Cold War 2: Chow Yun-fat Joins the Franchise

Given the size of its budget and the scope of the operations it conducts, there will always be ambitious people eager to serve as the Hong Kong Police Department’s Commissioner. However, the intricate network of senior-junior relationships makes it tricky to govern. Former Deputy Commissioner M.B. Lee thought he was the man for the job, until his son was arrested for betraying the force, ushering the old man into early retirement. That would seem to be that, but as long as Lee has the Old Boys network and a mysterious scheming patron, he has hope in Longman Leung & Sunny Luk’s Cold War 2 (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Cold War 1 ended with some conspicuous loose threads, including the hijacked emergency response van that remains missing, but the threatening call Commissioner Sean Lau Kit-fai receives would be the most pressing. It turns out there is a reason Joe Lee looks so smug in his prison cell. His accomplices have kidnapped Lau’s wife.

Since he is not a stickler for procedure, Lau is perfectly willing to drag Lee junior to the hand-off. The Commish has no intention of trading him for his wife, but that is how things shake out, with Lau handcuffed to a ticking bomb for extra added embarrassment. Obviously, the operation is an unsanctioned disaster, which turns the legislature into a pack of baying hounds. They are led by the curmudgeonly civil libertarian-ish Oswald Kan. The councilor will not pull his punches with Lau, but he is not a fan of the vested interests Lee represents either.

Although Lee did his duty and arrested his own son, he will turn on Lau during the hearings. Apparently, that was all part of the plan. Lee was not initially privy to the details of the conspiracy, but the high placed government figures backing his son will make him an offer he cannot refuse. Thus begins a three-handed intrigue, as Team Lau and Team Kan work at cross-purposes while trying to investigate Team Lee.

There is more closure in Cold War 2, but it definitely suggests this story has at least another chapter to unfold. The HK box office is sure to support a third installment, but assembling the big name cast again will be a challenge. Obviously, the biggest addition is Chow Yun-fat radiating gravitas as Kan. It follows in the tradition of Chairman of the Board role in Office, but it is arguably informed by Chow’s support for the Umbrella Movement’s student protestors. (When democracy opponents suggested he might be hurting his commercial appeal, Chow replied he’d simply make less money in that case, which is reason enough to go to CW2).

Aaron Kwok’s Lau is as smooth and steely as ever, while “Big Tony” Leung Ka-fai is still massively intense as the combustible M.B. Lee. Now that Eastwood primarily directs, Leung just might be the best squinter and glowerer working in film today. He and Eddie Peng Yuyan really do look like father and son in their brief scenes together. Peng continues to prove he has more chops than his early teen romances suggested. Unfortunately, Charlie Young’s deputy commissioner for PR gets dramatically short-changed this time around, but at least Janice Man gets a serious arc to work with as Kan’s protégé, Au Wing-yan.

There are several big, explosive action sequences in CW2, but Leung & Luk always use them in ways that advance the narrative. It certainly looks like they left plenty of odds and ends to be picked up later, but they steadily ratchet up the tension quite effectively. Altogether, it is a big, slick police thriller, very much in the Hong Kong action tradition. Enthusiastically recommended, Cold War 2 opens this Friday (7/8) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Shanghai: Gong Li Lights Up the Foreign Concessions

We tend to forget Japan fought with the Allies in WWI. Afterward, British and American interests were just as determined to exploit the Foreign Concession system as their Japanese counterparts. Yet, Shanghai’s complicated and contradictory multinational governance made it one of only two completely open safe harbors for Jewish refugees during the so-called “Solitary Island” period. Obviously, the city is the perfect place to conduct espionage. Unfortunately, one of America’s best agents has just been murdered, but his friend and colleague intends is out to find the killer and make him pay in Mikael Håfström’s Shanghai (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select theaters.

Paul Soames has assumed the cover of a National Socialist-sympathizing journalist, but he is really a democracy and freedom loving Naval Intelligence officer. However, his friend Conner was the true idealist. Yet, his prescient warnings about National Socialist and Imperial Japanese aggression were routinely ignored. Soames soon deduces Conner seduced Sumiko, the opium-addicted mistress of Tanaka, the police captain of the Japanese Concession and more importantly the local intelligence chief. Now suspiciously missing, Tanaka is turning the city inside out looking for her.

