Thursday, January 28, 2010

Kung-Fu Cinema: Flag-waving

Phil!

A little while back I decided that I wanted to get into kung-fu movies. Straightforward enough...yet deceptively complicated, because damn there are a lot of them, released under numerous aliases and with various crappy original language and dub audio tracks. I started here, an article I found very helpful as a primer...the legend continues, as they say. Keep in mind that I'm speaking about these films from a perspective of almost no prior knowledge and experience. So far I'm just working with what Netflix has available...

I watched Flag of Iron last night, another Shaw Brothers' film about a couple warring clans of fighters with different styles. My quest and interest in kung fu films is slowing down but on the plus side, watching them is making my Mandarin's improve; only, apparently it's golden oldie Mandarin, since most of the movies take place like 500 years ago and they use expressions that no one uses anymore. Also sometimes I feel like I'm missing out on the occasionally hilarious english dub tracks (I did half and half for this one)...but the language absorbtion thing seems more important than finding out where Wu-Tang samples originate.

This jam starred Philip Kwok. Most of these martial arts actors have already shown up in multiple films, and I recognized this this dude as Lizard in the Five Deadly Venoms. He plays a good guy again, name of Iron Panther (nice!). He's part of the Iron Flag clan, who fight with long flagpoles and get into a dispute with the Eagle clan (bunch of pusses). The story works so that he becomes a fall guy for his clan over some legal nonsense and goes into exile, only to eventually come back and topple a mini-conspiracy a year later.

Along the way he kills 9 deadly assassins who were sent to kill him who all have different fun names / styles. One's called the butcher because that's his job when he's not assassin-ing. Another goes by Iron Axe, etc..

The coolest part of the movie, and really the part that sort of redeemed it, was the final fight scene, where one dude throws a flagpole and impales another guy, whereupon the flag unfurls from the pole drenched in blood. This happens about 2 minutes into the clip.



One thing that cracks me up about kung-fu movies (like this) is the complete lack of resolution after the climax. The film ends literally 3 seconds after this scene (above). Typical end of kung fu film: they fight it out and then one guys dies and then there's a brief shot of the winner, and then the "the end" pops up. No tree topper on this party boat. They get it done and they roll the credits.

Analysis:

Some of the choreography in this movie was cool, and it's always fun to watch them fight with new weapons (in this case, a flag), but the plot and the fight sequences were pretty standard issue. The movie was bloodier than a bunch of the others I had watched, but the main thing that stood out about the film was the emergence of a new (to me) character archetype in "The White Rambler."

This guy, pictured in the clip above in white, is an assassin for hire who's just "in it for the money" and doesn't get too involved with the politics of the situation. He's laid back and slick with the babes. He's kung fu Dolemite. Han Solo with a headband and a spear that's spring-loaded and shoots the tip off (and afterward a handful of nails). His dub-voice actor is even doing half a John Wayne impression which sort of clinched it when I flipped over to the English soundtrack halfway through. Carbonite thick.

Other than that, I was sort of bored.

Iceberg Rating: 5 out of 12 parsecs for the Kessel Run


1 comment:

  1. I don't think I've seen this one, it looks interesting and I'll have to check it out on netflix.

    Was wondering how one would use a flag as a weapon but it seems like they are pretty much just using spears that have flags on them.

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