He
walked the earth “like Caine from Kung Fu,” but he eventually returned
to his Wudang monastery to find peace in his later years. Unfortunately, the
violence of the outside world will give him no respite. His name is Crane, not
Caine and this time the late David Carradine was not pretending to be anything
but caucasian, but there was definitely a lot of winking and nodding going on towards
his 1970s television show. Regardless, the fight direction and production values
were definitely a cut above average in The White Crane Chronicles (a.k.a.
Kung Fu Killer parts I & II, a two-part miniseries (also considered two
be a back-door pilot that did not get a full series pick-up), which releases
this Tuesday on BluRay, from Mill Creek Entertainment.
After
Crane’s missionary parents were murdered, Myling, the grand abbess of the monastery,
took in the young white waif. Of course, he thrived under her instruction, but
felt compelled to leave, for reasons that will be partially explained in the
second installment. Regardless, his tranquil golden years hiatus will be short
lived when the soldiers and thugs hired by the Warlord Khan gun down most of
the Wudang monks and students, including Myling. Only White Crane and his
student Lang Han survive.
Despite
Myling’s dying words, Crane ventures back to 1920s Republican Shanghai in search
of vengeance, leaving Lang Han to look after the villagers who had been
protected by the Wudang monks. Once there, he quickly befriends Jane Marshall,
an American torch singer performing in the night club managed by her sort-of-lover,
Bingo Quo. Khan is her biggest fan and would be patron, but he also happens to
be holding her opium-addicted brother Peter Marshall (just try not to think of
the Hollywood Squares whenever you hear his name) captive, forcing him
to mix a particularly lethal concoction of poison gas to fuel his ambitions of Chinese
conquest and unification.
Things
will be mostly resolved at the end of part one, but Bai, a briefly seen bitter
rival from Crane’s past reappears in the concluding segment. In fact, part two
feature some of the best fight sequences, thanks to the skills and action cred
of Anya Wu, who is terrific as the villainous Bai’s chief lieutenant. The bald
and scarred Bai, as played by Lim Yu-Beng is also a worthy opponent for White
Crane.
Indeed,
there are a number of terrific fight sequences choreographed by Cai Li (whose
work includes Hero and House of Flying Daggers). He wisely
tailors the moves for Carradine, who was then in his early seventies, but still
looked relatively credible (words cannot express the superiority of White
Crane over Son of the Dragon, another Carradine miniseries filmed in
China two years earlier).
Osric
Chau and Rosalind Pho also hold up their action duties quite nicely as Lang Han
and his girlfriend Wei. Unfortunately, there is no getting around the
miscasting of Daryl Hannah, whose weak cracking voice has no business on any
night club stage. However, the all-too-short but significant appearance of
legendary Shaw Brothers martial arts star Cheng Pei-pei makes up for the
missteps.
