Category: Festivals

Veteran (베테랑, Ryoo Seung-wan, 2015)

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1439210220_베테랑1Review of Ryoo Seung-wan’s Veteran (베테랑) – first published on UK Anime Network.

One of the top Korean box office hits of 2015, Ryoo Seung-wan’s Veteran is a glorious throw back to the uncomplicated days of ‘80s buddy cop crime comedy thrillers. A little less than subtle in its social commentary, Veteran nevertheless takes aim at corrupt corporate culture and the second generation rich kids who inherit daddy’s company but are filled with an apathetic, bored arrogance that is mostly their own.

Seo Do-cheol (Hwang Jung-min) is, as one other officer puts it, the kind of police officer who joined the force just to beat people up. He loves to fight and isn’t afraid of initiating a little “resisting arrest” action just to make things run a little more smoothly. However, when he strikes up a friendship with a put upon truck driver and his cute as a button son only to miss a crucial telephone call that eventually lands said truck driver in the hospital, Do-cheol’s sense of social justice is inflamed. After trying to join a trade union, Bae, the truck driver, is unceremoniously let go from his company. On taking his complaint directly to the head of Sin Jin Trading, play boy rich kid Tae-oh, Bae is subjected to the most cruel and humiliating “interview” of his life before apparently attempting to commit suicide after having realised the utter hopelessness of his situation. Incensed on his new friend’s behalf, Do-cheol is determined to take down these arrogant corporatists what ever the costs may be!

Veteran makes no secret of its retro roots. It even opens with a joyously fun sequence set to Blondie’s 1979 disco hit, Heart of Glass. Like those classic ‘80s movies, Veteran manages to mix in a background level of mischievous comedy which adds to the overall feeling of effortless cool that fills the film even when things look as if they might be about to take a darker turn. The action sequences are each exquisitely choreographed and filled with sight gags as the fight crazy Do-cheol turns just about any random object that appears to be close to hand into an improbable weapon.

Make no mistake about it either, this is a fight heavy film. Though Veteran has a very masculine feeling, it is to some degree evened out by the supreme Miss Bong whose high class high kicks can take out even the toughest opponents and seem to have most of her teammates looking on in awe, and the withering gaze of Do-cheol’s put upon wife who seems determined to remind him that he’s not some delinquent punk anymore but a respectable police officer with a wife and child who could benefit from a little more consideration.

Indeed, Tae-oh and his henchmen aren’t above going after policemen’s wives in an effort to get them to back off. Though this initial overture begins with an attempt at straightforward bribery (brilliantly dealt with by  Mrs. Seo who proves more than a match more the arrogant lackeys), there is a hint of future violence if the situation is not resolved. Tae-oh is a spoiled, psychopathic rich kid who lacks any kind of empathy for any other living thing and actively lives to inflict pain on others in order to breathe his own superiority. Probably he’s got issues galore following in his successful father’s footsteps and essentially having not much else to do but here he’s just an evil bastard who delights in torturing poor folk and thinks he can do whatever he likes just because he has money (and as far as the film would have it he is not wrong in that assumption).

He also loves to fight and finally meets his match in the long form finale sequence in which everything is decided in a no holds barred fist fight between maverick cop and good guy Do-cheol and irredeemable but good looking villain Tae-oh. Veteran never scores any points for subtlety and if it has any drawbacks it’s that its characterisations tend to be on the large side but what it does offer is good, old fashioned (in a good way) action comedy that has you cheering for its team of bumbling yet surprisingly decent cops from the get go. Luckily it seems Veteran already has a couple of sequels in the pipeline and if they’re anywhere near as enjoyable as the first film another new classic franchise may have just been born.

Reviewed at the first London East Asia Film Festival and the London Korean Film Festival.

The Grandmaster (UK Release) (UK Anime Network Review)

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background_46481“Once upon a time in Kung Fu”? Really? “Inspired by the True Story of Bruce Lee’s Master”? Yeah, this poster tells you everything you need to know. 1000+ word rant Review of the Weinstein cut of Wong Kar Wai’s latest up at UK Anime Network.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more internationally well loved Chinese director than the achingly cool Wong Kar-wai. When it was revealed that Wong was going to tackle the story of legendary martial arts practitioner Ip Man with frequent collaborator Tony Leung along for the ride, excitement levels were obviously dangerously high and only set to rise. However, the project never quite seemed to get off the ground and, in fact, several other Ip Man movies were made in the meantime including the hugely successful series starring Donnie Yen the third of which is currently in development. The film finally found its way to the Berlin Film Festival in 2013 and received a brief cinema run in the UK last year but is only now reaching UK homes courtesy of Metrodome.

