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| Johnny Hallyday. |
Election (Johnny To, 2005): Every marathon inevitably has a clunker and
Election was ours.
Election is a fairly typical and rote crime film chronicling the election (!) of a new triad president in Hong Kong. The election is between professional, cool headed Lok, and the more thuggish, angry Big D. When Lok is fairly elected, Big D tries to stop him from obtaining the "dragon baton" which symbolizes his power. Various acts of violence ensue: bludgeoning, shootings, stabbings, and, most disturbingly, rolling people in cardboard boxes down huge hills. Both actors Simon Yam and Tony Leung Ka-fai (sadly a different Tony Leung than the much admired star of the first half of our marathon) are fairly charismatic, and the supporting cast is fairly colorful, but none of the characters leave much of an impression.
Election isn't exciting enough to be an action film and not intriguing enough to be a crime film. The ending is a shocker though! If only more of the movie had been like that unforgettable and frankly stomach turning scene.
Vengeance (Johnny To, 2009): Unlike Johnny To's earlier film,
Vengeance was one of the highlights of the marathon for me. Again, the story starts out fairly typically: a family is brutally murdered in their home, including two young children. The wife and mother, a French citizen, survives and is visited by her father, a chef, in the hospital. She asks him to get revenge for her, and we get the feeling that Francis Costello (a nod to Alain Delon's character in
Le Samourai, as is the trench coat they both sport) is more than just a chef. Johnny Hallyady (an aging and terrifying looking French pop icon) is spectacular as Costello; angry, yet completely in control, he methodically hires a trio of hit men to help him track down the killers. The revelation that Costello has had a bullet in his brain for the last twenty years that affect his memory is a little clunky. He goes from being a little forgetful to essentially a child in a matter of minutes. This may be To's only misstep in the film. The cinematography by Cheng Siu-Keung is crispy and beautiful, and the set pieces including a crazy fight in a garbage dump are nail biters. Whereas in
Election, the henchman were indistinguishable, in
Vengeance the three hitmen who become Costello's partner each give nuanced, individual performances. We grow to love each of them and their ultimate fates mean something; in so many violent films, people die in terrible ways but it means nothing. In this film every taking of a life is meaningful, as To shows us that all of these hitmen have people waiting at home for them, even the ones that killed Costello's family. The message of most revenge thrillers is that revenge is ultimately pointless and doesn't change anything, but it is elegantly expressed (if a bit heavy handed; if you can't remember you got revenge, does it even matter?) with a deft hand by To. I expected a silly action movie and found something much deeper. The surprise of the marathon for me.
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| This is the face he makes the whole movie. |
Ip Man (Wilson Yip, 2008):
Ip Man is a gear shift movie, one that starts out a certain way that makes the viewer think they know exactly where it is going and ends up in a completely different place. A biopic of kung fu master, Ip Man (Donnie Yen, very zen and completely serviceable, if not a bit boring and one note throughout), this film starts out positively silly. The island of Foshan is an idealized place where everyone seems wealthy, the sun is always shining, and all they have to do is practice kung fu and challenge each other to good natured sparring. The biggest conflict (if that is really the word) is when a group of rogue kung fu mercenaries come and try to beat up all the masters of Fosham's numerous schools. The conflict is resolved when Ip beats the head mercenary in a fight in Ip's elaborate mansion wherein Ip's wife scolds him not to fight at home and his adorable son rides around on a tricycle telling him that "Mommy is going to be mad!". If it sounds silly, it is, supremely. I was laughing hysterically and my marathon mates were looking at me like I was crazy. The dialogue was clunky and silly and the characters were one dimensional at best. The movie takes a quick turn about halfway in when the island becomes occupied by the invading Japanese army and Ip loses everything. The film becomes a fight for survival as Ip almost inadvertently and then deliberately joins a fighting ring organized by the Japanese General (although life and death is now at stake the second half does seem intent on proving all the ways kung fu is better than karate). The film still has clunky dialogue and adds a sniveling, evil henchmen, but the actors are sincere and director Wilson Yip handles the change fairly well. The story ends exactly as you think it will with Ip the hero, but it was also a lot more nuanced than I expected from the first half hour. Gordon Lam, who was also in
Vengeance, is solid as a former Foshan police man, Lee Chiu, who becomes a translator for the Japanese. Perhaps the only fleshed out character, Lam portrays Lee Chiu as an unpopular stick in the mud who transforms from collaborator to patriot seamlessly. Unlike many of the films we watched, this was clearly a big budget crowd pleaser and, like so many Hollywood films, used the clichés and tropes we come to expect from them in an ultimately affective way.
Julie
