Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Bullet Ballet/ Girls With Guns
Director: Stephen Tung Wai
Year: 1995

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Fox Hunter lacks some of the usual virtues of films from the Golden Age of Hong Kong, but more than makes up for it in other ways.

Scripts in Hong Kong action films from that era were often loose and illogical, seemingly flung together during a bull session in a hostess bar. That seat of the pants attitude also extended to the action choreography, which was actually a virtue because the Hong Kong film industry was so knee deep in talented martial arts choreographers and actors who either were martial artists or who could fake it. The result was films that were sloppy dramatically but contained incredible martial arts sequences and stunts.

The exact opposite is the case with Fox Hunter. The script, by Benz Kong To-Hoi, Stephen Tung Wai, Jimmy Sin Chi-Wai, and something called the New Prima Creative Unit is razor sharp, a model of clarity and concision.

Let me give you an example. Our heroine, Jenny Yeung (Jade Leung) is introduced during the middle of a mission — she’s undercover as a hostess in order to trap a master criminal (Ching Fung). During the sequence, we flash back to her being offered the assignment. And then there’s a secondary flashback which shows her as a meter maid, handing out parking tickets. With barely a word spoken, we understand that Jenny wants desperately to be a cop who makes a difference catching bad guys, and that’s she’s hit the glass ceiling because she’s a woman. This distasteful and dangerous assignment is the only way she’ll be able to achieve her ambition. It’s damned good writing.

The action scenes, which are virtually devoid of martial arts per se, are incredibly detailed, which I attribute to the writers, some of who also did the action choreography (Benz Kong To-Hoi and Stephen Tung Wai — Poon Kin-Gwan wasn’t involved with the script). Each beat of the action scenes makes dramatic sense. It’s incredibly effective. The jeopardy is relentless and intense.

Adding to this is an unusual element for a Hong Kong action feature. Jenny isn’t the usual super cop beloved in Girls With Guns features. She’s a driven young woman who is very brave, determined, and yet inexperienced, going up against a criminal who is practically force of nature.

The writers also do a fine job of the central character relationship between Jenny and Chan Hong (Jordan Chan), a pimp who Jenny shanghais into helping her catch the villain. Chan Hong is a dreadful person, but little by little, Jenny starts to care about him and visa versa. It’s much like the mismatched partners stuff Hollywood does, but in a good way.

One way in which Fox Hunter is representative of the better Hong Kong flicks is that it has an incredible amount of energy, which I attribute to the direction of Stephen Tung, and an unusual degree of coordination between the directing, screenwriting, and action coordination departments.

I highly recommend Fox Hunter. It starts out well and just gets better as it goes along.

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One Point 0, like almost every science fiction film of the last 30 years, owes much to Blade Runner. Science continues to advance (nanotechnology), but the infrastructure continues to decay, society is more fragmented than ever, and paranoia reigns supreme.

Someone has been breaking into Simon’s (Jeremy Sisto) apartment and leaving mysterious unmarked packages which appear to be empty inside. A computer virus is going around. People in the apartment building where Simon lives are contracting mysterious illnesses. A neighbor down the hall is murdered. What does it all mean?

Indeed.

Although One Point O is maddeningly elliptical, it does eventually get to some actual ideas that don’t have to so with mere style. However, the journey you’re forced to take in order to arrive at limited content is littered with doublespeak and nonsense. Here’s a sample from a character named Howard (Lance Henriksen):

“That’s how they got me, only in baskets, and played their game, but I’ve beat ‘em. That’s how they get inside your head with their tools. They’d offer you that target audience, mass production, cheap labor, uniform quality, easy access, growth… That’s growth forever.”

No, that’s gobbledygook.

The truth is, I knew 15 minutes in that One Point O wasn’t going to be worth the slog, but at that point, I didn’t have time to watch another movie, so I stuck with it. My mistake. Don’t make it yours.

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Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Martial Arts/ Bullet Ballet/ Girls With Guns
Director: Yiu Tin-Hung
Year: 1995

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars


WORTH A LOOK

Here is yet another Oshima Yukari flick in which the actress is ill-served.

