Sunday, January 19, 2025

A Legend: Propaganda on BluRay

How many film critics are in the mood to cheer for colonialists waging war on an indigenous people? That is exactly what you get with this latest fantastical historical from China, except the cultural genocide it celebrates is still going on. In one timeline, it is the Han versus the “Hun,” a.k.a. the Xiongnu people of Xinjiang and the Eastern Steppe. The other timeline features the archeological time excavating the past. Jackie Chan appears in both—sort of. The propaganda might elude dumb Westerners unfamiliar with the region, but it is ever-present in Stanley Tong’s A Legend, which releases Tuesday on VOD and BluRay.

Technically, this is the third film in Tong’s trilogy featuring Chan as archaeologist Dr. “Jack” Fang, following the fluffy
Kung Fu Yoga and the earlier, similarly blandly titled The Myth, which A Legend more greatly emulates. As in Myth, Doc Fang and his assistant Wang Jing start having dreams and visions of the Han-Xiongnu Wars, in which they were both young heroic generals for the imperialist Han. However, you might not fully realize Fang is supposed to be part of the historical action. For the flashback scenes, Chan was “de-aged” using AI, rendering him almost unrecognizable and very weird-looking. If A Legend represents the current state of Chinese AI, then America and the West are way out in front of them.

Of course, the noble generals manage to save Mengyun, a Xiongnu princess fleeing a company of fellow Xiongnu soldiers. Conveniently, she and her family pledged their loyalty to the Han conquers, which [understandably] infuriated He Boar, who also covets the princess for himself. In fact, he even killed his moderate brother and their ailing chieftain father to have her.

Apparently, these visions started with the discovery of Mengyun’s shamanic jade pendant. There definitely seems be some kind of strange time-transcending New Agey power at play. A lot of people around Fang who are also interested—maybe too interested—in a rumored cache of Xiongnu treasure.

Throughout
A Legend all Xiongnu who are not part of Mengyun’s family are demonized for their barbarity. It is also rather galling to hear to listen to Chan lecture the audience on preserving archaeological treasures when the Chinese Communist occupiers have been literally razing mosques throughout Xinjiang to ground.

Chan, when he looks like himself, mostly falls back on the kind of mugging and shtick that have made so many of his recent films so disappointing. Frankly, the best action scenes come early, during Xiongnu War sequences. Ironically, Uyghur thesp Gulnezer Bextiyar looks great during her nicely choreographed fight sequences, but she is cold and remote the rest of the time, including love scenes. Likewise, Lay Zhang Yixing is too jokey in the contemporary times and too wooden in the scenes 2,000 years prior.

It is not an exaggeration to suggest
A Legend represents an offensive attempt to justify the CCP’s systemic program to eradicate the Uyghur people and their culture. Perhaps that message was lost on its international distributors, but it is an absolute certainty that Chinese speaking audiences receive it loud and clear. Decidedly not recommended for both the message and the creepy AI, A Legend release this Tuesday (1/21) for home viewing.