The Golden Job: The Young and Dangerous Cast Gets Fast and Furious

Just imagine if Vin Diesel were betrayed by a member of his “family” in the Fast and the Furious franchise. That is about what happens to the other four sworn brothers who make up an elite free-lance team of mercenaries with vaguely criminal roots. It also happens to be a reunion of cast-members from the Young and Dangerous HK films series in its prime, but this is an entirely unrelated narrative. A heist will go down really, really wrong in Chin Ka-lok’s The Golden Job (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

After an assignment for a big pharma company ends in disaster (possibly because the plan is utterly inexplicable), the Fab Five stop sub-contracting for the man and go back to their indie roots, answering only to Cho, their “Papa” in whatever it is they do. Their first operation on their own will be a pro-bono gig, knocking over a truckload newly developed super-medicine, so their leader Lion can deliver it to Dr. Chow, the NGO doctor working in Africa he has been intermittently romancing.

The job went off without a hitch, but when they look in the back of the truck, they find gold bullion instead of medicine. Clearly, leaving the intel and logistics to Bill, the roguish corner-cutting bro, was a mistake. Lion, Calm, Crater, and Mouse all express their disappointment. Inevitably, their confrontation turns into a slam-bang gun fight that seriously wounds Papa Cho. Bill absconds with the gold, which he uses to set himself up as a crime lord in Montenegro. Alas, the rest of his brothers are left holding the bag, but we know there is no way they will leave things that way.

One thing is undeniable, Chin likes to drive fast. Golden Job is not exactly a staggering work of originality, but it aims to please with plenty of energetically staged car chases, shootouts, and multiple old school fight sequences. The action is high octane all the way, with Chin choreographing a number of neat stunts.

As Crater, Jordan Chan broods with ferocious intensity, while Michael Tseng’s Bill chews the scenery with outsider relish. Jerry Lamb’s hacker Mouse is nearly as underwritten as Charmaine Sheh’s Dr. Chow, but who cares? Ekin Chan is still quite charismatic and has mucho action chops as Lion and Calm’s specialty (as played by Chin) is getaway driving, so what more do we need? Plus, Eric Tsang tones down the shtick as Papa Cho. As a bonus, veteran Japanese character actor Yasuaki Kurata gets an unlikely action showcase as Cho’s elderly but still steely Japanese neighbor.

You need no familiarity with the Y&D films to enjoy Golden Job, but you had better enjoy old school throw-downs. It might be an angsty time of betrayal for the “brothers,” but it is a lot of fun to watch. Recommended for fans of classic HK action films, The Golden Job opens this Friday (9/28) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Asian World ’17: Mad World

It is never easy for families to deal with mental illness issues, but it is especially difficult in Hong Kong, thanks to the high population density, hyper-connected social media, and iffy social services. At least that is the grim portrait painted in one of Hong Kong’s most lauded indie films of the year. Chosen as Hong Kong’s official foreign language Oscar submission (and previously a selection of the 2017 NYAFF), Wong Chun’s Mad World (trailer here) screens during the 2017 Asian World Film Festival.

Wong Sai-tung has been somewhat stabilized, but he is really being released jut to free up his bed. His estranged father Wong Tai-hoi agrees to take custody, even though he rents a shockingly small space in a sub-divided flat. Tai-hoi accepts fully responsibility for his absentee parenting, but his late ex-wife Lui Yuen-yung is probably just as much to blame. Like Tung, she probably also wrestled with some sort of bipolar condition and most certainly suffered from dementia late in life. Tung was her primary care-giver, but she was not an easy patient to look after. In fact, she directly contributed to his breakdown.

This would be an opportunity for Tai-hoi to redeem himself, but Florence Chan’s screenplay is never so simplistic or Pollyannaish. The working-class father will try his best for his former stockbroker son, but he is ill-equipped to deal with such challenges. Regardless, Tung may very well reach a point where he does not want to be helped.