Drugs Fighters is yet another HK film pitting drug dealers against cops. The biggest novelty is that the movie takes place in the People’s Republic of China instead of Hong Kong.

The first problem you notice is that the film is episodic, moving in fits and starts instead of having an integrated plot that steadily builds. The second thing you notice is how stupid the plotting is, and we’re talking truly moronic here, because HK crime flicks are not exactly noted for their sterling logic.

For example, if you were the police, would you send two cops to apprehend at least a half dozen heavily armed drug dealers who had already repeatedly shown their willing to casually kill officers of the law? I didn’t think so.

Third, the great cast is largely wasted. We’ve got Ngai Sing, Oshima Yukari, Yuen Wah, Lam Wai, and Ken Lo on hand, but they have almost nothing to play because the characters are barely written in the script by Benny Tam. Oh, sure, Ngai Sing is charming and idiosyncratic as a traffic cop, Oshima Yukari sparkles as usual with a nothing part, and Yuen Wah, through sheer magnetism, is formidable as the big boss, but the usually reliable Lam Wai and Ken Lo are almost ciphers, which is completely not their fault.

Fourth, and this will be the deal breaker for a lot of folks, is that the martial arts and stunts, choreographed by Alan Chui, are cheated way too often. We seldom see completed movements, whether kicks or falls. That severely compromises the effectiveness of the martial arts scenes. It’s too bad because on the occasions that Chui doesn’t cheat, the martial arts and stunts are powerful. And God knows he’s got the actors to pull it off. All the principles do great work. On the other hand, Chui does a very good job with the gunplay, which is gritty, creative, and generous with the blood packs.

So, you’ve got a story that doesn’t really work, blah characters, and when the action kicks in, the excitement is throttled by too much cheating.

You can probably miss this one, unless you’re a die hard fan of the principle actors, like me.

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Country: Italy
Genre: Action
Director: Marino Girolami
Year: 1975

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars


WORTH A LOOK

Roma Violenta is an okay time waster, but not much more than that.

Screenwriter Vincenzo Mannino and director Marino Girolami maintain a quick paced, steady flow of action, but there’s a problem. We’ve seen it all before, many times over. Dirty Harry clones like Roma Violenta live and die by how creative they are. You need witty, original scenarios, and lots of over the top gratuitous violence to make these stories work. It also helps if you have juicy roles and charismatic actors to play them.

There’s little of that in Roma Violenta.

Commissario Betti (Maurizio Merli) is your typical cop who disdains civil liberties and uses violent methods, but he’s pretty tame by the standards of the genre. Mostly, he beats up suspects to get confessions or information leading to an arrest. Okay, at one point he shoots two fleeing criminals in the back, but that’s pretty weak tea, if you ask me.

One thug, known as The Nail (John Steiner), machine guns a group of children to create a diversion so he and his fellow crooks can escape. Now, that’s fun, but there should have been a dozen moments like that in Roma Violenta. Screenwriter Vincenzo Mannino parcels out the perversity parsimoniously.

Let me give an example. After a supermarket robbery, Commissario Betti uncharacteristically lets the robbers get away by using a hostage as a human shield. Later on, the robbers throw the hostage out of a moving car. That’s the right idea, but a car behind them manages to swerve to avoid the body. Wrong! The woman should have struggled to get up and then been plastered by the second car. The filmmakers just aren’t mean spirited enough.

As to charisma, Maurizio Merli doesn’t cut it. The filmmakers try to make him seem more human by having him joke around with some criminals at police headquarters, but it’s a lost cause. At one point, his character, Commissario Betti, has just witnessed a fellow cop being machine gunned in the back, and is in hot pursuit of the culprits, but by the expression on his face, Maurizio Merli might as well be thinking about office politics. It’s a non-performance.

