Licence to Kill (1989)

It’s been a long time since I last watched Licence to Kill, that most ’80s-ish of the ’80s Bond movies. In my memory it’s always been one of my least favourite entries in the entire series. I’m pleased to say that upon today’s rewatch, I enjoyed it a lot more, and can now honestly say I like it – even if I still don’t think it’s anywhere near as good as Dalton’s preceding film The Living Daylights.

The plane-hooking opening sequence is fun (just look at that shot of Felix Leiter and his DEA allies’ slow-mo charge forward – see, told you it was oh-so-’80s!), but the movie doesn’t really start to get good until Bond discovers the very brutal thing that happened to Felix Leiter and his new wife. The idea of Bond going rogue on a personal mission outside of MI6 is a good one, but not enough is really made of it. Unlike something like the later Mission: Impossible, it doesn’t feel like Bond’s former allies could be just as much of an obstacle as the bad guys: a while after Bond’s “with one bound he was free” escape in the scene with M, one agent turns up angry at him, then immediately dies, and that’s pretty much it. Bond’s licence to kill is revoked, but this has absolutely no effect on his ability to proceed to kill just as many people as ever. He even still gets to have Q helping him – in one of that character’s biggest roles, in fact!

Having said that, it’s not quite true to say that this might as well be an officially sanctioned mission: I really like the neat plotting of the way Bond’s solo quest for vengeance screws up two other groups’ attacks on Sanchez. The way 007 effectively fuels Sanchez’s concerns about betrayal within his organisation is also good, and the length of time Sanchez remains oblivious to the fact that Bond is his enemy makes for an extremely unusual Bond movie. Overall, perhaps because so much of the movie is kept relatively grounded and low-key, the plotting generally (with a few exceptions) progresses more logically than it does in most Bond films. (Everyone: for some excellent commentary on story structure points like this, go and read Andrew Ellard’s Tweetnotes on the movie. It is indeed the “knifiest Bond ever”!)

The sequence with Bond sneaking around Krest’s operation is a good one; the “maggot coffin” is a fun baddie takedown, and the scene has a satisfying conclusion thanks to how Bond kills Felix’s betrayer. (The way Sanchez dies at the end of the movie – hey, it’s a Bond film, it’s not a spoiler to say that! – is also one of the most satisfying in the entire series.)

The film contains two very good action sequences, the harpoon-plane-waterskiing (featuring gunfire to that da-dada-da-da Bond theme rhythm!) and the concluding tanker chase. They easily make up for the crap bar brawl (noteworthy only for the swordfish bit) and ninja attack. (Ninjas… who are Hong Kong narcotics agents? Mixing up your nations of the Orient a little bit there, aren’t you, writers?) The section inside Sanchez’ smuggling base ranks somewhere in between: the conveyer belt fight against Benicio del Toro is nice and tense, but the setting seems even more Made Of Explodium than the hotel in Quantum of Solace.

As it’s a revenge story, it’s understandable that Timothy Dalton’s performance would be more downbeat than it was in The Living Daylights. But, combined with a general lack of memorable dialogue for him, it does mean that I find him much less fun to watch in this movie than in his first one, which may be a big part of the reason why I like it a lot less. The two Bond girls are also far from the greatest of characters or performances.

(A ridiculously minor nit-picky point, which doesn’t really belong in a review but I want to moan about it anyway: one of the baddies kills Bond’s DEA ally and says, “Guess what? His name was Sharkey!” The emphasis in that sentence has always felt like it’s on the wrong word, as if he’s simply confirming that his name was what he already thought it would be, rather than drawing attention to the irony of his cause of death. For similar reasons, I get disproportionately annoyed with a likewise mis-delivered line in The Matrix: “The image translators work for the Construct program…”)

[003 out of 005]

Cloud Atlas (2012)

The Fountain.
Magnolia.
Adaptation.
Synecdoche, New York.
A Cock and Bull Story.
The Hours.
Memento.

Look, I admit it – I’m a sucker for cinematic experiments in metafiction and form. Such movies tend to attract critics’ comments like, “All this self-referentiality, not-too-subtle thematic interlinking, and chronological jumbling are mere gimmicks; once you’ve solved the superficial puzzle-box, there’s little of substance to them. They’re not really as profound or interesting as they think they are – they exist only as exercises for writers and directors to smugly say, ‘Look how clever I am!’”

