The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: City Hunter (1993), directed by Wong Jing

 The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: 'City Hunter (Sing Si Lip Yan)' by Jackie Chan

       Are there films from China and Hong Kong that are based on novels that I could have done? Of course, some of the most famous and successful stories of all time came from China, and they’ve been adapted to film dozens of time. Are there films from China and Hong Kong that don’t star Jackie Chan? Yes, in fact we’ve even covered some in the past Marathons. But god damn it sometimes you just want to watch Jackie Chan do wacky and incredibly dangerous stunts, which for me is every October in between 30 other movies. Also I believe this is the movie where Jackie Chan cosplays as Chun-Li from Street Fighter, and I can’t truly die until I see that. That’s not hyperbole by the way, I was actually cursed by a witch last summer who was really into martial arts movies.

       Released in 1993, City Hunter was written and directed by Wong Jing and produced by Chua Lam through Golden Harvest, Paragon Films and Golden Way Films, based on the popular manga series by Tsukasa Hojo. Jackie Chan stars as Ryu Saeba, the private detective known as City Hunter, although he seems to prefer pretty ladies and eating over solving cases. Today Ryu has been hired by newspaper magnate Mr. Imamura to find his daughter Kiyoko, who in a fit of teenage rebellion has run away from home. Simple enough, until the case moves onto the luxury liner Fuji Maru, which aside from having its maiden voyage is also being targeted by an international gang of thieves. Now Ryu not only has to recover Kiyoko, but he also has to stop a boat hijacking while trying to salvage his relationship with his assistant Kaori. All on an empty stomach! What’s a poor City Hunter to do?

       Going into this movie, my first question was ‘how are they going to make Jackie Chan suave’? I mean you look at how Hojo drew City Hunter and it gives the impression that Ryu is the smooth, Han Solo type of badass, and while I’ll always contend that Jackie Chan is cool it was always based more so on what he could do rather than how he acted. Well it turns out the answer is ‘they didn’t’. Out of all of Jackie’s films that I’ve covered on this blog, City Hunter is far and away the goofiest, with some kind of gag or joke just about every minute. If you remember Roger Rabbit and the ways Zemeckis interpreted cartoon visual gags into live action, it’s very much the same for City Hunter, whose antics feel straight out of the anime trope handbook. Perhaps even more than Roger Rabbit, which at least had the benefit of a toon environment. City Hunter has folk transforming in video game characters and getting hit with comically oversized hammers with no attempt at reconciling it with reality.

       Which I guess could be considered City Hunter’s biggest flaw, depending on your connection to the source material. Having never really read City Hunter or watched any of its numerous OVAs I have no idea if this film could be considered a loving tribute or outright parody of Hojo’s work. I can tell you that it doesn’t take itself or its story seriously; Even at the very beginning of the film where Ryu is discussing the brutal murder of his former partner the scene is done in a very slapstick manner, so there’s very little in the way of emotional weight or depth. Yet the film is written in such a way that it kind of expects you to understand the references? Is this Tim Burton’s Batman or more like The Guyver?  I dunno, the whole thing ends up feeling like a fever dream by the end, hyperactive and often horrifyingly incoherent.

       One thing that is consistent however is the action, because Chan knows his audiences. Nothing especially elaborate/bone breaking, but the level of stunt and fight choreography is still leagues above others in the field, which is only compounded by the cartoonish elements. The Street Fighter tribute is a definite highlight, but I also really loved the climax of the film with the dancing gunplay and the final fight, which is a great showcase of Chan’s agility and dexterity. The man is a living highlight reel.

       City Hunter gets the recommendation. While the overwhelming goofiness could be a turn off to some, don't really need a running gag of a dude trying to bang his cousin, it maintains the level of action quality that Golden Harvest built its legacy on, so if not acceptable it’s at least tolerable. Pair it up with Wheels on Meals for more wacky kungfu antics.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Drunken Master (1978), directed by Yuen Woo-Ping

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "8 Drunken Gods", by Chow Fu-liang

       Bruce Lee may have been the pioneer of what we know of as the martial arts genre of film, but I don’t think anyone can deny that Jackie Chan was its greatest innovator. With a style honed by the rigorous acting training he underwent as a child for the Peking Opera , a natural gift for comedy and a willingness (if not desire) to put his body through hell for the sake of the movie, Chan not only firmly established himself as one of the top dogs of Hong Kong/Chinese action cinema, he also found great success in the West as well with such films as Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon. I first discovered him as a child through the animated series Jackie Chan Adventures, one of my favorite shows back in those days, and even if didn’t match up 1 to 1 with Chan’s actual life, it did put his name in my head, and later pushed me towards his films. Bruce Lee was undoubtedly a legend, but that legend was confined to a couple films and a role in short-lived superhero show. Jackie Chan, on the other hand, WAS martial arts to me for a long time, and when I think of martial arts movies, his name is the one that immediately comes to mind. Not Bruce Lee, not Jet Li or Tony Jaa, but Jackie ‘remember that time I dressed up as Chun-Li from Street Fighter?’ Chan. So if the newly established guidelines state that we get in at least one martial arts film a year, it only makes sense that he would eventually make an appearance. A proper inauguration, if you will.

