Chinatown Video releases for January 2000
Weasel Alert: I occasionally do a bit
of work for Chinatown Video. This month I wrote the back cover blurb and liner notes for
the rental release of A Man Called Hero.
A MAN CALLED HERO (1999) Rated M.
Rental.
This is the highly-anticipated second fantasy feature from Andrew Lau and
Manfred Wong's BoB production company. Their first effort at comic book
fantasy The Storm Riders broke box office records in 1998 and signalled a new
direction for Hong Kong swordplay: a head-on collision with CGI effects.
However, anticipating a Storm Riders 2 is the wrong way to prepare yourself
for A Man Called Hero. For instance, the first real fight doesn't occur until
about 20 minutes into the film, and the first CGI setpiece clocks in just shy of the one
hour mark. Instead, Lau and co. choose to spend their time building up
the characters and their saga.
The story is split across two time zones. In 1913, Hero (Ekin Cheng)
commits a murder in China, and is forced to flee to America, leaving behind his fiancee
Jade (Kristy Yeung). Sixteen years later, his son Sword (Nic Tse)
follows in the footsteps of the father he has never met. The story follows Sword as he
visits all of Hero's old haunts in New York, meeting people who knew his father. Piece by
piece he assembles the puzzle that was the life of the man called Hero...
The film is based on a long-running comic book, and as such it tries to pack in more
than one movie's worth of characters. This is a shadow-fantasy version of our world, where
the streets of New York are walked by incognito swordsmen, renegade monks and natty ninjas
in full military dress. In comic saga style, all of these characters wander in and out of
the plot, and not all loose ends are tied up - there's room for several more stories, and
key conflicts are still unresolved at the end of the film's admittedly long two hours. In
this respect, it fails as a screenplay, but I was happy to see things left open-ended. One
plot point in particular is entirely left with the viewer to work out.
As an emigration story, the film takes a simplistic Yankee-bad Chinese-good approach.
Frankly, this didn't bother me; but what really bothered me was the point about 5
minutes before the end where you can almost hear the director turn to the screenwriter and
say "Hey, there are no good white guys in this film! Write one in!" Bam, the
Mayor of New York is dumped into the fray with so little setup that you'd almost swear
he'd been airdropped in. He delivers a God Bless America speech of such profound crapness
that the film nearly dies right there and then. Luckily, the CGI fight scene that follows
snatches it back from the brink, and sends it out with a bang.
There are fewer CGI scenes than The Storm Riders, but each is a standout. An
alley attack by Japanese ninjas is a thrilling fusion of digital effects, live action and
comic styling, and the film's final duel atop the Statue of Liberty scores big on pure
chutzpah, particularly when the combatants do a Venus de Milo on the old girl.
In summary then, A Man Called Hero is slower paced than Storm Riders,
with more time invested on the characters. If you bear this in mind and relax and
let the story unfold, you're in for a long and pleasant trip. And when the CGI mayhem does
finally arrive, the hatred that fuels it makes it that much more meaningful.
ALL ABOUT AH LONG (1989) Rental.
This superior drama from director Johnnie To sees Chow Yun Fat
and Sylvia Chang as estranged parents fighting over custody of
the son that he has raised alone. The film is yet more proof that Yun Fat does
not need two guns to prove that he can act, although there is a bit of motorcycle racing
thrown in for good measure.