But for me, that clever-clever self-referentiality, not-too-subtle thematic interlinking, chronological jumbling, and puzzle-solving is exactly what wins me over. (Usually.) And it certainly worked in the case of Cloud Atlas!

I have not read David “Not The One From Peep Show” Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas, but before going to see the film, The Fountain was the reference point I had in mind. And sure enough, of the above examples, The Fountain is the film that it most resembles, in its cross-cutting between vastly different time periods in order to emphasise symbolic links between events and characters.

I enjoyed the film very much. The 2144 segment was always going to have the most immediate appeal for someone primarily interested in this film because of the Wachowskis’ involvement, and it’s a relief to see that they have lost none of their flair for action direction. (If, indeed, it was the siblings and not Tykwer who directed that segment’s action scenes: the end credits suggest that they did, but interview comments¹ suggest that the credits give a misleading impression of how distinctly the film’s directorial responsibilities were divided.) However, all the stories had something to recommend them (the humour of the 2012 segment; the conspiracy of the ’70s thriller; the interaction between Ben Whishaw and Jim Broadbent’s characters in the 1930s), so that I was rarely disappointed when the film interrupted a story I was enjoying to switch to another one. The abruptness of the transitions between the different stories’ tones and genres was also something that appealed to me rather than a disorientating irritation. Overall I found it a very well-paced movie, flowing along about as well as any non-linear three hour movie ever could. (Although I could have done with a few less solemn, pseudo-profound statements about interconnectedness in the voiceovers.)

Many people have complained of being distracted by the make-up, and Tom Hanks’ attempts at certain accents – it’s true that I was distracted by those things too, but with only a couple of exceptions, keeping an eye out for the different roles each actor took on was an enjoyable distraction.

Hugo Weaving has said in interviews that roles in mainstream blockbusters no longer really appeal to him as an actor. If that means he won’t be doing any more of them, then at least we have Cloud Atlas to represent the ultimate culmination of all his villain-portraying! (Although: yeah, he does resemble the Hitcher from The Mighty Boosh at one point…)

[4 out of 5]

¹ See Lana Wachowski’s comment in this AV Club interview:

We keep trying to explain to people that, first of all, the credit you see in the movie was this kooky thing invented by the Director’s Guild, because they couldn’t understand how three people could direct a movie together. And they have this convention that the only way directors can be multiply credited on a film is if it’s an anthology, so they invented this bizarre credit to allow their rules to make sense for our film.

Iron Man (2008)

This film happened to start on TV shortly after I’d finished rewatching The Iron Giant, and it amused me to make a double-bill of two such similarly-titled films.

The key to the movie’s success is, of course, the casting of Robert Downey Jr. He delivers offhand jokes, almost to himself, in ways that make it feel like he’s improvising while everyone else is sticking to a screenplay,* and it’s simply a lot of fun watching him on-screen – especially in scenes alongside Paltrow’s Pepper Potts. Terrence Howard makes a much better Col. Rhodes than Don Cheadle did in the sequel; it’s much more believable that he’d be Tony Stark’s friend.

As Tony Stark’s buddy Film Crit Hulk once pointed out, it’s nice that here’s a summer blockbuster in which the action is the least interesting part. In that blog post, the all-caps critic also says, “EVERYONE SEEMED LOVE THAT IT SPENT SO LONG BEFORE TONY ACTUALLY BECOME ‘IRON MAN’ SO THEY GET EXPERIENCE ALL THE GREAT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT TO GET THERE. EVERYONE LAUDED THE FUN SENSE OF ADVENTURE THAT CAME FROM HIM ACTUALLY BUILDING THE SUIT”, and I completely agree: the section where Tony gets back to the US and carries out his first experiments with building the suit is perhaps my favourite sequence in the movie. (Yeah, OK, I admit that a lot of it has to do with the way it appeals to the gadget-nerd techno-fetishist in me.) All good superhero origin movies should contain a scene where our hero first experiences the joy of what their superpowers allow them to do (see for example Superman running alongside that Smallville train, or even Neo grinning as he spars with Morpheus), and the test flight of the Iron Man Mk. II suit is one of the very best.

Something I find interesting is the way that the film both has its cake and eats it: it’s based around the idea of a warmonger coming over to the side of the peaceniks, and yet also contains gleeful scenes of t’rr’rist-slaughter which are pure right-wing hawk revenge-fantasy. (I admit I do find some of the film’s depictions of the Bad Brown People fairly uncomfortable at times.)

