I thought I’d seen all the 70’s Kung-Fu movie greats – Bruce Lee , Jackie Chan , Jim Kelly , Sonny Chiba – but I’d never even heard of Ron Van Clief until I watched BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE. Guess his films never played at my neighborhood Grindhouse, which is a shame, because Mr. Van Clief is one serious ass-kicker! The former Marine, Vietnam vet, NYC cop, and multiple-time martial arts champion starred in a series of action-packed films showcasing his dazzling technique, and BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE makes for one helluva introduction.
Dig those crazy 70’s sideburns!
No, BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE is not a sequel to Bela Lugosi’s 1942 Monogram flick BLACK DRAGONS, but a continuation of the badass character Van Clief played in his film debut, 1974’s BLACK DRAGON. Here, Van Clief is sent by an Exploitation film producer from San Francisco to Hong Kong to investigate the death of…
I grew up during the 1980’s and I do remember how it was a decade dominated by martial arts films and cop action films. Even looking back through rose-tinted goggles, I will admit that for a majority of films released under those two genres most were quite bad. Yet, they were bad and enjoyable in their own clumsy and low-budget way.
The short comedy action film Kung Fury arrives on the web today. Why a short film and not a full-length? Well, while it’s kickstarter campaign more than passed it’s goal of $200,000 dollars it failed to reach a stretch goal of $1,000,000 to turn the film into a full-length feature film. While I believe a full-length film would’ve been nice to see, I think this film works best in it’s short film format.
Kung Fury (written, directed and starring David Sandberg) is a pastiche of all the over-the-top action beats action film fans love about the genre during the 1980’s. It throws everything it could think of onto the screen and blends them together with no thought in mind of how ridiculous and insane it turned out. It’s a film that’s a homage and a parody of those very 80’s action and martial arts films that we know and love so much.
Yet, for all the insanity that occurs in the film there’s actually a weird logic to the film’s narrative that reaches a nice pay-off in the end that screams and begs for a sequel. What better way to end a film that’s a love letter to all things 1980’s action than making sure it ends in a blatant cliffhanger that screams sequel and franchise building.
If there’s one film you should see this weekend that doesn’t involve costumed superheroes, post-apocalyptic marauders, acapella throwdowns, and the next disaster porn then it should be the 30-minutes of insane martial arts, time-traveling, police action film called Kung Fury.
One of my guilty pleasure films of the past 20 years was this little martial fantasy flick called Storm Riders. I think most everyone of my generation who heard about it ended up seeking it out.
I have a feeling the same thing will happen for this latest generation when they hear whispers and ever-growing tales of Donnie Yen’s The Monkey King. It has Yen in heavy make-up to look ike The Monkey King from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. It has Chow Yun-Fat as the Jade Emperor. What else does one need. Plus, it’s in IMAX 3D!
The Monkey King has been given a September 14, 2014 release date for North America
I have to admit, Gareth Evans’ “The Raid: Redemption” wasn’t on my collective radar. It was by way of two friends on Twitter that I was even aware of it, but damn was it worth it. I can easily recommend The Raid as the movie to catch this weekend if you can find it playing near you (and if you happen to like action films). It’s been a while since I’ve run to the theatre twice in one week for the same film. It’s not perfect, and won’t win any kind of dramatic awards, but it’ll probably have you coming back for a second dose of the action.
The film has three things going for it:
1.) The action is intense, when it happens. The breaks between action moments are small.
2.) The film is short. At about 100 minutes, you almost won’t even realize when the film’s done.
3.) The music really moves it.
Evans and The Raid’s main star, Iko Uwais worked together back in 2009’s Merantau, which I’m looking to see now. The premise of The Raid: Redemption is a simple one. Rama (Uwais), along with 20 other SWAT team (or SWAT Team like) members perform a raid on a building owned by a criminal lord. Once the team gets in, they find the tables turned on them, with everyone in the building becoming their enemy. This forces the team to try to stay alive and find a way to either escape, or get the Boss. That’s all it is, and honestly, that’s all The Raid would need to be as an action film. It’s as simple a story as Fist of Fury, Hard Boiled, and quite possibly The Expendables. There’s a side element in the film that I won’t go into detail on, which adds to things a little, but all the audience needs to know is that in The Raid, you’re getting pure action. If you’re walking into this expecting something more thought invoking (and that’s not a detriment to the film), you may want to look elsewhere.
Another high point of the film is its soundtrack, performed by Mike Shinoda (of Linkin Park) and Joe Trapanese has a number of kinetic tracks in it that help to fuel the battles. It comes together very well, though part of me wishes that the main theme had a larger instrumental piece to it.
The pacing for The Raid is pretty good. Again, the time between fights are minimal, and most of it is used to showcase some of the situations the team and the members that live in the complex are in. While a few of these can be tense, they don’t really relax to the point where you’d hope to see more action.
If The Raid suffers from any drawbacks, it’s that that the fights themselves can end up being a little on the repetitive side. Mind you, this could be just a side effect of having seen the film twice already but you’ll find that by the time you get to the second to last fight, some of the moves seem to be repeated. Still, you won’t see anything better than this if you’re looking for a straight laced action film. An easily recommended pick.