The best moments in the film are provided by the invaluable John Steiner. In every type of world cinema, there are actors that are worth their weight in gold, that give entertainment value just by showing up. In Italian cinema, John Steiner is one of those, along with Henry Silva, Tomas Milian, and Mario Adorf. Steiner just oozes sleaze, whether he’s smiling, gunning down innocents — it doesn’t matter what he’s doing. He’s just wonderful. But when he exits the picture after a short time, the energy drains out of the picture.

It’s not exactly that Roma Violenta is bad. It’s energetic enough, I suppose. But it lacks that special kick in the pants that give the best Italian crime thrillers their oomph.

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Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Martial Arts/ Bullet Ballet
Director: To Pak-Hon
Year: 1992

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

There isn’t a whole lot to Come From China. You won’t find any great themes, cultural significance, or moving human drama. But one thing screenwriter James Fung does well is set up a situation that practically guarantees non-stop action and director To Pak-Hon and martial arts choreographer Ha Kwok-Wing make the most of it.

In the opening scene, Wan (Chin Siu-Ho) escapes from China into Hong Kong in order to reunite with his brother Master Hsin (Lam Wai). His two travel companions aren’t so lucky. But Wan’s troubles are just beginning.

Master Hsin has just finished a ten year prison sentence for armed robbery. He wants to keep his nose clean, but old colleague Little Macau (Chan Lau) is pushing Master Hsin and Master Hau (Kam Hing-Yin) to join him in another robbery. But it’s even worse than that.

Little Macau is taking the job because he owes loan shark Sir Chung (Wong Chi-Keung) a crushing debt. You see, Sir Chung happens to know that a badass Mainland gang led by Tank (Dick Wei) and his wife (Ha Chi-Jan) are about to come into a massive pay day. His bright idea is to have Little Macau and his crew steal the money from them!

You can guess how that works out.

There isn’t a whole lot of time for characterization between the plotting and action scenes, so director To Pak-Hon wisely cast his film with actors so charismatic and distinctive that 90% of the work would be done just by them showing up. Lam Wai can do the hard bitten gangster with a core of decency in his sleep. Chin Siu-Ho is charming as always. Wong Chi-Keung is a natural born scumbag. The big revelation in the cast is Ha Chi-Jan. She’s a hellion. Her ferocity reminded me of actress Pauline Wong.

The martial arts battles and gunfights don’t have the elegance of a John Woo, Ringo Lam, or Jackie Chan film, but they’re bruising and hard hitting. The hits don’t seem telegraphed, there are plenty of hard falls and hairy stunts, and action director Ha Kwok-Wing is generous with the blood packs. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that almost the entire cast can either fight or fake it.

Come From China may be a straight up no frills genre exercise, but for what it is, it’s damned good.

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Country: Japan
Genre: Action/ Drama/ Swordplay
Director: Hiroshi Inagaki
Year: 1967

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars


NOT WORTH YOUR TIME

Sasaki Kojiro tells the story of the title character’s quest to become acknowledged as the best swordsman in Japan.

The movie has beautiful vistas, fluid camerawork, and decent martial arts choreography, but that pretty much exhausts my praise.

The huge problem at the center is the character of Sasaki Kojiro himself. As written, Kojiro is vain, selfish, arrogant, and infantile. Even more insufferable, he is almost as good a swordsman as he thinks he is.

If writer/director Hiroshi Inagaki were making a cautionary tale about ambition, Sasaki Kojiro might have worked, but instead, Inagaki has somehow unaccountably decided that Kojiro is a hero. So we have scene after scene of characters devoting themselves to Kojiro, only to have Kojiro treat them like dirt. Over and over again, characters opine that Kojiro is a great man when he is fact a crass idiot, while the soundtrack swells heroically. And this goes on for two and half hours. The movie is endless.

Absolutely awful.

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Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Drama/ Art
Director: Ann Hui
Year: 2009

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

You’ve got to hand it to Ann Hui. She’s been making films since 1979 and she just keeps improving. Night And Fog is the more assured film I’ve seen her direct yet. The compositions, the camera movements, the cinematography, the music, are all first rate, as good as anything a Western director could come up with. And when you’re talking about pure drama, that’s saying something. Hong Kong is not exactly noted for its sterling dramas. Best of all are the performances Hui gets from her actors.