I do wonder if the little bit of non-linearity that opens the film was only included because of a belief that the audience would grow restless unless the movie opened with a bang. Whatever the reason: I’ve always found that little piece of “how we got here” flashbacking very effective. The high-altitude icing problem setup and payoff also works similarly well (it’s to the film’s benefit that it’s not the final thing that defeats the villain), even if it’s not exactly subtle.

I’ve never read it, but the most famous Iron Man comics storyline is Demon In A Bottle, which tackles Stark’s alcoholism. The Marvel Studios movies haven’t adapted this on-screen yet, and it doesn’t sound like they will do any time soon. This makes a nice change from the way Fox approached X-Men 3 and Sony approached Spider-Man 3: rushing to hit the most famous comics storylines and characters as soon as possible, then getting greedy and cramming too many of them into one movie. Having said that, we do get several sequel-setups: Rhodey’s “Next time, baby” line is a little too cheesy for me, the Ten Rings hints are OK, and as for that post-credits epilogue… I can’t remember if it had been spoiled for me in advance of seeing the movie back in 2008, but I remember thinking that although it was a fun tease, it was something that would almost certainly never come to pass. It’s really quite wonderful to think that the thing set up in that cameo not only happened at all, but actually matched my very high expectations!

[4 out of 5]

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* OK, admittedly Downey mumbles a lot of the best lines so you could easily miss them. But its nowhere near as bad as his mumbling in the Guy Ritchie version of Sherlock Holmes – inaudible dialogue from the lead character is pretty much all I remember of that movie…

Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

This film contains “I am the Walrus”, my favourite Beatles song, and therefore, by extension, my favourite piece of music by anyone ever. “The Fool on the Hill” ain’t half bad, either, and if “Your Mother Should Know”, “Flying” and the title song are more minor tracks by the band, they’re not unpleasant. (Never been keen on “Blue Jay Way”, though, although it does effectively convey a disconcerting atmosphere.)

So the music video aspects of the film work well enough – the problem is pretty much everything else.

The plot: Ringo and his aunt get on a coach for an outing to an unknown location. (I wonder if the presence of Ringo’s aunt was intended to be reminiscent of Wilfred Brambell’s role as Paul’s Grandfather in A Hard Day’s Night?) The passengers observe some bizarre events, and some wizards up in the clouds observe the coach’s progress. (Those wizards were the main thing I remembered about the film from when I watched it as a kid, but it turns out that they’re only in it for about two minutes.)

Hilarity ensues!

… Except it, er, doesn’t.

Some of the sketches would be called Pythonesque if not for the fact that a) the film was made almost two years before the first episode of Flying Circus was broadcast, and b) they’re not funny. (There is something of The Meaning of Life’s Mr Creosote in the spaghetti scene, and Victor Spinetti’s incomprehensible drill sergeant is very much like a stock Python character.)

A couple of John Lennon’s brief snippets of narration hint at the sometimes hilarious wordplay in his books “In His Own Write” and “A Spaniard in the Works”. For example, one line of dialogue in the film is followed by the narrator’s storytelling addition “… he said”, and I like his deadpan uncertainty over whether there are “four or five magicians” (perhaps prefiguring Yellow Submarine’s “Once upon a time, or maybe twice”). But these snippets appear rarely and don’t last more than a sentence or two – I wanted more of them!

One bit that is mildy amusing is the cut from Ringo’s Aunt daydreaming of a romance with Buster Bloodvessel, to the reality of the man drearily droning on and on. (Only mildy amusing, though.)

Late in the movie, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band turn up to provide the soundtrack to a stripper’s performance (“CENSORED”), and to some extent they outshine the Beatles in their own movie.

—

In The Beatles Anthology, Paul McCartney’s main defence of the film is to say “Where else are you going to see a performance of ‘I Am the Walrus’?” but he also makes the claim that he’d heard that “people like Steven Spielberg” saw it in film school and were impressed/influenced by it. I’ve always been skeptical of that claim… but then, in the Arena documentary that accompanied the BBC’s October 2012 broadcast of the film, who should turn up but Martin Scorsese, confirming that he for one genuinely thinks it’s a remarkable film.

