In Harm’s Way: Bille August’s Co-Pro

During WWII, strong ties were forged between America and the Chinese people, thanks to the Flying Tigers, the Yankee volunteer pilots serving with the Chinese Air Force. Jack Turner is not one of them, but he is still pretty close. The Army Air pilot will complete a spectacular bombing run over Tokyo, but he crashes over Zhejiang shortly thereafter. Fortunately, a beautiful war widow and her little daughter will provide Turner shelter at great risk to themselves in Bille August’s Chinese co-production, In Harm’s Way (a.k.a. The Chinese Widow, a.k.a. The Hidden Soldier, trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

Life is a struggle for Ying, but she still dutifully supports her in-laws with the proceeds of her traditional silk-making. Unfortunately, her daughter Nunu still allows grief and anger to distract her from her school work. One day while collecting silk worms, they chance across the badly injured Turner. With the encouragement of the village headman, her husband’s boyhood friend Kai, Ying hides the pilot in her secret cellar. Not long after, the sadist Captain Shimamoto kills Kai to teach the village a lesson. It certainly clarifies the stakes for Ying—and even more so for the pouty Nunu.

Despite the language barrier, Ying and Turner quickly fall in love. He also starts to win over Nunu, which is no small feat. Fortunately, their rapport is fast and furious, because nasty old Shimamoto senses something suspicious about Ying.

August and screenwriter Greg Latter checked all the requisite boxes of a Chinese WWII movie. The Nationalists are cowardly bumblers, the Communist guerillas are the real patriots, and the Japanese are monsters from Hell. Granted, the sympathetic American is a bit of a new wrinkle, but he is really just a vehicle to establish Ying’s self-sacrificing heroism. Still, as Ying and Turner, Crystal Liu Yifei and Emile Hirsch have much stronger chemistry than the uniformly poor notices have indicated. However, the best thing going for the film is young Li Fangcong’s remarkable performance as Nunu.

The cast is not the problem here. It is Latter’s utterly predictable script, which follows a straight, orderly line, with absolutely no deviations, detours, reversals of fortune, or anything else that might build suspense. Frankly, August does next to nothing to wring tension out of Turner’s potential discovery. Even the climatic action sequence looks problematically small in scale.

Arguably, In Harm’s Way would be a pretty good TV movie, but it just doesn’t have theatrical chops. There are definitely propaganda elements, but some critics have been especially hard on it, ever since it awkwardly replaced Ann Hui’s universally hailed Our Time Will Come as the opening film of the Shanghai International Film Festival—a move widely considered to have been orchestrated by Beijing to favor August’s Party-line-towing film over Hui’s morally complex tale of intrigue involving the Hong Kong resistance.

That is not entirely fair to IHW, but Hui’s film is undeniably superior, according any rational standard. There are some nice moments here and there, but mostly IHW is just okay, which makes it a disappointment. Lukewarm and well-behaved, In Harm’s Way does not inspire much of a recommendation either way when it opens today (11/2) in LA, at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

The Four: Super Wuxia Cops

Yes, they have exotic super-powers, but they really just have massive chi.  They are members of the Divine Constabulary, tasked with fighting crime during the late Song Dynasty.  Unfortunately, their more conventional colleagues in Department Six are less than thrilled to have them as competitors.  There is also a super-villain to contend with in Gordon Chan & Janet Chun’s The Four (trailer here), which releases on DVD and BluRay today from Well Go USA.

Although based on a series of popular 1970’s novels, The Four will not escape comparison to the X-Men, especially considering the wheelchair-bound Emotionless’s Professor X-like psychic abilities.  However, she is not running the show.  The Divine Constabulary loyally follows her adoptive father, Zhuge Zhengwo, who reports directly to the Emperor. 

Emotionless guides their inquiries and Iron Hands, a flesh-and-blood Colossus, works in the field, tapping into his network of underground contacts.  He needs some back-up though, so Zhuge recruits Life Snatcher, a preternaturally spry debt-collector, and the lycanthropic Cold Blood, a former member of Department Six.  One of many characters playing a double game, Cold Blood is actually working as an inside informer for Department Six’s head, the Sheriff King.  Constable Ji Yaohua is supposed to be his back-up, but she is actually a mole planted by the evil mastermind An Shigeng (a.k.a. the God of Wealth).

The Four starts with a counterfeiting investigation, quickly escalating into a geopolitical conspiracy and eventually presents viewers an army of risen zombies.  Instead of cheap scares, the latter are employed as shambling grist for the Four’s martial arts mill.  This is definitely a kitchen sink movie, not particularly concerned about narrative detail.  At one point, An Shiqeng tells Ji: “You can spend the rest of your life trying, but you’ll never guess what I’m up to.”  Well, thanks for the warning.

Indeed, part of the charm of The Four is how wildly overstuffed it is with wuxia superhero steampunk elements.  Action director Ku Huan delivers some gravity defying smackdown spectacle, relying more on leaping and kicking than chi-fireballs.  Already the subject of several Mainland and HK television series, The Four was a couldn’t miss box office hit in China with sequels already announced.  The superstar cast did not hurt either. 

Anthony Wong does his Obiwan thing as Zhuge—and it is still kind of awesome.  [Crystal] Liu Yifei and Jiang Yiyan (who look a bit like sisters, which is a blessing for them both) burn up the screen as Emotionless and Constable Ji, knowing rivals in both the machinations afoot and for the affections of the brooding Cold Blood.  For Jiang (who made such an impression with relatively little screen time in The Bullet Vanishes), it is a real star-making turn as the ruthless yet sensitive femme fatale.

Featuring zombies, uncanny martial arts, and a wonderfully ambiguous villainess, The Four has just about everything one could ask of a big popcorn movie.  Wildly confusing fun, The Four is recommended for martial arts and superhero genre fans.  It is now available for home viewing from Well Go USA.