Simon Yam has been one of my favorite actors since I saw him steal the show in John Woo’s Bullet in the Head as a suave Eurasian assassin. Here he is playing a man who kills his wife and two young daughters. This is not a spoiler because we know that going in.

What Cheung Ging-Wai’s script does, in intimate detail, is depict how this comes about. Simon Yam’s performance is an extended symphony of agony. He’s brilliant. Just as good in a quieter role is Zhang Jing-Chu as his wife.

It’s just heartbreaking. Lee Sum (Simon Yam) is reduced to his social security check. Yeah, so what, you might be saying. Well, in Hong Kong society, men are socialized to think they can have it all: wealth, property, mistresses, and so on. There are no jobs for an aging man like Lee Sum, especially in a down economy. Sum’s son, a pimp, gives handouts to his dad. Sum’s ex-wife, impatient with Sum’s inability to land a job, henpecks him relentlessly. For a man like Sum, this is intolerable.

Sum must find a way to feel like a man. So, what does he do? He goes to the Mainland, where young women think the streets in Hong Kong are paved with gold. He can behave like a bigshot with his mistress Wong Hui-ling and her family. Sum divorces his wife, marries Hui-ling and has two daughters. But the money runs out and he can’t escape the voices in his head telling him he is a loser.

But now, Sum has at his disposal three people who are even more vulnerable than he is, who he can take his rage out on.

Director Ann Hui and screenwriter Cheung Ging-Wai tell us none of this directly. We can see it for ourselves.

What’s even more heartbreaking is that nobody else sees it. Not the clueless social service people. Not the heartless civil servants, like the cop who dismisses Hui-ling’s fears out of a combination of laziness and patriarchal privilege. Not even Hui-ling herself, who is a simple soul.

Unlike Sum, Hui-ling has no expectations in life. Life is simply life. Survival is noble enough.

Night And Fog is a rich, satisfying wallow in misery. If that’s your thing, enjoy. Just don’t expect entertainment in the usual sense.

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Country: Italy
Genre: Drama
Director: Damiano Damiani
Year: 1971

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

L’istruttoria E Chiusa Dimentchi aka The Case Is Closed: Forget About It has much in common with every other prison expose you’ve ever seen, with one exception: it’s about the Italian prison system. This makes a bigger difference than you might expect.

When people are driven mad in this movie, they go crazy in a specifically Italian way. Same goes for when someone launches into a tirade about injustice. For me, that makes L’istruttoria E Chiusa Dimentchi worthwhile.

Don’t get me wrong. The movie is well written and directed by Damiano Damiani. I enjoyed the actors, too. I’ve completely changed my mind about Franco Nero, for example. My first exposure to his work was in Poliziottesco flicks and spaghetti westerns, and he was almost always terrible, wooden as could be. But when he’s cast in straight dramas, he’s a completely different actor. Nero is intense and intelligent instead of the plastic action figure he becomes in genre flicks. Besides Nero, a number of the actors are quite enjoyable, especially the always dependable John Steiner, as a sociopathic killer who’s having the time of his life in prison.

And I’ve got to admit that writer/director Damiani delves into class and wealth more than prison pictures usually do, which is a plus in my book.

It’s just that I’ve seen variations on the ideas in L’istruttoria E Chiusa Dimentchi at least a half a dozen times. Mind you, it’s executed quite well, but still.

In a way, it’s not really fair to writer/director Damiani because L’istruttoria E Chiusa Dimentchi, which came out in 1971, had to be one of the first serious prison expose flicks, as opposed to a Warner Brothers genre prison flick.

But, as I alluded to earlier, the eccentricities of the Italian character make L’istruttoria E Chiusa Dimentchi just different enough to sustain the viewers’ interest.

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Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Martial Arts/ Drama
Director: Wu Ma
Year: 1990

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

In 1930s Shanghai, the genteel art form of “chaste” opera is already long passé, so the performances of Pops’ (Wu Ma) all female opera troupe are sparsely attended, and then only by underworld types who don’t really appreciate their artistry. These lowlifes just want to leer at the ladies and pick out one to take home with them. Chang (Lau Siu-Ming), the chief scumbag, has his eyes set on Sai Hsiao Hsuen (Lai Yin-Saan).