       His 37th or so film of that decade, his fourth film of 1978, and his second with director Yuen Woo-Ping (the first, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, having come out earlier that year), Drunken Master stars Jackie Chan as a young Wong Fei Hung (or Freddie Wong, depending on your dub), a real life Chinese folk hero, martial artist and acupuncturist. The son of a well-respected martial arts master, Hung is something of a lazy punk, relying on his natural talents in kung-fu to get out of the messes he finds himself in. When he finally pushes things too far his father arranges for him to be taken in by Master So-Hi for one year, in the hope that he will find discipline through training. Despite appearing like a feeble old drunk, So-Hi reveals that he is more than a match for the over-confident and rebellious Hung, possessing an incredibly bizarre and powerful kung-fu that astounds anyone who comes up against it. Hung, deathly allergic to strain or work of any kind bristles at the idea of the harsh training So-Hi, but it’s training he’ll need, as an assassin with deadly kung-fu roams the land. Can Wong Fei Hung become the Drunken Master, or will he die on his knees? You’ll have to watch to find out.

       If you’ve never seen a Jackie Chan movie before now I can’t think of a gateway film as good as Drunken Master. You’ve got the long takes of quick, intricate and acrobatic fight choreography, the use of props in said choreography, the comedic aspects, everything that defined Jackie Chan as an action star wrapped up in one movie. Not only that, but this is a Hong Kong action movie, which means they’re not selling you a sports car with nothing under the hood. You came for fights, and Drunken Master packs them in as much as they can. With weapons and without, in multiple styles, all the while Jackie Chan (in his physical prime) flips and move through space like gravity forgot his name. It’s amazing to see, almost as if Jackie and the crew are doing their very best to make sure every minute in this 2+ hour movie doesn’t go to waste. If only some of the other filmmakers in this Marathon had taken notes.

       As for cons, well as as a story there’s not to say, there’s not much of a plot or character development beyond ‘guy trains in martial arts to beat people up’. There’s also the fact that use of martial arts in this film emphasizes acrobatics and theatrics, which means it can lack the visceral energy that made The Big Boss and Enter the Dragon such great films. In terms of comedy Drunken Master has a tendency towards the childish and cartoonish at times, including fart and poop jokes, which might turn more serious minded people away. Then there’s the English dub, which has some issues beyond the trope of kung-fu movies having bad dubs. Aside from shoe-horning English names here and there, Wong Fei Hung and his dad becoming Freddie and Robert Wong for example, I just found Jackie’s voice actor rather annoying to listen to at some points. Of course Hung’s character does a lot of whining, but there’s something about the tone of it that struck my ear the wrong way. Definitely a movie you’d want to go subs not dubs for, or you could get up off your ass and learn Mandarin. I mean, unless you’re a coward or something.

       A lot of films get labeled as popcorn movies, occasionally in a derogatory, ‘turn your brain off’ manner, but Drunken Master is an example of this at its best. So much work, so much blood, sweat and tears shed all so that we can see Jackie Chain act like an idiot and beat the shit out of people with chairs and Hong Kong audiences drank it in like fine wine, Drunken Master making over twice what Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow managed to rake in. I loved it too, which is why it’s getting the unabashed full recommendation. It might not seem like Halloween fare, the only horrors here are the horrors of alcoholism, but if you need a fun break from the spooks then this should be your first stop. Drinks are on me. 

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991), directed by Lam Nai Choi

I watched this movie instead of Crocodile Dundee 2. Don't ask.

Trailer

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Appropriate Tune: "Prison Song #1", by System Of A Down

     “By 2001 A.D., capitalistic countries have privatized all government organizations. Prisons, like car parks, have become franchised businesses.”

     Quite a dystopian way to begin a movie, wouldn't you say?

     Ricky Ho Lik Wong (Fan Siu-Wong), 21 years old, has been sentenced to ten years in prison for manslaughter. We know little about him at first (because that’s how movies work) except that he is an orphan, a former music student, and mysteriously disappeared for two years prior to his arrest. A x-ray scan indicates that he he has six bullets lodged within his chest that he has refused to remove for some reason. Ricky is clearly an (androgynous) man of many mysteries, and also what looks like a slight uni-brow. We don’t judge.