As usual with Wong who’s never quite managed to find the “save & quit” button, The Grandmaster exists in three different versions – the first being the original “Chinese cut” which runs 130 minutes, the second the “Berlin Cut” which runs 123 minutes and then there’s the “Weinstein Cut” which is 108 minutes long. If alarm bells are already ringing on hearing the name Weinstein, you are unfortunately correct – the UK release is limited to the shorter Weinstein cut. Not only is the film 18 minutes shorter than the longest version, it is an entirely different movie. Subplots have been streamlined or removed altogether, scenes have been reordered and rearranged and crucially additional voice over and explanatory title cards have been added for the “benefit” of an international audience. Seeing as few people will have the opportunity to see either of the other cuts of the film, there’s little point in explicating every last difference but suffice to say if you do have the opportunity to view the 130 minute Chinese version of the film it is a much better option than this overly accommodating “Ladybird Book” style international offering.

As for the plot of this Weinstein version, it runs more like a traditional martial arts thriller with Ip Man as the challenger who must fight various bosses to become the king of martial artists with some stuff about not kowtowing to the Japanese thrown in. The film has been “refocused” to centre more definitely on Ip Man himself as THE Grandmaster whereas the Chinese cut of the film situates him slightly to one side of things – almost an impassive observer of the chaotic events which over took Chinese society from the mid 1930s through to the early 1950s as seen through the mirror of the popularism of the kung-fu world both real and imaginary. In fact, in the Chinese  version the real story is arguably that of Zhang Ziyi’s Gong Er whose tragic life story serves as a metaphor for the dangers of a stubborn adherence to traditional values. Left with little to reflect on, this Ip Man’s story is relegated to a martial arts serial style retelling of the early adventures of the man who went on to train Bruce Lee which is both reductive and actually a little insulting.

The Chinese cut of the film is a sweeping, operatic epic rich with restrained emotions and barely suppressed personal, and implied national, tragedies. Most obviously the subtleties of the central love story between Ip Man and Gong Er are all but lost in this version as the scenes which allowed them to build up the necessarily emotional resonance have either ended up on the cutting room floor or been rearranged ruining the careful rhythms of their relationship and robbing the film of its beating heart in the process. Adding to the zombified feeling are the various title cards interspersed throughout the film which simply display a a few stage directions in an extremely ugly white font, almost like the kind you might see in the restoration of a rare film in which some reels are missing and the only way to fill in the blanks for the audience is to provide a scene synopsis for the intervening action. To put it bluntly, this is an extremely amateurish solution which both takes you out of the ongoing action of the film and adds to the feeling that one is being talked down to.

However, it isn’t all bad. The beautifully balletic fight sequences and often stunning cinematography have both made it through largely unscathed. The film has an undeniable aesthetic appeal and those action scenes are just as exciting as they are good to look at. Likewise, the central performances, though often frustrated by the problems raised by this new edit, are universally strong though it’s shame that Zhang Ziyi’s quite extraordinary work here is being unfairly disrupted by the butchering of her character arc. Coming to the film cold entirely unaware that another version exists, you may feel it’s a so so art house kung-fu movie with a bit too much talking, not enough fighting and altogether too much too much distance between the two but perhaps not find it altogether unenjoyable.

It’s a shame that the UK will likely never see the longer cut of The Grandmaster. Though apparently Wong Kar-wai worked closely with Harvey Weinstein to create a version that was more accessible to non Chinese viewers, it’s difficult to believe this extremely dumbed down approach could really be what he was looking for. After all, there is no dubbed track here – viewers opting to watch a subtitled film most likely aren’t looking for something familiar, they’ve chosen it because they’re interested enough in another culture to spend two hours exploring it. They almost certainly don’t need the kind of bald explanatory text offered here (though, really, who would?) and will most likely feel insulted at having been treated like children who need every last little thing explained in painful detail. Nevertheless, if this is the only way to see the latest film from Wong Kar-wai, there is still a fair amount to enjoy but be aware that it’s far from the true version of The Grandmaster and it may be worth your while to seek out the 130 minute Chinese cut to see Wong’s complete vision.

 

Branded to Kill (uk-anime.net review) / Masters of Cinema to release Suzuki’s Youth of the Beast

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One of my favourite films – Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill reviewed at uk-anime.net!

In the words of the bosses at Nikkatsu who chose to fire Seijun Suzuki immediately after the film was released in cinemas, Branded to Kill is ‘incomprehensible’. The same bosses then went on to add that they were stopping Suzuki’s monthly salary with immediate effect because his films never made any sense or any money and that he should probably give up being a film director because no one else was going to hire him. To be frank, it was their loss. ‘Incomprehensible’ is one way to describe the film, it’s almost fair though the plot and shooting style feel more straightforward than his previous film, the psychedelic yakuza movie Tokyo Drifter. Like Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill is the story of a tough guy killer but this time around our ‘hero’ turns out to be much less self aware.