Some of the talking heads in that documentary remark on how the film’s approach of drawing upon avant-garde* experimental influences (lack of plot or script, Ringo Starr messing about with lenses in his role as Director of Photography(!), random shots of cheering crowds) and filtering them through working-class Liverpudlian childhood nostalgia (a charabanc coach trip) is representative of exactly what the Beatles did so successfully in much of their music. These are good points – at least until the moment the doc gets Macca attempting to tie MMT’s experimentality to Un Chien Andalou, which is just a little bit of a stretch. (And of course the documentary illustrated the comparison with THAT shot – ARRGGHHH!)

So it’s not a good film. But the story behind it is interesting for what it says about where the Beatles were at that point – after Brian Epstein’s death and dominating the world with Sgt Pepper, they were casting about wildly for new ideas, which eventually led to them going off to India with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and founding Apple and trying to make a fly on the wall documentary about themselves, and we all know what happened with that. So the film’s scriptless nature is nicely representative of all that – but it doesn’t really make for a very fun film to watch.

[2.5 out of 5]

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* “French for bullshit”, I think someone once said. I wonder who?

Skyfall (2012)

Obviously Skyfall was never going to surpass From Russia With Love as my favourite of the series (what could?), but I was hopeful that it could rank alongside my other favourites: GoldenEye, Casino Royale, and OHMSS. Judging by this first viewing, I’d say it does – which means that The Living Daylights is finally edged out of my top 5. (Sorry, Timmy!)

Spoilers below.

Moonraker (1979)

(Rewatched 11 August 2012)

Sometimes I wish Roger Moore would come back
With an underwater car or some kind of jetpack
Or a hover-gondola and a Union Jack

– Joe Cornish, “The Something of Boris” (an Adam and Joe’s Song Wars entry)

As Cinebro’s review illustrates, “silly” is the operative word when you’re talking about this film. But there’s nothing wrong with silliness; silliness can be very funny, if it’s done well. So although I remembered Moonraker as being by far the worst Bond movie, this time, I went into it hoping to be able to judge it more generously – approaching it with some optimism that it would succeed as a daft spy comedy rather than fail as a spy adventure.

Unfortunately, I think very little of the comedy in this is done well. Forget comparing it to The Naked Gun – this isn’t even Spy Hard.

I’ll start with some positives. The cable car action sequence is good (even if at first, the camera positions in the wheel house set confusingly make it look like Jaws is following Bond and Goodhead down from the top, rather than coming up from the bottom on the opposite car). And I like the look of Drax’s construction facility as Bond flies over it at the start of the film. In fact, Ken Adam’s sets are consistently one of the best things about this film – although I may just be saying that because twenty years later they inspired the brilliant Aztec mission in the GoldenEye videogame!

The movie’s pre-title sequence is based around a fantastic parachute stunt sequence – which, unfortunately, is undermined when it concludes with a wacky bit involving a circus big top, and a bizarre transition into the film’s opening credits (falling umbrellas WTF!). Jaws’ appearance in this opening also undermines the later scene in which he’s introduced by walking through a metal detector, which is genuinely fun (an example of the film succeeding in the tone it aims for), and would have made a much better introductory scene for the character. Speaking of Jaws, I have to admit I’m quite fond of the two moments in the film where Bond and Jaws meet and acknowledge each other with a smile before they begin fighting.

What surprised me on this viewing is just how little talking there is over the course of the film. There are large sections of the movie that play out in silence. Surely this must be the Bond film with the fewest lines of dialogue? What dialogue is there gives us some of the comedy that does work, in a few brief but memorable lines:

- “His name is Jaws, he kills people.”
- “Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him.”
- “Mr Bond, you persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you.”
- “At least I shall have the pleasure of putting you out of my misery.”
- “You missed.” “Did I?”

Note that most of the above examples are spoken by the film’s villain, Hugo Drax – but apart from a few lines like those, he’s played very flatly as Bond-villain-by-the-numbers, and isn’t very memorable.

I remember the Moonraker novel being one of my favourites of Fleming’s books, but the film bears almost no resemblance to the book (unless you count the Minister of Defence’s very brief reference to playing Drax at bridge). Bond’s following of clues throughout the film is not at all interesting and not particularly logical, and Drax’s initial attempts to kill 007 seem to be motivated not out of any concern that Bond might discover his plans, but simply because he’s a Bond villain and trying to kill Bond is what Bond villains are required to do. That centrifuge sequence is OK, but comes across rather like a repeat of the rack exercise scene from Thunderball.