     The prison, as can be gathered from the intro, is a horrible place, more a encampment for slaves than an institution for rehabilitation. It’s run by the equally-as-mysterious-as-Ricky-if-not-more-so Warden and his vice-warden Dan, a sadistic, snobbish, one-eyed, hook-handed bastard with a fondness for general dickery. Their rule is maintained by the Gang of Four, prisoners who are leaders of the four wings of the prison. There’s Oscar, the tattooed leader of the North Wing, Brandon the blond, needle throwing leader of the South, Tarzan, the burly leader of the East, and Rogan (Yukari Oshima), the leader of the West, overall leader of the Go4, and the most androgynous man in the film. For the (relatively) innocent prisoners, horrible death is commonplace, and misery is omnipresent. If only, they surely think, there were some kind of super badass martial artist around who wasn't a total dick. They could totally take out those 4 assholes and two superior assholes, and prison could be fun and exciting again! Except for the shower rape, of course.

     As it turns out, Ricky is a super badass martial artist, and he’s not a dick at all. With a mastery of the secret/ancient art of Qidong and a hatred for injustice so intense that the average superhero feels inadequate by comparison, Ricky is one man against an army of truncheons and guns and fists. The army better start writing up their wills, if you know what I'm sayin'...

     So ‘the lone martial artist fighting against injustice’ is not what you may call a unique plotline, seeing as it and ‘lone martial artist seeks revenge for the death of master/loved one’ comprise 90% of all martial arts film plots, so what is it that sets Riki-Oh apart from its peers? Gore. Riki-Oh is easily the most over-the-top violent martial arts movie that I have ever seen, and the extent to which these special effects are utilized remind me more of The Evil Dead or Re-Animator than Return of the Dragon or The Drunken Master. People don’t just get punched in the head, skulls are pounded in from the sheer impact of the fist, blades don’t just cut, they rip through flesh like a hot katana through butter, etc. Almost every single fight, hell, even physical interactions between characters is a explosion of blood and viscera just waiting to happen, and often does. Which sounds like it would get old, but Riki-Oh springs it on you in such unexpected ways, at the same building and building up the excess that you end up looking forward to how exactly folks are gonna get jacked up every time.

     It’s fun for the whole family.

     The excessive violence is obviously a part of what makes this film popular, but the part that drives it home is how stupid it is. Not bad stupid, of course, but pure undiluted camp, that lovely feeling that comes with people doing ridiculous things without a trace of self-awareness or irony. It’s what helps the violence turn from unsettling to hilariously cartoonish, because it’s being done by people who don’t see the question of physics that arise with a small Asian man that can karate chop human limbs off. Character development either doesn't exist or come out of nowhere, which doesn't really matter because the characters are so bizarre and exaggerated that it wouldn't really help things at all. Ricky’s backstory, which are presented in flashbacks, are such a model example of stupid things done seriously that it boggles the mind. The origin of the bullets in Ricky’s chest, which is given in the later half of the film, literally left me speechless in how ludicrously it was shown to us in the film. Eraserhead gave me a similar feeling of being unable to wrap my head around what I was seeing, but in that case it is intentionally being presented in a surrealist manner. Whereas here it was more like walking down the street and passing a woman who was walking a poodle, and that poodle was wearing trousers. No context, no warning, just a dog wearing pants for a split second and then it’s gone. That’s the easiest explanation I can come up with, which explains why I don’t explain things that often. Explain explain explain.

     Perhaps all this campy violence can be justified by mentioning that this is in fact a comic book movie, or a manga movie for all you Japanophiles out there. Yes, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is based on a manga by the name of Riki-Oh, created by Saruwatari Tetsuya and Masahiko Takajo and published by Shueisha in the late 80s. Although perhaps excessive by modern standards, comics about ridiculously overpowered fighters killing random bastards by the truckload in a hyper-violent fashion was actually a market in that time. Buronson’s Fist of the North Star, Hagiwara’s Bastard!!, everything about the actual story could be bonkers, as long as you had some badass fight scenes and graphic death scenes. Which I guess makes Riki-Oh accurate to the tone of the original manga, but it means that you have human beings playing crazy characters that were likely even more crazy on paper, with storylines that were likely built up for months being condensed within a 90 minute film. Which is not an uncommon thing for comic book movies, most notably previous Thunderbird entry The Crow, but is the very same reason why it’s very hard to see a good comic book movie. The Crow is, like Riki-Oh, a comic book movie that tries serious and ends up camp, but as well as from the flaws I mentioned in that entry, the direction is skewed far too much in the boring lost love subplot, and less on the crazy atmosphere and action, that it ends up evening out to a C-grade at best. Riki-Oh is an almost nonsensical train wreck that wraps right around to success, and the eventual romantic doesn't distract from the fact that you’re seeing guys getting their eyeballs knocked out of their sockets. It’s a schizophrenic gumbo that you can’t help yourself from eating, even though your brain can’t make sense of it at all.

     Yeah, I enjoyed it. If you love gore hound effects, cheesy action, grab some beer and a couple friends and spend a Friday evening with this film, and you won’t be disappointed. If you don’t have any friends, for whatever reason, you still might like this movie, but it sounds like you are probably more suited towards The Crow and leather pants. Also the music of the Smiths.

     Morrissey knows your pain, middle-class white people. Morrissey knows your pain.

Result: Recommended