Soames’ search for Sumiko brings him into the orbit of gentleman gangster Anthony Lan-Ting and his society wife Anna. Lan-Ting has accepted an alliance with the Japanese for the sake of business, but his wife has secretly risen through the ranks of the resistance. Soames ingratiates himself with both Lan-Tings when he saves Anthony from an attack on Japanese officers organized by his wife, but executed without the surgical precision she had expected. She genuinely loves Lan-Ting, but like the wife of the local German military contractor, she finds Soames jolly fun to flirt with. Yet, as Tanaka cranks up the pressure, the attraction shared by her and Soames becomes more seriously ambiguous.

If you watch Shanghai soon after Zhang Yimou’s Coming Home, you will be astonished by Gong Li’s range. While she just rips viewers’ hearts out as the achingly tragic mother in Zhang’s literary masterwork, she plays Håfström’s noir heroine with all the va-va-voom you could ever hope for. She makes the screen smolder, even opposite a little twerp like John Cusack. Yet, she also compellingly projects the inner turmoil of a woman whose loyalties are divided between her husband and her country. It is a big, juicy, psychologically complex role, but Gong has the skills to pull it off.

Cusack just is not right for a Rick Blaine-ish romantic role, but fortunately, his gee whiz, fish-out-of-water persona works well enough for most of his solo scenes navigating the various intrigues. Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Conner with characteristic intensity in his flashbacks (too bad he wasn’t the one paired up with Gong), but the ever-reliable David Morse is grossly under-employed as Soames’ embassy contact.

Of course, Gong owns the film, but Ken Watanabe basically walks away with every scene she is not in. He is hardly another Captain Renault, but he is no Maj. Strasser either. Watanabe rather keeps us guessing, humanizing Tanaka, while playing his extremes to the hilt. Strangely, Chow Yun-fat is the one most conspicuously short-changed for screen time, but you can rectify that by watching The Last Tycoon, a natural companion film that focuses on a similar gangster-turned reluctant patriot. Unfortunately, Rinko Kikuchi is just squandered as the seldom seen Sumiko.

Attentive eyes will also spot future-star-in-the-making Andy On as one of Anna Lan-Ting’s comrades-in-arms. His appearances are brief, but his screen presence and action chops still come through loud-and-clear. Also look for Benedict Wong, who is quite good in the small but significant role of Juso Kita, Soames’ informer.

Håfström shifts gears from big historical set pieces to noir intimacy relatively adroitly. Hossein Amini’s screenplay intelligently incorporates the circumstances of the Foreign Concessions, as well as the events leading up to Pearl Harbor. Although he is clearly riffing on Casablanca, he wisely avoids paralleling the Bogart classic beat-for-beat. As a result, it all works quite well, in a pleasingly old fashioned kind of way.

Frankly, it is rather baffling why Shanghai’s release has been so long-deferred. In the intervening time, On’s star has risen, but Cusack’s has fallen, yet Gong remains on top of her game. She is more than enough reason to see Shanghai, along with Julie Weiss’s elegant costuming, Watanabe’s slyly villainous turn, and an unusual deep and accomplished supporting cast (blink and you miss Downton’s Hugh Bonneville). Recommended for fans of historical espionage thrillers, Shanghai opens this Friday (10/2) in key markets.

Johnnie To’s Office

It is the corporate headquarters of Jones & Sunn, a large Mainland financial services conglomerate, but it looks like it exists in the world of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Never has the white collar workplace been so surreal, yet so uncomfortably credible in a Bloomberg bullpen kind of way. The impending IPO represents a heck of a payday for everyone, if by everyone you mean the charismatic chairman and his not so secret lover, the CEO, but Lehman Brothers complicates everything in Johnnie To’s musical adaptation of Sylvia Chang’s zeitgeisty play, Office (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, after premiering at this year’s TIFF.

Yes, Johnnie To has made a movie musical—and why not? It is one more cinematic peak he summited. The music is not bad, but the design is simply extraordinary. Note there is no article before this Office. It is a strictly serious, high stakes environment. Ambitious junior managers like Sophie understand they have to move up or out, but there is not a lot of room above her. She has the ambiguous “support” of VP David Wang, who in turn is the “favorite” of CEO Winnie Chang. She is a somewhat scandalous figure for openly carrying on with the chairman, Ho Chung-ping while his wife remains in a persistent coma.

