Chief of War, on Apple TV+

King Kamehameha I was the Garibaldi or Charlemagne of Hawaii. He unified the Islands, but he was a King, so apparently, we must remove his statue from Congress’s National Statuary Hall, because “no kings” is the new motto of the righteous, right? Regardless, Keawe-Ka’iana-a-Ahu’ula (commonly referred to as Ka’iana) was a big part of Kamehameha’s campaigns, at least until he wasn’t. Their relationship was complicated, as viewers soon glean from creators Thomas Pa’a Sibbet & Jason Momoa’s nine-episode historical drama Chief of War, which premiere today on Apple TV+.

Like Dom Toretto, “family” is everything to Ka’iana. He once served as the Chief of War for King Kahekili of Maui, but he tired of the ruler’s bloodlust, so he and his family—wife Kupuohi, brother Namaki, sister-in-law Heke, and his loyal dude—Nahi led to Kauai, where they are treated like lowly refugees. At least, they are no longer party to Kahekili’s cruelty, until the King summons them back to Maui.

Reluctantly, Ka’iana once again leads Kahekili’s army, during Maui’s time of need—except the circumstances are not exactly what the King led him to believe. Horrified by their complicity in Kahekili’s atrocities, Ka’iana’s family once again flees Maui. This time, the find shelter in the Kingdom of Hawaii (a.k.a. “The Big Island”), just as a succession battle erupts. Keoua succeeded his father as king, just as he expected. However, the late monarch willed Hawaii’s war god-idol to his nephew, Kamehameha. Essentially, that was like cleaving the Commander-in-Chief duties from the office of the President of the United States. Keoua takes it as a rebuke, which indeed it was.

As the civil war unfolds, Ka’iana’s family aligns with Kamehameha, but it will be an uneasy alliance. However, Ka’iana might not even get that far. While escaping Kahekili’s army, Ka’iana resorts to a death-defying cliff dive, after which an English trading vessel fishes him out of the ocean, on their way to the rough-and-tumble Spanish-Filipino port city of Zamboanga. Ka’iana will get quite an education there, on subjects like guns.

Time will tell how the indigenous Hawaiian community feels about the depiction of famous chiefs like Kahekili and Keoua. For those coming in without any preconceived notions, the series hums along quite briskly as a big, bold, violent historical epic, very much in the tradition of Mel Gibson’s before-scandal films.

Indeed, Chief of War represents an unusually cinematic streaming series. The Hawaiian Island backdrops look stunning and the battle scenes are spectacular. Although Sibbett, Momoa, and cowriter Doug Jung often cast Westerners in villainous roles (especially with respects to the Spanish slave trade), the series itself is much less concerned with the colonialism than the tribal warfare enveloping the islands.

Justin Chon’s Ms. Purple

Kasie looks fashionable in any clothes, even including traditional purple Korean garb. Unfortunately, abandonment issues have not worn so well on her. It is painfully obvious her mother’s desertion has made it acutely difficult for her to let go of her ailing father, but a potential reconciliation with her semi-estranged brother could help in Justin Chon’s Ms. Purple, which opens today in New York.

Sadly, Kasie’s essentially comatose father has no real quality of life left, but she still dutifully nurses him. To pay his medical bills, she works as a doumi hostess in a hedonistic Koreatown karaoke, where she is often forced to accept sex-work side gigs. When the visiting nurse abruptly quits, Kasie is forced to reach out to her brother Carey for help. Much to her surprise, he agrees.

As we see from flashbacks, Kasie was always her father’s favorite, which made their mother’s abandonment even more difficult for him. Yet, Carey tries to do right by his dying father. However, he will be even more concerned about the demeaning treatment Kasie receives, both at work and from her playboy lover, Tony.

Ms. Purple is certainly not a slam-bang kind of film. Far from plotty, it is a quiet, moody character study, with a vibe and sensibility not so very different from vintage Hou Hsiao-hsien (Millennium Mambo being a particularly apt comparison). Hou is quite the name to invoke, but Chon’s assured hand warrants the guarded comparison. However, Chon’s film has a much harder edge, especially when it comes to depicting the harsh realities of sex-related work.

Like Hou had Shu Qi in Mambo, Chon has the advantage of a luminously expressive star turn from his lead, Tiffany Chu, who is utterly arresting and absolutely devastating. The quietly understated sibling rapport she and Teddy Lee forge together is also eerily potent. From time to time, Octavio Pizano provides some relief from the melancholy atmosphere with his memorably idiosyncratic portrayal of his name-sake Octavio, a smitten former co-worker, who would probably be good for Kasie.