Hanada (Joe Shishido) is one of the top hit men operating in the Tokyo underworld (though perhaps not *the* best). His latest assignment is to escort a someone across town assisted by his alcoholic hit man friend. However, they’re ambushed and his friend is killed though the client reaches his destination safely. On the way home, Hanada’s car breaks down but a pretty girl, Misako, stops to give him a lift. Completely besotted, Hanada returns home to play odd sex games with his wife all over the house whilst sucking in the smell of boiling rice from the rice cooker to put himself in the mood. Becoming more and more obsessed with Misako, he agrees to take on an impossible hit which goes wrong after a butterfly lands on his sights. Accordingly, Hanada then loses his status as one of the top guys and begins to become increasingly insistent on claiming the number one slot for himself.

As you can see, the suits at Nikkatsu may have had a point. Essentially, Branded to Kill takes a fairly standard B-movie gangland plot where multiple guys duke it out for the top spot but it adds in multiple layers of quirky humour and surreality that were definitely not part of Suzuki’s brief. The first section of the film shows you Hanada’s tough and resourceful nature as he takes down the ambushers and completes his original mission in a cool headed fashion. His subsequent assignments have him showing a little more flair whether perfectly timing his shot to fire through the opening of a giant cigarette lighter on billboard, escaping via hot air balloon, or in the famous sequence in which he assassinates an optician by firing through the drainage pipes which lead to his sink. Unfortunately though, Hanada made a serious miscalculation when he accepted Misako’s job offer – as his friend told in him in the beginning, booze and women will get you killed. Stripped of his status and now a wanted man, Hanada’s fragile grip on his identity begins to crumble leaving him at the mercy of his own desires.

Misako herself is obsessed with death. She tells Hanada on their first meeting that her dream is to die and shows him the dead black canary she has hanging from her rear view mirror. Her house is filled with taxidermy birds and black butterflies and it’s hard not to see her as a kind of death goddess, luring Hanada from his certain path of simple but precise killing to one of neurotic questioning. Hanada’s relationship with his wife, Mami, also appears quite strange as in he seems not to care very much about her. He uses her for sex (whilst ordering her to cook him up a fresh batch of rice which, it seems, is what he really wants) but then seems faintly annoyed that she exists and barely seems to care when he telephones his boss but it’s Mami that answers the phone. She appears fairly devoted to him, though intolerant of his fetish for the smell of cooking rice, and is hurt by his lack of attentiveness. During the course of the film, both women will try to kill him and both will suffer directly or indirectly at his hands. Even the strangely homoerotic relationship he develops with the mythical No.1 is fuelled by death – what is it, really, that Hanada has been looking for?

Speaking of strange relationships, as part of this set Arrow have also provided the 1973 ‘Pink film’ remake of Branded to Kill, Trapped in Lust. Following Suzuki’s departure, Nikkatsu was taken over by new management who moved more into the realms of explicit sex and violence in the hope of recapturing an audience that was deserting the cinema for TV. Known as the ‘Roman Porno’ line Nikkatsu continued to pour out a series of explicit sex films, some of which were more ‘arty’ than others. Trapped in Lust is only loosely based on Branded to Kill but its protagonist is a more of a would be hit man who blows his chances by breaking the rules but still desperately wants to be taken seriously. Though it lacks Suzuki’s directorial flare, it makes up for it with sheer weirdness. How often can you say the villain turns out to be a ventriloquist and his doll in which you’re never quite sure which one is actually in control? These sorts of films have lots of rules about what can and can’t be shown including the prohibition on visible pubic hair which might explain the marker pen like scribble at one point where, presumably, the actress’ towel fell down unexpectedly. Pure wish fulfilment, Trapped in Lust has a slightly more upbeat ending (for the protagonist at least) and is worth seeing for its total bizarreness alone but is perhaps more interesting than actually enjoyable.

After being fired by Nikkatsu Suzuki entered a lengthy tribunal process (which he eventually won) and didn’t make another film for ten years. Strange, surreal and other worldly from its more straightforward beginnings to its boxing ring show down, Branded to Kill is one of the most perfectly constructed, but totally insane, B movie extravaganzas ever created. ‘Incomprehensible’? No. Well, a little bit – but only in the best possible way. Like all of Seijun Suzuki’s movies, Branded to Kill defies description or explanation and must be seen to be believed. A genre bending classic, Branded to Kill is a true must see and perfect example of late sixties weird cinema.

 

Also, hot on the heals of Arrow’s dual format DVD/BD combo of Branded to Kill, Eureka/Masters of Cinema announced today that they’ll be releasing a dual format release of Suzuki’s earlier colour film, Youth of the Beast!

Everybody’s going Seijun Suzuki crazy which can only be a very good thing! Now someone hurry up and release the Taisho trilogy.