Into this thorny nest of office politics come two fresh-faced management trainees. Li Xiang is a guileless go-getter, who somewhat charms Chang in spite of herself. Yet, the mysterious Kat probably has the inside track being the chairman’s daughter, working under an assumed name to avoid improper appearances. Frankly though, nepotism will be the least of everyone’s worries.

At the risk of excessive repetition, it should be emphasized just how incredible designer William Chang’s sets look. They brilliantly blend the austerity of postmodernism with the expressionism of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Sylvia’s Chang’s narrative is unusually complex, but it is nice to see a film refrain from dumbing down the content. Of course, some themes are universal, like the corporate equivalent of the aging diva and naïve ingénue struggling to hold onto their piece of the pie. However, her source play resonated with Chinese audiences newly coming to terms with the salaryman blues in ways that will feel familiar to American viewers. Welcome to the party, its spectacular, isn’t it?

In all honesty, the tunes are just okay, but Eason Chan demonstrates major vocal chops as David Wang. On the other hand, Tang Wei looks like she just wants to get through her numbers as quickly as possible, but in all other respects, her work as Sophie is sensitively rendered and deeply affecting. Still, Sylvia Chang clearly saved the prime cuts for herself, digging into Winnie Chang’s Joan Crawfordness with relish we can all share. She also develops some charmingly undefinable chemistry with Wang Ziyi’s Li Xiang. It is also cool to watch Chow Yun-fat strut his stuff as the chairman of the board, because that is basically what he is to Hong Kong cinema.

When Johnnie To does a musical, you have to see it. It sounds fine, but Tang, Sylvia Chang, and William Chang’s eye-popping corporate HQ give the audience plenty to watch. Recommended for To faithful ready for his next departure and fans of the all-star cast, Office opens this Friday (9/18) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

HK Cinema at SFFS ’14: From Vegas to Macau

Chow Yun-fat is one of the biggest Hong Kong movie stars ever, especially when he plays a gambler. His latest Mr. Lucky character is quite a team player, assisting the Hong Kong, Chinese, and Macanese police take down an international money launderer. However, it might suddenly become difficult to watch on the Mainland following Chow’s statement of support for Hong Kong’s intrepid pro-democracy protestors. Even if he is banned in Chinese cinemas, Chow is an icon of HK cinema, perhaps even more so now. Fittingly, his latest gambling romp, Wong Jing’s From Vegas to Macau (trailer here), opens the San Francisco Film Society’s annual Hong Kong Cinema film series.

“Magic Hands” Ken is a reportedly unbeatable gambler and former Vegas casino security expert who has just made a splashy return to Macau. He invites his old crony Benz, the patriarch of a family of conmen, to his lavish birthday partner. Sparks soon fly between Ken’s daughter Rainbow and Benz’s son cool, despite nephew Karl’s awkward attempts at seduction.

Unfortunately, Benz’s undercover cop stepson Lionel’s cover is about to be blown. He was investigating the shadowy Mr. Ko, whose henchmen are now looking for the evidence he furtively recorded. That will bring them into conflict with Benz’s family and Magic Hands, in due turn. Naturally, he prefers to handle such matters alone, but he will start to coordinate somewhat with Lionel’s Chinese colleague, Det. Luo Xin, for obvious reasons.

In FVTM, Chow is a lot like vintage Burt Reynolds. He is having fun and he does not care how we take that. He still looks great in a tux, so more power to him. He definitely does his ring-a-ding-ding Rat Pack thing, leaving most of the fighting to Nicholas Tse’s brooding Cool. Tse doesn’t mug—period. However, Chow’s larger than life presence still provides the film’s jet fuel.

Jing Tian shows off her first class chops again as Luo Xin, but does not have the same featured spotlight that let her elevate Special I.D. above its functional ambitions. She makes an impression nonetheless as the hard-charging detective. While most of the comedy is broad but digestible, Chapman To gets a wee bit shticky as Karl, but he has also been rather outspoken in his support of the democracy movement, so we’ll give him a pass anyway.