Right, we are definitely talking about some jolly fun stuff here. As if the mental health themes were not depressing enough, Wong and Chan also give viewers a good look at how the marginalized live in today’s Hong Kong. Their dorm room-like quarters make a Manhattan studio look like a palace. They also have a great deal to say about online bullying and uninformed prejudices against mental illness survivors (they’re generally opposed to both).

Reportedly, this film could not have been made without Eric Tsang’s salary concession. That was probably a good investment on his part, because he has subsequently racked up numerous awards and nominations for his portrayal of Tung’s father. This is a radical departure from the goofy comic roles he is known and even beloved for. Normally, he is such a larger than life presence, but he looks so small here. It is a quiet, acutely dignified turn, but guilt and remorse just seem to stream out of his every pore.

Likewise, Shawn Yue does some of his best work possibly ever as the profoundly damaged Tung. Again, it is not a loud, showy performance, but it resonates deeply. Charmaine Fong further piles on the emotional pain as Jenny Tam, Tung’ ex-wife who was left holding the couple’s financial bag. Her work is harrowingly intense, but the scene in which she verbally condemns Tung while testifying in an Evangelical Christian church was a tin-eared mistake Wong probably already regrets.

Mad World is often hard to watch, but that is mostly a credit to Wong and his cast. There are no easy answers or easy outs in this film. However, the real story is just how convincingly HK superstars Tsang and Yue portray such lost and broken people. Highly recommended, especially for Oscar voters, Mad World screens this Friday morning (10/27) and Saturday night (10/28) as part of the 2017 Asian World Film Festival, in Culver City.

The Adventurers: Andy Lau Steals His Way Across Europe

Evidently, French prisons are so hot at rehabilitation either. To be fair, this Hong Kong jewel thief was primed for recidivism. He was caught stealing part of the priceless “Gaia” three-piece necklace set. To find the villain who betrayed him, he will need the other two pieces. He will also commit crimes against the English language, but his French copper nemesis sounds nearly as awkward in Stephen Fung’s breezy The Adventurers (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Dan Zhang is an old school Thomas Crowne kind of jewel thief, who was planning on going straight after the big score that sent him up the river. With a few loyal accomplices and “Red” Ye, a hotshot new recruit, Zhang plans to take the other two pieces of Gaia. The first outstanding component-piece has been put up for charity auction in Paris by Tingting, a Chinese celebrity animal lover. Ironically, Red will whip up the animal rights protestors against her, over her alleged fur wardrobe, to cover-up the caper unfolding.

That will be the easy heist, even though it is in Bissette’s backyard. The hard one will be the third piece of Gaia, nestled in a vault within a castle outside Prague, owned by a nouveau riche Chinese oligarch. His security is state-of-tomorrow’s-art, but Zhang has Red. However, Bissette also has his own surprise ally, Amber Li, the art expert who authenticated the original fateful piece of Gaia, who happened to be engaged to Zhang at the time. Unaware of his true profession, she also felt slightly betrayed by the events that transpired.

Despite the fractured syntax, The Adventurers is cheerful throwback to old fashioned caper movies. Yes, there are all kinds of double- and triple-crosses going on, but it is still a genuinely low stress affair. It is all about exotic locales (Paris, Prague, Kiev), cat burglar stunts and gizmos, and a ridiculously attractive cast (Andy Lau, Shu Qi, Zhang Jingchu, You Tianyi, and probably Tony Yo-ning Yang counts too), plus bonus character actors Jean Reno and Eric Tsang.

If you enjoy watching Raffles-like characters shimmying across ledges and illuminating motion sensor-lasers, then The Adventurers is your cup of General Foods International Coffee. As Zhang, Lau has his on-screen charm cranked up to eleven. Shu Qi enjoys playing against type as the mercenary femme fatale Red, but Zhang Jingchu might actually outshine everyone as the sensitive but cerebral Li. Of course, Reno and Tsang do their thing as Det. Bissette and Zhang’s “uncle” fence, King Kong.