I’ve always enjoyed the posts on each of the Bond movies on the “I Expect You to Die!” blog, and that site’s writeup of Moonraker lays out the movie’s flaws particularly well. I like its summary of the similarities between Moonraker and its predecessor The Spy Who Loved Me:

TSWLM: Teaser involves ship being mysteriously stolen, the girl Bond is macking with tries to have him killed, and the teaser climaxes with a Bond parachute stunt.
MR: Teaser starts with a ship being mysteriously stolen, the girl Bond is macking with tries to have him killed, and the teaser climaxes with a Bond parachute jump.

TSWLM: The plot involves an insane billionaire who believes humanity has become corrupt; he wants to eliminate all humans and start over from his undersea base.
MR: The plot involves an insane billionaire who believes humanity has become corrupt; he wants to eliminate all humans and start over from his satellite base.

TSWLM: The main henchmen is a mute giant named Jaws.
MR: The main henchmen is a mute giant named Jaws (with added bonus: a mostly mute Japanese henchmen!!)

TSWLM: The Bond girl is a Russian spy!
MR: The Bond girl is an American spy!

TSWLM: A special Bond vehicle comes out of the water onto dry land, as tourists and animals do double takes.
MR: A special Bond vehicle comes out of the water onto dry land, as tourists and animals do double takes. Except in this one, we get lots more double-takes and reaction shots. Lots more.

Add another example: The Spy Who Loved Me contained a musical clip from Lawrence of Arabia; this one quotes the notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (heard THREE TIMES, just in case you didn’t notice!) and also contains the theme from The Magnificent Seven. Not to mention the Romantic Meadow Run that Jaws and his girlfriend get to do…

Oh, didn’t I mention? Jaws gets a girlfriend in this movie. Also, Bond wrestles a terribly fake-looking python (but it’s played straight, as if it’s meant to be genuinely threatening), and pigeons do double-takes, and the movie’s climax takes place IN SPAAAAACE.

“Bond goes into space” is usually cited as the biggest, most memorable thing that went wrong with Moonraker. But strangely, in principle I don’t have a problem with the idea of Bond (at least Roger Moore’s Bond) in space. Just as The Matrix Reloaded has more fundamental problems than the fact it concludes with that speech by the Architect, just as The Phantom Menace has more fundamental problems than the presence of Jar Jar Binks, I’m less annoyed by Moonraker‘s overblown space station climax than with most of the other problems earlier on in the movie. I wouldn’t have been bothered by a comic relief CGI Star Wars character if it had actually been amusing; similarly, I would have no objection to a wacky, campy, over the top, tongue-in-cheek Roger Moore Bond movie if only it had been funnier.

[002 out of 005]

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

I haven’t seen many of the Star Trek films: First Contact, the 2009 reboot, and Wrath of Khan (plus Search for Spock, too long ago for me to remember any of it). Prior to watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, pretty much all I knew of it was that it had some links to a failed attempt to resurrect the TV series in the ’70s, that it was directed by the director of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and that it contains lots and lots and lots and lots of very slow and elaborate special effects sequences.

That point turned out to be very true. We really do spend a very long time admiring the Enterprise, wormholes, and the movie’s Big Dumb Object, which tends to cause reviewers to use words like “interminable”. Now I’m someone who’s a big enough SF/SFX nerd to have watched all the raw model shot footage included on the Red Dwarf DVDs (and found it interesting!), but even I’ve gotta admit that as lovely as all these sequences look (and sound), they don’t half go on a bit. It felt to me as if the lesson Robert Wise took from watching 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Douglas Trumbull took from making it!) is that the key to making a science fiction movie seem Serious is to slow all your special effects down to a glacial pace!

They’re very good special effects, though – even given the fact that I watched the original version, and not the Director’s Cut with its CGI additions. I imagine that if the film was remade today, a lot of the special effects shots would look broadly similar, but would just be achieved using different methods. Sets and shot compositions are nice, too.