Wong keeps the mood upbeat and the action skipping along, even though some pretty terrible tribulations befall several supporting characters. He also gives enough winking allusions to the God of Gamblers franchise to keep fans amused, before formally joining them together in a Marvel-style denouement.

FVTM certainly delivers the expected quota of action, slapstick, high living, and attractive cast members. Frankly, it ought to be an utterly apolitical film, but given the predictable invective aimed at Chow, patrons can feel strangely good about enjoying it. Recommended for fans of Chow and gambling/con game films, From Vegas to Macau opens the SFFS’s 2014 Hong Kong Cinema showcase this Friday (11/14) and screens again on Saturday (11/15).

NYAFF ’13: The Last Tycoon

There are explosions, talk of independence, and a villain named Mao.  What more could you ask for in a Fourth of July screening?  Shanghai’s most prominent gangster and his two very different mentors will choose up sides amid the turmoil of Republican era China in Wong Jing’s The Last Tycoon (trailer here) which screens today during the 2013 New York Asian Film Festival.

Cheng Daqi is very loosely based on the real life historical figure, Du Yuesheng, a high-ranking Shanghai mobster, who supported the Nationalists out of anti-Communist and anti-Japanese sentiments.  As a young man, Cheng always intended to make a name for himself in the big city, but a scrape with a corrupt cop forced his hand.  It also introduced him to his temporary cellmate, Mao Zai, an army officer serving as an unofficial liaison to the underworld.  When Mao’s men spring them from prison, Cheng follows them to Shanghai.

Cheng quickly raises through the ranks, apprenticing under the top gangster, Hong Shouting.  However, he still remembers his great love, Ye Zhiqui.  She has also fulfilled her ambition to become the toast of Beijing’s opera, eventually marrying Cheng Zhaimei, a scholar and clandestine operative in the revolutionary underground.  Of all the nightclubs in Shanghai, Ye and her husband walk into Cheng Daqi’s, because it is the biggest and most ostentatious.

There are echoes of Casablanca throughout Tycoon, but Wong never slavishly parallels the Bogart classic.  He also departs considerably from the established facts of Du’s life.  However, he clearly plays to the strengths of his star, Chow Yun-fat, giving him plenty of opportunity to blast away two-handed while dressed to the nines.  Although The Assassins was pretty good, Tycoon is really the sort of film his fans have been waiting years for.

Chow does his stone cold cool thing and it still works like a charm.  Sammo Hung also brings all kinds of gravitas and good karma as his patriotic master, Hong.  Clearly enjoying the heavy role, Francis Ng is charismatically villainous as the turncoat Mao Zai (not Zedong, but close enough for the 4^th).  While his Mao is not exactly analogous to Claude Rains’ Captain Renault, Monica Mok really throws a wrench in the Casablanca works as Cheng Daqi’s wife, Bao.  Sensitive but strong and resilient, she rather walks away with the audience’s sympathies.

Produced by special festival guest Andrew Lau, Tycoon is the sort of sprawling gangster/war epic that HK cinema does so well.  It is a quality period production, boasting quite a few get-your-money’s-worth action sequences.  Sure to satisfy fans of the all-star cast and martial arts shoot-outs, The Last Tycoon screens tonight (7/4) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of the 2013 New York Asian Film Festival.  Happy 4^th of July.

The Assassins: Cao Cao’s Lucky Stars

Though he died early in the Third Century, Cao Cao continues to be a potent figure in Chinese culture.  To bolster his legitimacy, Mao invited open comparisons between himself and the legendary general.  In 2009, Cao Cao’s tomb was supposedly discovered, but many archaeologists have questioned its authenticity.  Viewers get a glimpse inside Cao Cao’s tomb-in-progress as part of Linshan Zhao’s late Romance of the Three Kingdoms epic, The Assassins (trailer here), which releases today on DVD and Blu-Ray from Well Go USA.

You didn’t unify a large swath of China while protecting arguably the worst (and last) emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty without making enemies.  Cao Cao has plenty, some of whom are abducting orphans, training them to become assassins.  Their only target will be the Chancellor himself.  Young lovers Ling Ju and Mu Shun will have the best opportunity to complete the mission.  She will serve as a consort in Cao Cao’s Black Sparrow Tower, while he will be placed as a eunuch in the Imperial court.  Unfortunately, the shadowy cabal is willing to do what it takes to protect Mu Shun’s cover.