I wasn’t fortunate enough to be able to attend last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. If I was there I have a feeling that a little Indonesian action film would’ve been the highlight of my time at TIFF 2011. The film is The Raid (it will get the Redemptionadded for it’s American release) and from the look of these two trailers it just speaks the language of awesome.
All I can say is that it should put the Indonesian martial arts style Pencak Silat on Hollywood’s map the way Ong Bak did for Muay Thai a decade ago.
There comes around a few films every year which I end up enjoying despite how awful it is to most everyone. I’m a major fan and follower of all things grindhouse and for some grindhouse means it was made during the late 60’s and through most of thru the 70’s. I always thought of grindhouse as a state of mind. I mean I like to believe that’s why Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino make the films that they make (all of them grindhouse films at heart if not execution). So, it happens that in 2009 there was one film which was panned universally by critics and mainstream audiences everywhere. It was the second film by Wachowski Brothers protege James McTeigue. He was the same director who made the impressive V for Vendetta film adaptation (I still believe to this day that the Wachowski Brothers had a hand in directing that adaptation).
When word came down that he was going to do a modern ninja film which included Sho Kosugi (he practically was the star of most, if not all, of the best-known ninja grindhouse flicks of the 70’s and 80’s) there was no doubt that this film would rock. The heightened anticipation for this martial arts extravaganza would turn out to be more a whimper than a bang. James McTeigue’s Ninja Assassin became one of 2009’s worst films of the year and part of me don’t agree with how most people viewed it.
The story for this film was quite simple. Former ninja assassin tries hiding from his former ninja clan and it’s badass ninja leader (played by badass ninja-man himself, Sho Kosugi). The part of this former ninja was played by Korean singing pop sensation who went by the name Rain. He got the lead part for this film due to the Wachowski Brothers and uber-action producer Joel Silver having been impressed seeing his work on the Wachowski Brothers’ very-maligned and misunderstood live-action take on the classic Japanese anime series, Speed Racer. The brothers and Silver saw a start on the rise in their midst and decided to make a film around Rain. The fact that the film ended up being Ninja Assassin must’ve been one reason why we haven’t heard of him in the US since.
Still, Rain did a good enough job as the blank-faced, albeit master of the ninja arts, Raizo. He was chosen because he looked the part, moved like the part and probably powers that be thought him being shirtless half the time would bring in the huge J-pop and K-pop demographic. Again, the producers might have been reaching a bit much when they were developing Ninja Assassin.
The rest of the film is Raizo being chased by his former clan, having flashbacks of his time as a child being trained by the Ozuna ninja clan to become their top assassin, then back to the present trying to kill as many ninja as possible, while avoiding getting killed himself. Believe me when I say that the blood and body parts rain down like dismembered bodies were on sale at Wal-Mart and everything was tagged “Entire Stock Must Go!”.
Ninja Assassin will live and die through it’s action sequences and despite the heavy use of CGI-blood the action in this film were pretty good. There’s the usual slo-mo tricks the Wachowski Brothers have become well-known for and it seems like their protege have learned from them well. I actually thought that the ultra-violent and very gory action scenes is why this film reminded me of past martial arts grindhouse flicks. Those were also very bloody and violent. It was as if the filmmakers of those film were telling McTeigue that the more blood and violence the merrier.
I would mention that the film had some good performances from the non-ninja roles played by Naomie Harris and Ben Miles, but I’d be lying. Their work here was passable and just needed to fill the slow and dialogue-heavy gaps in-between ninja butchering. These non-ninja butchering scenes actually slowed the film down. I do believe that if they were replaced with more ninja butchering hapless Interpol security agents and vice versa then Ninja Assassin would’ve turned out a hundred times better. Sometimes mindless gory violence is better than wince-inducing dialogue and exposition.
From the sound of this review one would think that I didn’t like Ninja Assassin. Part of me doesn’t like this film, but the part of my brain which understands the nature of grindhouse flicks loved this film because of the very awful things people say about it. This is a film which was so bad that it passed the point of awfulness and became entertaining in its very own way. I mean this film definitely felt like a Sho Kosugi ninja flick but of the digital age. I always believed that no matter the era and no matter how advanced film techniques get there will always be filmmakers out there who go about in a serious manner to create a good film, but despite their best intentions and plans the overall execution and final product don’t live up to their expectations. In a way, that’s what most grindhouse films tend to be in the end. Films made with the best in mind but got lost in its very own grandiose plans to come out batshit nuts on the other side.
PS: Those wondering how ninja having no guns can take on militayr-trained agents in tactical armor wielding the latest in assault rifles. Well, who needs a Heckler&Koch G36 assault rifle when one can throw shuriken as fast as an assault rifle. In the end, Ninja vs. SWAT makes for a badass, mindless climactic battle scene.
Dig those crazy 70’s sideburns! 
The Insanely Glorious Action That Is Kung Fury
Through the Shattered Lens 