I’m all in favour of more science fiction movies about exploration of weird alien phenomena, rather than action-packed battles against conventional baddies. But here, the plot’s a fairly thin version of the Mysterious Alien Artefact Threatening Earth of countless sci-fi tales: trim down the special effects sequences, speed up the pacing, and the whole thing could quite comfortably be told within a 45 minute TV series episode. The film’s not as smart as you’d hope from something that includes Isaac Asimov’s name in the credits. However, towards the end of the film the true nature of said Big Dumb Alien Artefact is revealed, and I found it a fairly surprising and effective twist.

There’s lots of potential in the conflict between Kirk and Decker: the question of whether it really is in everyone’s best interests for Kirk to take charge of the Enterprise, or if he’s just nostalgic for the thrill of command. Unfortunately, not much is made of it: presumably it would’ve helped if the Decker character had been played more forcefully by a better actor. Like so much else, the idea of Kirk’s nostalgia for being a Captain rather than an Admiral was handled better in Wrath of Khan.

The film spends some time reuniting the crew. Athough I’ve only seen a very small proportion of the original series episodes and feature films, I am fond of these characters, and their rapport is good to watch, so there’s a genuine sense that something feels very wrong – a piece of the puzzle’s missing – when Spock turns up acting even more brusque and unemotional than usual. There’s a good line from McCoy (“Why is any object we don’t understand always called a ‘thing’?”), and the very first thing that the character of Ilia dues upon meeting Kirk is emphasise her oath of celibacy – which I took to be a self-referential joke about Kirk’s reputation as an alien ladies’ man!

Unfortunately, there’s not really enough of that sort of thing. Most of the scenes on the bridge consist of the crew standing around either watching special effects, or formally issuing and reacting to commands. DeForest Kelley in particular gets almost nothing to do; as Stephen Rowley put it*, “Bones always did hang around the bridge too much (probably because that was the only decent set), but this becomes particularly embarrassing here.” In its attempts to challenge 2001‘s claim to the title of “proverbial ‘really good’ science fiction movie“, Star Trek: The Motion Picture removes a lot of the fun ’60s-ness of the TV series.

Although this review sounded really negative, I did enjoy the movie: I was curious to know the answer to the central mystery of what V’Ger really was, there were plenty of likeable individual moments throughout the movie, and most of the sci-fi ideas were solid even if they were underexplored.

Also, my interest in movie special effects meant that I found it interesting to look at examples of 1979′s state of the art optical techniques, even when they seemed to be done for the sake of it, rather than because they served the story. Judging by this film, my tolerance for interminable FX sequences is very high!

[3 out of 5]

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* His review of this film and quite a few others seem to have been removed from the current version of his site.

Drunken Master II/Legend of Drunken Master (1994)

For years I’ve heard a lot about how Drunken Master II (aka Legend of Drunken Master) is consistently recommended as one of Jackie Chan’s best films. More specifically, one or two of its action sequences consistently get called among the best that he or anyone else ever filmed – Roger Ebert, no less, said of the film’s climax: “This extended virtuoso effort sets some kind of benchmark: it may not be possible to film a better fight scene.”

Unfortunately, the film has always been pretty hard to come by in the UK – at least to someone who doesn’t pirate movies! I’ve never seen it on TV (even though there was a period between the releases of Shanghai Noon and Knights when things like Who Am I?, Rumble in the Bronx and Police Story were broadcast quite often on terrestrial TV channels), and I’m not even sure if it ever got a UK DVD release prior to the current Blu-Ray release (which only came out in April 2012, according to the online shops I checked).

Still, over the years I’ve resisted the urge to watch YouTubed versions of the fight scenes in the hope that one day I’d be able to watch the whole film properly from start to finish.

So I was delighted to see that LoveFilm had put a streaming version online (under the title of Legend of A Drunken Master and with its predecessor’s DVD blurb, for some reason). But before watching it, I went and rewatched the first Drunken Master. In that review, I described how the movie’s main appeal was its off-balance drunken boxing, which was utterly spectacular to watch:

The effect of wine on characters who have mastered the secrets of the Eight Drunken Gods is rather like the effect that spinach has on Popeye the Sailor. It’s incredible to watch the characters staggering around, constantly looking like they’re teetering on the edge of falling over, but actually in complete control of their balance. Their off-kilter motions give an absolutely unique look to the fight scenes, making them fascinating to watch – so it’s a shame that the titular fighting style is introduced pretty late in the movie, only after we’ve seen several fairly standard kung fu fights.