Ms. Purple is smaller in scale than Chon’s electric directorial debut, Gook, but it is still a worthy follow-up. The themes are more universal this time around, but Chon and co-screenwriter Chris Dinh (Crush the Skull) squarely center them in the Korean American first- and second-generation experiences. In a departure from the black-and-white of Gook, cinematography Atne Cheng dramatically saturates the colors, but in ways that complement the lonely, after-hours ambiance. Highly recommended for those who can handle some raw, straight-no-chaser sibling drama, Ms. Purple opens today (9/13) in New York, at the Quad.

Justin Chon’s Gook

This film is set during the 1992 LA Riots, but it is impossible not to hear echoes of subsequent events, such as the unjust persecution of Chinatown’s Abacus Federal Savings Bank, the selective prosecution of NYPD officer Peter Liang, and the still unsolved (and possible hate crime) assault on Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens)—provided you had heard of those news stories in the first place. In each case, it was deemed socially and politically acceptable to scapegoat or marginalize Asians. This was especially true of the grossly under-reported crimes committed against the small proprietorships owned by Koreans and other Asians in 1992. Twenty-five years later, their testimony is still often excluded from the media narrative. Drawing on his family’s own experiences, writer-director-lead actor Justin Chon tells the inspired-by-actual-events-story of two Korean American brothers who will be blindsided by violent looters in Gook (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Their father’s shoe store is slowly dying, but Eli clings to it, like he holds onto his anger. In contrast, Daniel yearns to leave the store to pursue his R&B dreams, but he is too passive to directly challenge his brother. The store also provides a direct link to eleven-year-old African American Kamilla, their mascot and surrogate little sister. Years ago, her mother was shot dead inside the store along with their father during an ill-fated hold-up attempt.

Before the Rodney King verdict is even announced, Eli receives a beating from local thugs. However, Daniel will eventually catch much worse when he is caught in the wrong neighborhood, at the wrong time. Both brothers understand the verdict is an ill omen, but they are too preoccupied with their own bickering to recognize the storm brewing, until it is too late.

Chon has screen intensity of a younger, saner Sean Penn that even shines through in comedies, like the under-seen Seoul Searching. There is a rawness and honesty to his performance that harkens back even earlier, to the work of Brando and the Angry British young men. He is always a livewire in the film, but his scenes with his real-life father Sang Chon (a former child actor, who survived the 1992 lootings as a Greater LA store-owner) crackle with electricity. Initially, Mr. Kim appears to be a cranky foil for Eli and Kamilla, but he will have wisdom to offer during the crisis.

David So nicely counterbalances Chon as Daniel. While he presents himself as a more easygoing mensch, he is really just keeps his resentments quietly bottled up. Simone Baker is also very good as Kamilla, but her character often feels more like a symbol of inclusive martyrdom, transparently modeled on a widely-reported victim of the riots.

Ante Cheng’s black-and-white cinematography is stark and spartanly powerful. Yet, it also gives the film a timeless quality that suddenly feels uncomfortably timely. There is a good reason Burkean conservatives and classical liberals distrust the masses. When large groups of people start following collective impulses, riots might break out, which could hurt friends, foes, and unsuspecting bystanders alike. Chon emphasizes the personal rather than the political, but it is clear the experiences of Korean shopkeepers like his father still hurt twenty-five years later (the scathing bluntness of the title should have been your first clue). Highly recommended, Gook opens this Friday (8/25) in New York, at the Regal Union Square.

Sundance ’15: Seoul Searching

Suppose they threw a cultural camp and a 1980s teen comedy broke out instead. Evidently, it happened quite regularly. Not so surprisingly, the sponsoring Korean government was not too amused—hence the program for children of the Korean diaspora was eventually discontinued. However, the camp will have one big horny, heartfelt last hurrah in Benson Lee’s Seoul Searching (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Prepare to get your eighties on. They are the children of Korean immigrants in America, Germany, England, and Mexico, who have assimilated more completely than their parents. In many cases, they do not even speak Korean. They have been packed off to reconnect with their Korean heritage, but they are really just there to party. Grace Park, the New Jersey pastor’s daughter, has modeled her style on Madonna. Sid Park has adopted Sid Vicious as his idol. These two might be perfect for each other, but it will take them a while to overcome a really rough start.

S. Park will bunk with Sergio, the aspiring Latin lover, and the ever so German Klaus Lee. The latter is decidedly reserved, but he will come out of his shell a little when he helps American adoptee Kris Schultz track down her biological mother. Meanwhile, military academy cadet Mike Lee wages an open war with three kids who want to be the next Run DMC. Yet, the stern Mr. Kim only seems to want to bust Sid Park’s chops.