The Adventurers probably will not make it onto very many awards ballots, but it will be fifty times more entertaining to re-watch than Crash, American Beauty, or Titanic. It is a fun, sparkly film that goes down easy and leaves you with a desire to visit Prague with Shu Qi or Andy Lau. Recommended as pleasant “Summer Friday” matinee, The Adventurers opens this Friday (8/18) in New York, at the Regal E-Walk.

NYAFF ’17: The Village of No Return

If you have seen Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, you understand our innermost pain is what makes us human. The sinister con man masquerading as a Taoist priest would respond by offering to remove the pain of watching Star Trek V with his “Worry Ridder.” However, once you start letting someone erase the past, it inevitably leads to tyranny in Chen Yu-hsun’s goofy but still on-point satire The Village of No Return (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

During the early days of the Chinese Republic, the well-heeled Rock Peeler is hatching an evil scheme to invade and dominate sleepy Desire Village with the help of the outlaw Cloud Clan. Big Pie was supposed to be his plant in the village, but his broken-hearted wife Autumn kind of-sort of poisoned him. It’s complicated, but she has good reason to feel guilty about it. Fortune Tien can fix that.

After his grand entrance, the village’s only slightly corrupt chief has the flamboyant flim flam man imprisoned, which might be his only wise decision in the entire film. Nevertheless, the smooth-talking Tien is administering memory wipes soon enough. Of course, once he starts poking around in villagers’ heads, he gives them full scrubs, leaving them susceptible to his nefarious suggestions that he is their beloved chief and Autumn is his adoring wife.

Ironically, it is Autumn who holds out the longest, because she is reluctant to lose her memories of her long lost true love, the chief’s son, Dean Wang. He went into the city to take the Civil Service exam, but disappeared during the Republican revolution. As fate would have it, he fell in with the Cloud Clan and is now lurking outside Desire Village, waiting for the messenger pigeons Big Pie will not be releasing.

Yes, you can read into Village a subtext regarding those who forget the past and dictators who censor unpleasant history into society’s memory hole. There are also a lot of people hitting each other and falling down. There is indeed plenty of slapstick business, but unlike some shticky Mainland comedies, this Taiwanese import has other things on its mind. For one thing, the steampunky design of the Memory Ridder is undeniably cool and its implications are pretty serious. Chen & Chang Yaosheng’s screenplay goes from bumpkin bumbling to dystopian mind control in record time.

The film is also anchored by the wonderfully subtle and sly Shu Qi, who effortlessly ranges from grandly tragic to radiantly sweet and archly suspicious and then back again. Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan manages to be both nebbish and darkly brooding as village’s highly trained martial artist, who has never managed to use his skills due to an acute childhood trauma. Wang Qianyuan chews the scenery like mad as Fortune Tien, but he still can’t lay a glove on Eric Tsang, this year’s NYAFF Star Hong Kong Life Achievement Award recipient, who definitely does his thing as Rock Peeler.

There is plenty of broad humor in Village, but there is also some distinctive design work, a cautionary warning against sacrificing freedoms for the sake of comfort, and Shu Qi. What more do you need? Recommended for those who dig a wacky allegory, The Village of No Return screens tomorrow (7/2) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2017 NYAFF.

Kung Fu Yoga: Jackie Chan Goes Bollywood

It is a martial arts film deliberately crafted to support Beijing’s “One Belt, One Road” neo-Silk Road-sphere of influence policy. It is also a tomb-raiding film without tomb-raiding, Instead, world famous archaeologist “Jack Chan” risks life and limb to recover lost artifacts for the greater glory of China. In addition to physical danger and extreme elements, he must also deal with deceptions and double-crosses in Stanley Tong’s Kung Fu Yoga (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

When a highly regarded and impressively limber Indian archaeologist requests Chan’s help tracking down a treasure lost during the Journey to the West era, he can hardly say no. Along with his teaching assistants and Jianguo an old crony who specializes in remote petroleum drilling, Chan globe-trots off the China-India border, to follow the clues on an ancient map. Unbeknownst to them, the well-heeled descendant of the rebel Magadha army lies in wait to ambush Chan’s team. It was his ancestor who lost the fabulous treasure, so he intends to steal it back to restore the family honor.