Attempting to save his troupe, Pops imports opera star Tsui Yen Hsieh (Kara Hui) from Beijing, whose style incorporates martial arts.

This causes resentment in the opera troupe, especially for former star Shen Yen Chiu (Ann Mui).

The first 45 minutes of Stagedoor Johnny are almost pure drama, but that’s okay. Director Wu Ma obviously has his heart in the story. He gives the proceedings an elegiac tone. One is reminded that, just as the genteel form of opera faded into memory, so has Peking opera in our lifetimes.

If that was all there was to Stagedoor Johnny, it would be enough, but there is more.

Ching, in addition to being a pig, is also dealing opium, which is forbidden in Shanghai. Rival triad leader Lu Tung Tong (Waise Lee) attempts to stop him, leading to bad blood.

Wu Ma directs beautifully. The camera glides through the sets, not in an ostentatious way, but buttressing the emotions and action at every turn. The art direction is fantastic, and appears to be budgeted at a reasonable level, unusual for Hong Kong cinema of this period. As usual, Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Group does an admirable job with the martial arts choreography and stunts.

Stage Door Johnny also has a terrific cast. There are so many wonderful performances. The standouts for me are Wu Ma as the troupe leader, Kara Hui as the opera performer from Peking, and Lau Siu-Ming as the evil triad boss, but also very strong are Lam Ching-Ying, Chung Faat, and Mars.

So, why am not giving Stagedoor Johnny five stars? The weak link is the script. Mind you, the story is excellent, the script structure is solid, and writer Chan Ka-Cheong provides us with a wealth of incident. The problem is that he doesn’t seem to be able to thread the various elements of the picture into a cohesive whole. The picture has a frustrating stop and go quality instead of building steadily in intensity. Also, the dialog isn’t always up to the standards of the rest of the picture. Chan Ka-Cheong tries to be oblique and subtle, but his dialog often comes off as vague and obscure. Who knows? Maybe the translation of the subtitles wasn’t very good. As it is, the actors have to work doubly hard to build their characters.

I also didn’t much like the ending, which seemed like overkill to me. Director Wu Ma and screenwriter Chan Ka-Cheong have already established that the art form of classical Chinese opera is on its way out. It wouldn’t have killed them to toss the audience a bone or two, like maybe a proper comeuppance for the villains.

But never mind all that. Stage Door Johnny is still well worth your time.

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Country: United States
Genre: Art
Director: Ken Russell
Year: 1988

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Salome’s Last Dance is almost but not quite a filmed play.

On Guy Fawkes Day, 1892, playwright Oscar Wilde (Nickolas Grace) is invited to a high class brothel in order to watch a production of his play Salome, which has been banned in England. He watches the play and the film ends. That’s pretty much it.

Doesn’t sound like much, but thanks to the spirited performances by Glenda Jackson, Stratford Johns, and Imogen Millais-Scott, Oscar Wilde’s wit and poetry, the rococo exuberance of director Ken Russell, and the inherent perversity of the Bible story on which it is based, Salome’s Last Dance comes across like a celebration of decadence, poetry, and art.

Without deviating substantially from his biblical source, Oscar Wilde turns the intent of the story of Salome and John The Baptist upside down, in the end humanizing the wicked Salome as an extreme example of a scorned woman.

You don’t watch Salome’s Last Dance for the plot, which moves very slowly indeed. You watch it for the theatrical performances, the visuals, the cheerful atmosphere, and the lack of moral judgement.

In these times, when anybody who isn’t a worker bee straining under the yoke of capitalistic slavery is condemned as lazy and spoiled, it’s refreshing to see such a celebration of the power of art and the capacity for empathy.

That said, this is an art film with a capital A. It is definitely not for the Friday night film crowd or for that matter, for most folks who would be interested in the majority of the films reviewed on this site.

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