Ling Ju loves a eunuch, but she also begins to admire the crafty old general she is supposed to kill.  The common people’s esteem for Cao Cao and the stability he preserves is eye-opening for her.  She can also appreciate his knack for thwarting assassination attempts.  He seems to make all the right enemies, including the ungrateful slime-bucket of an emperor.  Yet, killing him might be the only way to free herself and Mu Shun.  Adding urgency, a prophecy about the four stars coming into alignment would seem to foretell the fall of the Han Dynasty and Cao Cao’s rise as their successor.

Frankly, Cao Cao is the best role Chow Yun-fat has had in years.  At his best, he nicely conveys the regrets and isolation of the warlord at the end of his career, while projecting an appropriate sense of badness, like a revisionist Eastwood wuxia figure.  He can be a bit stiff during the quiet scenes, though.  In contrast, Zhang Fengyi is far more enjoyably villainous as Cao Cao in John Woo’s Red Cliff (which Chow reportedly bailed out of at the last minute).  Yet, Jiang Wen’s world weary but still Machiavellian Cao Cao in Alan Mak & Felix Chong’s The Lost Bladesman remains the richest screen interpretation in recent years.

While there are a few adequately staged large scale action sequences, Assassins really is more of a romantic tragedy.  Zhao exercises surprising tear-jerking restraint, but Ling Ju and Mu Shun’s stolen moments together have real bite nonetheless.  (Crystal) Liu Yifei plays the former with a porcelain-like fragility, while Hiroshi Tamaki broods effectively as the emasculated Mu Shun.

Thanks to accomplished contributors like art director Yohei Taneda and cinematographer Xiaoding Zhao (whose credits include Kill Bill and House of Flying Daggers, respectively), Assassins is quite an impressive looking period production.  Although action fans might get frustrated with Assassins’ stately moodiness, there is something about Ling Ju and Mu Shun’s star-crossed love that resonates deeply.  Recommended for fans of historical melodrama more than swordplay, The Assassin is now available on home viewing formats from Well Go USA.

Let the Bullets Fly: the Legend of Pocky Zhang

Call it gangster government. During China’s lawless 1920’s, adventurers bought governorships to make a quick score bleeding the locals dry through excessive taxation. Basically, it was a lot like the Federal government’s current fiscal policy. However, one old school outlaw finds the system too corrupt to countenance in Jiang Wen’s wild Eastern Let the Bullets Fly (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Nick-named for the pockmarks he ought to have but doesn’t, “Pocky” Zhang is not exactly Robin Hood, but he has his limits. Hijacking the train carrying Goose Town’s new governor, Bangde Ma, Zhang and his six sons instead find a weasely con man looking to make a fast buck. Assuming his place as the incoming governor, Zhang and his band try to establish some legitimate law & order in town, which hardly endears him to “Master” Huang, the town’s entrenched opium lord. Thus begins a game of chess played with a rounds and rounds of bullets.

Fly gives the “new-sheriff-in-town” story several clever twists, especially with Zhang’s final stratagem to cajole the cowed populace to rise up against Huang Tea Party-style. Indeed, it is chocked full of Mexican stand-offs, impostors, and double-crosses. Granted, it is hardly unusual for Chinese action epics to incorporate high tragedy and slapstick comedy, but viewers can really feel Jiang shifting the gears here. If not a smooth ride, at least he always has his foot on the gas, delivering high energy scene after scene.

Arguably, Jiang is his own best asset, playing Zhang with world weary gravitas and super-bad charisma. Unfortunately, Chow Yun-Fat is more than a little shticky as Huang. Watching him mug and bicker with his double (also played by Chow) does not instill the sort of joyful loathing great villains inspire. In contrast, HK actress Carina Lau is a tart-tongued delight as conman Bangde Ma’s wife masquerading as “Governor” Bangde Ma’s wife.

Fly is an eccentric period production with big set pieces that fittingly appear to be on the brink of collapse. Cinematographer Fei Zhao also gives the harsh countryside and crumbling village an evocative spaghetti western look. Featuring a great anti-hero in need of a worthy villain, Fly is still a solidly entertaining action morality play. Enjoyable but not essential, it opens today in New York at the Cinema Village.