However, the real treasure remains buried somewhere deeper within India. To find it, both parties will have to acquire the artifact stolen by Jones, the son of Chan’s late friend and colleague. Unfortunately, Jones has put it up for auction in Dubai, the conspicuous consumption capitol of the world.

Granted, KFY is a little wacky, but it is not a full-on goofball spectacle in the mode of Chuen Chan’s 1979 Kung Fu vs. Yoga. Arguably, the sequence in which Jack[ie] Chan pursues a car chase with a not so tame lion in the back seat of his appropriated SUV harkens back to the madcap spirit of vintage Chan movies. Tong also makes Dubai look like an absolutely horrible, nauseatingly shallow place to visit and an even worse place to live.

Chan mostly acts two-thirds his age in KFY, even checking into the hospital at one point. Aarif Rahman’s Jones displays some solid chops, carrying a disproportionate share of the martial arts load, while Eric Tsang is about as shticky as you would expect as Jianguo. Disha Patani is certainly a good sport flirting with Chan as the secret Indian princes Ashmita. However, Mu Qimiya matches and maybe exceeds her yoga flexibility and screen appeal as Chan’s assistant Nuomin.

There is a good deal of corn in KFY, but there are also a handful of gleefully outlandish action scenes, including one set in a cage full of hyenas (beasts are definitely beastly in this Chan outing). It closes with a Bollywood number which is a cliché, but it is still good, clean fun. It can get silly, but never in the way that makes loyal fans gag. Recommended as a fluffy, harmless romp, Kung Fu Yoga opens today (1/27) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Maggie Cheung at Metrograph—Comrades: Almost a Love Story

Early last year, the Mainland Communist government finally lifted its strict censorship of this ostensibly nonpolitical award-winning romantic vehicle for Maggie Cheung. The prohibition never really made sense, so it was often chalked up to Hong Kong-Mainland differences. However, it is easy to suspect the characters’ sentimental affection for Taiwanese Mandarin singer Teresa Teng, who was quite outspoken in her support for the Tiananmen Square democracy protestors, had a direct bearing on the decision. As usual, the government denied its people something good. Without question, Maggie Cheung gives a career-defining performance in Peter Chan’s Comrades: Almost a Love Story (trailer here), which screens as part of the Metrograph’s retrospective series Maggie Cheung: Center Stage.

Li Xiao-jun has come to Hong Kong from the northern provinces to earn money, so he can marry his hometown sweetheart. However, in 1986, the go-go mega-city is a hard place for a guileless Mandarin speaker. It seems a bit easier for Li Qiao, a brash, Cantonese fluent scammer from Guangzhou. Yet, life seems to be in the habit of disappointing her. Initially, she assumes she will just make a quick buck off the rube, referring him to an English tutorial school for a commission, but somehow he sticks in her life.

They start out as almost frienemies, but soon evolve into friends with benefits, which causes the engaged Xiao-jun considerable guilt (and Li Qiao as well). When Li’s intended finally joins him, Li Qiao duly befriends her. Of course, fate, timing, and chaos involving her aging Triad sugar daddy constantly conspire to keep the almost lovers separated.

You just haven’t seen bittersweet until you have seen Comrades (a term used with some irony). The pseudo-couple experiences dozens of near-misses, but Ivy Ho’s elegant screenplay never feels contrived. Frankly, that really is how the world works when you are a marginalized economic migrant. Yet, there is always something admirable about the Lis and their friends, because they are so doggedly working to better their lives.