Searching is based on writer-director Lee’s fondly remembered 1980s summer at Korea’s cultural summer camp—and you can really feel the nostalgia. Honestly, if all the Clash, Go-Gos, Erasure, and Violent Femmes tunes do not bring the decade flooding back for you, you just weren’t around back then. In terms of tone, it is four parts John Hughes and one part American Pie, but the underlying themes of generational culture clashes and the need for roots gives it greater bittersweet substance.

The entire cast is ridiculously charismatic, even when selling the grossest make-out session ever and plenty of manipulative melodrama involving Schultz and her birth-mother. Frankly, it seems like Justin Chon and Jessika Van are way due to breakout as major stars (he was terrific in the short film Jin, but might be better known for the Twilight franchise, while she made a strong impression in indie fare like Bang, Bang). They really have great chemistry in their punked out, material girl Moonlighting-esque sequences. However, Korean actress Byul Kang sort of steals the third act out from under everyone as the taekwondo tomboy Sue-jin.

Even if you weren’t at the Korean government sponsored summer camps, Lee and his cast will make you fondly remember something from your teen years. He juggles at least a dozen well defined characters and two or three times as many mood shifts. Yet, he holds the overstuffed film together and makes it work quite well. Slightly naughty but wholly endearing, Seoul Searching is recommended rather highly for all kids of the 1980s when it screens again next Saturday (1/31) in Park City and Sunday (2/1) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance.

Revenge of the Green Dragons: Infernal Flushing

The 1980s were glory days for Queens, especially 1986, unless you were working in virtual slavery to pay off the human trafficker who brought you into the borough illegally. Sonny and his adopted brother Steven will be two of the ostensibly lucky ones who are recruited by the Green Dragon street gang, but their life expectancy will be limited. Survival of the fittest comes with a code of silence in Andrew Lau & Andrew Loo’s Revenge of the Green Dragons (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Nobody has to tell Sonny life is not fair. When his mother died during the harsh passage over, the traffickers forced Steven’s mother to take him in. They never warmed to each other, but the boys became fast friends and sworn brothers. For years, they were relentlessly bullied, until a Green Dragon leader intercedes. Soon they are rising through the ranks, especially the even-keeled Sonny.

There are many Asian gangs in 1980s Queens, but the Green Dragons are the most sophisticated and badassedest. Paul Wong, their benefactor, represents the Dragons in the board room, but in the backroom, they are led by Snakehead (who is presented like she is Fu Manchu’s daughter). Wong has engineered a grand scheme that will give them a stranglehold on the Queens Heroin trade, but Steven jeopardizes the established order when he kills a white guy by mistake.

Sadly, Andrew Lau does not replicate the magic of Infernal Affairs in Queens. There is a fair amount of violence, but the film is caught betwixt and between an issue-driven immigration morality tale and a gangster thriller. Frankly, it is spectacularly tone-deaf, constantly interrupting the action with loaded video snippets of Presidents Reagan and Bush I. It is not just heavy-handed. It also confuses the narrative thread by cutting away to a Reagan speech on immigration during the early 1990s.

The FBI agent Michael Bloom is another case in point. Presumably, he represents the racist Federal government, constantly issuing dire warnings about the Asian mobs, but since he is played by Ray Liotta with his usual energy and attitude, he comes to be an audience favorite, since he at least relieves the boredom. Indeed, even though the film wears its immigration heart on its sleeve, it is hard to envision many viewers walking out of a screening convinced we need a “pathway to citizenship” after watching the Green Dragons racketeering, raping, and murdering with abandon.

It is a shame Green Dragons wastes a likable lead like Justin Chon. Some will know him from the Twilight franchise, but AAIFF patrons will recognize him from festival fare like Innocent Blood and the excellent short Jin. He develops some finely wrought chemistry with Shuya Chang’s Tina, the daughter of a former HK celebrity now beholden to Wong’s patronage. Unfortunately, the film cuts them off just as they are getting started. It also completely wastes Eugenia Yuan (Cheng Pei-pei’s daughter) as Snakehead.

Admittedly, Lau and Loo turn a heck of a twist down the stretch, but it feels like it takes much longer than the film’s ninety-some minutes to get there. Despite some nice performances, it is an awkward mishmash that is too heavy on message and too light on fun. Disappointingly not recommended, The Revenge of the Green Dragons opens tomorrow (10/24) in New York at the Village East.