking the same person. It’s almost as though they couldn’t choose which version they wanted to use so they used both. Whether it was a stylistic choice or not is beyond me, but the effect is baffling and often confusing.

In the end Dragon from Russia exists as an odd sort of exercise in absurdity, showcasing the dangers of poor editing. Things happen so suddenly it’s ridiculous, the entire movie acting as a sort of rollercoaster that doesn't care if you fall off at some point. There are many better movies of this sort out there, and the vast majority make fare more sense than this does.

The Blob (1988)

There are countless remakes of classic horror movies, and most of them are garbage. Mostly made for a quick buck to capitalise on the popularity of a known franchise, remakes and reboots of horror films tend to turn out badly. They rely on nostalgia, offering very little in terms of improvement, originality or quality. The remakes of Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween, for example, were torturous garbage that lacked in just about every aspect. 

Good remakes are possible though. Sometimes a new coat of paint can lend itself well to a remake, such as Evil Dead’s remake or Amityville Horror. The Blob is one such remake. It takes the general idea from the original film and plays with it, both updating it for new audiences and being more creative with the details. It doesn’t change the world or shake things up as much as some of the great remakes (like John Carpenter’s The Thing or David Cronenberg’s The Fly) but it excels where many remakes fail by being highly entertaining.

The plot is simple. A meteorite lands in the woods just outside of a small American town, unleashing the blob. At first a small gelatinous mass, the blob consumes people and grows in size, making its way through town and consuming everyone that crosses paths with it. Two teens, Brian and Megan, are the first to realise the danger and try to warn others and survive. Things are further complicated with the appearance of shady military men wearing biohazard suits and brandishing machine guns lurking in the woods, who quickly quarantine the town.  The plot isn’t particularly important for this sort of film, but it gets the job done right. The characters themselves are pretty ordinary, but that's fine since you're here for the Blob, and you really do get what you came for. 

The Blob is gory as fuck. That’s one major improvement over the original I’m all for. The blob doesn’t just engulf you, it digests you, melting through flesh and bone and dissolving everything it swallows. This leads to some impressively gruesome imagery. Limbs fall off, faces are melted, bodies are torn apart – this is an expertly gory film that doesn’t skimp on the nastiness. The blob itself is aggressive as hell, furiously assaulting fleeing survivors so it can ingest them. It has a measure of intelligence and malleability, capable of stretching out in tentacles to reach through drains and vents. While the effects are really good for the most part, some choppy effects work does shows up as the blob increases in size. While the smaller versions were brought to life with fantastic prop-work, the larger ones tend to involve CGI trickery which doesn’t look particularly convincing.

This is a very pulpy movie that isn’t afraid to have fun with the ridiculousness of it all. An explanation is given for the blob that’s just as silly as you’d expect it to be. Pulpy and silly are two words that really sum up the movie, and make it a really fun time. That being said, sometimes the silliness lends itself to unintentional humour. When people show up dead with their bodies melted and their arms severed, the police instantly arrest town delinquent Brian, seemingly because he rides a motorcycle and doesn’t obey the rules. The military try to stop the Blob by shooting at it with handguns (despite already knowing that bullets and explosions don’t work).

The only real problems I have with the film are in the smaller details. The main issue I have is that, for the first two thirds of the film at least, the town feels oddly empty. The streets are bare, the buildings are empty and the town feels deserted at times. While this might be because the focus on Brian and Megan takes us to places where other people aren’t necessarily around (like back alleys, the woods, the sewer), it still feels odd that it takes so long for anybody to realise the blob is killing people on the streets, or that the military has quarantined the entire town. This all changes for the finale, with dozens of people on the street fleeing in terror, but for most of the movie there doesn’t seem to be all that many people around. Another complaint is that the movie also ends on a really odd note, not keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie.

The Blob remake is a really fun time, easily improving on the original through sheer spectacle and thrills. It has some impressive gore, some decent effects work and is genuinely the best movie about a giant gelatinous blob you could hope for.