DM2 has much less in common with DM1 than I thought it would. Again Jackie Chan plays Wong Fei-hung, who again displeases his father (again a martial arts school owner), again some of the fight scenes involve drunken boxing, and again the final bad guy is a kicking specialist – but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. It has a very different feel to the original, due to the urban rather than rural setting (with more crowded scenes, and settings like trains and factories), the lack of training sequences, the fact Wong Fei-hung is older and less of a rebellious joker, the much heavier emphasis on props and weapons in the combat, and the more modern shooting style (none of those DRAMATIC CRASH ZOOM STINGS here!)

However, one thing that did carry across to the sequel was my disappointment at how late in the film the drunken boxing is first introduced. According to the film’s IMDb trivia page (ah, those benchmarks of reliability!), Jackie Chan wanted Drunken Master II to emphasise inebriated combat (like I did!), but the film’s director Chia-Liang Liu wanted it to have a heavier focus on normal kung fu styles. Hence there are only a few fight scenes when the drunken boxing is fully on display. Early on in the film, Jackie announces he’s about to use that fighting style, but it’s not really obvious in the short ensuing fight.

So it’s only midway through the film that we properly get to watch the off-balance intoxicated antics we all came to see, in an outstanding fight against several opponents. It’s probably the funniest of the film’s fight scenes, and it also includes the funniest “alchohol as Popeye’s spinach” moment: “What does it mean when there’s a picture of a skull?”…”GOOD STUFF!”

That’s not to say that the sober fights in the film are poor, though! The opening fight is set underneath a train, which makes for an interesting setting for combat. Late in the film we see Jackie and his ally defend themselves against an onslaught of axe-wielding attackers; Jackie’s weapon is a shaft of bamboo, which gradually deteriorates as the fight goes on, until eventually it looks and handles more like a cat o’ nine tails. In some places, the use of props is almost up there with the stepladder fight from Jackie Chan’s First Strike. It goes without saying that they’re all very well choreographed and directed – if some action didn’t register properly, it’s not due to problems with editing, composition or camera motion, but simply because of the amazing speed at which the actors performed the action.

And then we come to that famous final duel. Roger Ebert’s “it may not be possible to film a better fight scene” assertion was extremely bold, but the sequence comes impressively close to living up to it! Jackie Chan’s most spectacular stunts are the ones involving ridiculous heights – there aren’t any of those in this movie, but in this fight he gets to have his clothes set alight, dodge falling weights that slam into the ground, and scurry across burning coals. In the film City Hunter Jackie Chan got to play Chun Li from Street Fighter (it’s true!), but at one point in this DM2 fight he gets to do E. Honda’s flying headbutt move! But again, it’s the teetering-on-the-edge feel of the drunken boxing that really makes it brilliant.

As for other aspects of the film…

I doubt there are many people who watch Jackie Chan movies for the bits in between the fight scenes, but in this one, they really do feel like quite tedious padding. Most of the non-physical comedy in DM2 fell flat for me – although some works, and fortunately the humour always stays relatively high-brow(!) compared to the broadest moments from the first film!

It should go without saying that there’s not much to the storyline, although hilariously, Wikipedia contributors have somehow managed to stretch its plot synopsis out to 1600 words. One interesting thing about the story is that it’s very clearly set during the period of British colonialism in Hong Kong, and prefigures Rush Hour in depicting the theft of Chinese artefacts by a corrupt English ambassador. Everyone knows that we Brits make the best movie villains, and here we’re represented by a cigar-chomping Consul who looks a bit like Charles Dance in Last Action Hero (now there’s a good baddie comparison for a movie to have, but unfortunately the comparison only extends as far as his looks, and the guy is not a fighter and therefore doesn’t get much screen time). I’m not asking for the film to turn into an in-depth examination of Hong Kong under British rule, but I would have liked the film to make more of the colonial aspects of its setting, and the potentially-interesting plot about the smuggling of a country’s national treasures; but instead, time is spent on subplots like the money problems of Wong Fei-hung’s family.

What plot is there isn’t conveyed very clearly (in particular the switcheroo between the ginseng and the valuable artifact) – perhaps that was just an issue with the dubbed version I watched, and I might have preferred a subtitle track using a literal translation? (Speaking of dubbing: while watching the credits, one voice actor’s name stood out. Is that the Bryan Cranston, and I wonder which character he dubbed…?)

So, is this the best Jackie Chan film?