If you have ever considered Cheung an icy screen presence, this is also the film to melt your preconceptions. She just basically rips viewers hearts out as the exponentially-more-vulnerable-than-she-lets-on Li Xiao. The chemistry she shares with Leon Lai (as Xiao-jun) is absolutely devastating. Frankly, the same can be said of her rapport with Eric Tsang as the mobbed-up Pao Au-yeung, which is another reason why the film packs such a sustained emotional wallop. For comic relief that naturally takes a melancholy turn, noted cinematographer Christopher Doyle (working solely in front of the camera) steals several scenes as Jeremy, the foul-mouthed English teacher.

The kicker is the lyrically romantic soundtrack, featuring dozens of Teresa Teng’s fan favorite love songs and the dreamily jazzy themes composed by Chiu Jun-fun and Chiu Tsang-hei. In a way, Comrades is a sweeping tale, encompassing the Chinese immigrant experience in mid-1980s Hong Kong and mid-1990s New York, but it also feels intoxicatingly hushed and intimate, thanks to Chan’s sensitive but assured hand on the helm. It is a modern classic that is almost mandatory for any Cheung retrospective (the same is probably true for Lai and Tsang). Very highly recommended, Comrades: Almost a Love Story screens this Saturday (12/18) at the Metrograph, as part of Maggie Cheung: Center Stage.

NYAFF '13: The Rooftop

That’s right, “Wax” is the word.  Named for his hair styler, Wax is a singing kung fu motorcycle gang member, who is out to win the heart of the innocent ingénue.  There will be dancing, fighting, and swooning in Jay Chou’s The Rooftop (trailer here), the closing night film of the 2013 New York Asian Film Festival (and also part of the Well Go USA spotlight), which opens theatrically in New York this Friday.

Wax and his bowling biker buds live in the Rooftop section of Galilee, under the shadow of the huge outdoor billboards.  They do not mind the scenery though.  In fact, they are rather fond of the one featuring Starling, a budding starlet and supermodel.  Wax’s three stooges, Tempura, Egg, and Broccoli refer to her as “Sister-in-Law” to needle the big smitten lug.  Everyone assumes nothing will ever come of his impossible crush until the day Wax picks up some part-time stuntman work getting the snot beat out of him on the set of her next picture.

Of course, she notices him.  As their chaste courtship heats up, William (the one-named), Starling’s mobbed-up movie star patron, contrives to sabotage their romance.  We know he is bad news because he is an associate of Red, one of Tempura’s unfriendly rent-collecting rivals working for the corrupt housing authority.  That’s right, some of the villains are Taiwanese HUD bureaucrats, albeit decidedly more flamboyant than our homegrown variety.

For his second outing in the director’s chair, pop idol and action super-star Chou channels his inner Baz Lurhmann, unleashing a kaleidoscope of colors and staging big flashy, razzle-dazzling musical numbers. Clearly, not afraid of a little sentiment, Chou indulges one big melodramatic set piece, after another.  One minute Wax and Starling are strolling through a carnival, next they are dancing in the rain, and shortly thereafter they stare into each other eyes in his quaint rooftop neighborhood as fireworks explode in the background.  It’s all good.

Chou and the radiant Li Xinai look like an attractive couple and develop some half decent romantic chemistry together.  She even does some legit acting in her own scenes. However, the crafty old HK vet Eric Tsang often steals the show as Dr. Bo, the lads’ martial arts mentor and local snake oil salesman.  Alan Ko also has his moments as Tempura, the enforcer trying to go straight.  Unfortunately, the shticky comic relief delivered by Egg and Broccoli becomes embarrassing over time.

Still, Rooftop has a few gags that will have viewers laughing in spite of themselves.  Truly, this is kitchen sink filmmaking.  Chou throws it all in, including a way over the top framing device.  Yet, Mark Lee Ping Bin, considered one of the world’s finest cinematographers for his work on films like Norwegian Wood, makes it all look bright and sparkly.  If you want spectacle, Chou has your spectacle right here.  Recommended for those who thought The Great Gatsby was too staid and did not have enough martial arts, The Rooftop officially closed this year’s NYAFF last night, but will open this Friday (7/19) in New York at the AMC Empire.