Maybe, but there are a few I’d have to rewatch and lots I’d have to watch for the first time in order to say for sure. The fights scenes in Drunken Master II are unquestionably better than those of things like Who Am I?, Police Story and Shanghai Noon, but as I recall, those films felt more complete and well-rounded as a whole due to the bits between the stunts and fights standing up better.

But you don’t really care about those bits. You come for the fight scenes – in particular the drunken fight scenes. And boy, the drunken fight scenes are incredible.

4 out of – Hic! – 5

Drunken Master (1978)

Although Jackie Chan’s best known for his incredible death-defying stunts, he started off in martial arts movies that take place firmly on solid ground. Drunken Master is still the only film from that period of his career that I’ve seen, and it’s a good one. The main character is a Chinese folk hero called Wong Fei-hung, probably best known from Jet Li’s Once Upon A Time In China movies, but in Drunken Master Jackie Chan plays him as a rebellious prankster. Have a read of this review of the film for a good summary of why this was such an original portrayal at the time.

Make no mistake – the comedy in this film is broad. Very broad. So broad, it makes the eighth series of Red Dwarf look like PG Wodehouse. Now I’ve nothing against slapstick pratfalls (I wouldn’t be watching a Jackie Chan movie if I did), but there are lots of lowest common denominator gags that make me roll my eyes and question why in the world I’m watching it at all. Fortunately, those bits are balanced out by plenty of humour that works: it’s impossible to resist the scene where cartoonish bumps appear when one character gets bonked on the noggin, and I’m oddly fascinated by another character’s exaggerated teeth – but best of all, the smash cut to the “PAY OR DIE!” sign is brilliant!

The film improves as it progresses: the scenes where Jackie Chan’s character plays pranks at his father’s school are a bit tedious, but the movie really picks up when the elderly Beggar Su turns up and begins training him. This martial arts master is played by Yuen Siu-tien, the father of the film’s director/choreographer Yuen “The Matrix” Woo-ping. The training scenes are great; any fan of the Pai Mei training scenes in Kill Bill vol 2 should watch Drunken Master to understand the sort of thing that Quentin Tarantino was aiming for.

Some time after the first training sequences, the drunken fighting style itself is introduced, which is everyone’s real main reason for watching the movie!

The effect of wine on characters who have mastered the secrets of the Eight Drunken Gods is rather like the effect that spinach has on Popeye the Sailor. It’s incredible to watch the characters staggering around, constantly looking like they’re teetering on the edge of falling over, but actually in complete control of their balance. Their off-kilter motions give an absolutely unique look to the fight scenes, making them fascinating to watch – so it’s a shame that the titular fighting style is introduced pretty late in the movie, only after we’ve seen several fairly standard kung fu fights.

Finally, late in the film that drunken kung-fu is put into practice in two excellent fight scenes: first against the “King of Sticks”, and then against our evil baddie, taekwondo expert “Thunderleg” (Hwang Jang Lee). These two fight scenes are among the best “straight” fights (as opposed to those making heavy use of stunts and props) of any Jackie Chan film – right up there with the one that concludes his 1999 film Gorgeous.

The film could do with being a bit shorter: as I said, I would have liked some trimming from the first half’s standard kung fu fights so that the much more interesting drunken style could have been introduced earlier. Also, there’s a good scene where Jackie Chan’s character is humiliated by the villain, but then as soon as it’s over he thinks back to what happened and we see what he remembers – causing the whole scene to be immediately repeated almost identically, pretty much in full! Sure, it conveys Jackie’s humiliation effectively enough – but the film has great editing in the fight scenes, so it’s a shame that that tedious bit couldn’t have been trimmed down a little as well.

So in conclusion, the film’s length and the broadest, stupidest bits of lowbrow comedy are really the only reason I’ve limited my rating to three stars. If you can look past those moments, there are three very good reasons to watch Drunken Master: the training scenes, the bits of physical comedy that do hit the target, and the incredible choreography of the drunken kung fu fight scenes.

Actually, make that four good reasons: no ’70s martial arts movie is truly complete without a few crash zooms into characters’ faces, accompanied by DRAMATIC audio stings, and you certainly get your money’s worth of those here!

[3 out of 5]

The Dark Knight Rises and the Trilogy Trend

Here’s a little thing I noticed – spoilers regarding something that The Dark Knight Rises has in common with the third parts of other movie trilogies…