He uses soft style in a hard way.

Man of Tai Chi

(2013)

Keanu doesn’t know Tai Chi. At least, his villainous alter ego in Man of Tai Chi doesn’t. Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut is a star vehicle for fight choreographer and diminutive chum Tiger Chen (with whom he worked on The Matrix trilogy). Chen, who bears a passing resemblance to John Cazale, more than holds his own as a leading man, in a rudimentary but effective narrative that finds him overcome with yin and battling to regain his yang. This, naturally, involves a lot of fighting.

This premise is recognisable anywhere, any time; Tiger (Luke) is trained by a master (Ben Kenobi/Yoda) but is tempted by the dark (Yin) side that is Donaka (Reeves; Darth Vader/the Emperor). His master is even called Master Yang (Hai Yu); it’s up there for all to see in orange highlighter. It’s no secret that Lucas’ films consciously blended Eastern and western religion and mysticism in order to tap into universal themes.

Here, right from the start, Master Yang is worried about the disruptive forces within Tiger (“You are not controlling your Chi. Your Chi is controlling you”). Tiger is attracted to power, to prove that Tai Chi is effective for fighting (and so to disprove the pronouncement of his opponent in a local competition; “Tai Chi is just for show. You’ve already lost”). In so doing, Tiger attracts the attention of Reeves’ super-rich Donaka, owner of a private security firm. He runs an illegal fight club in which the contestants may end up dead, one that is under investigation by police officer Sun-Jing Shi (Karen Mok).

Of course, it’s necessary to provide Tiger with motivation to sign up (fighting for money is not honourable, so he requires the lure of a threat to his master’s temple). When he does, a series of escalating encounters ensue. Reeves the director, aided by Woo–ping Yen designing the action, has learnt well. He ensures the fights are brutal and vital, complemented by a driving soundtrack that adds a touch of the oriental to Matrix style beats. Michael G Cooney’s script embraces the archetypes and furnishes a few modern touches; Tiger’s life becomes a Truman Show, filmed at every stage to a paying audience; when it is played back for his edification/horror, it feels like a strange mash up of Peter Weir’s film with The Parallax View test reel.

There wouldn’t be any movie if Tiger accepted his master’s wisdom at the outset, so evidently it’s much more fun to pursue the yang path in filmic terms. This is coloured, however, by having rigid, succinct Donaka (Reeves playing to the minimalist, an effective choice) root for Tiger to become all he can be. Donaka’s methods are merely an inversion of his own master’s teaching, and ultimately there is a blurring of the lines of attainment. Tiger rejects Donaka’s path, refusing to kill for him. But Donaka has his way in the end, when he confronts Tiger and the latter calls upon Yang’s technique of palm striking his opponent. So Tiger delivers Donaka the life he is owed, while Tiger, in so doing, acts with the control Master Yang saw as essential to development.

While the Tiger fights are consistently engaging, Reeves is responsible for the occasional misstep. The Raid’s Iko Uwais is wasted in a cameo as one of Tiger’s opponents, while Reeves is stiff and unconvincing of pose during the climactic confrontation. His appropriation of martial arts worked when conveyed within the stylistic trappings of the Wachowskis’ Matrix universe, but, paired with Tiger, he’s more akin to a lumbering giant. Additionally, the investigation subplot never justifies its inclusion.

Reeves is willing to indulge supernatural elements (the palm strike, the beast like snarl Donaka emits when roused), but he stops short of fully embracing elemental forces. As such, there’s a wee bit of a hodgepodge going on, the director and writer straddling stools at any given moment. Still, this is a decent and modest spectacle, and hopefully Reeves will get back in the director’s seat again soon.

Comments

Exit bear, pursued by an actor.

Paddington 2 (2017)
(SPOILERS) Paddington 2 is every bit as upbeat and well-meaning as its predecessor. It also has more money thrown at it, a much better villain (an infinitely better villain) and, in terms of plotting, is more developed, offering greater variety and a more satisfying structure. Additionally, crucially, it succeeds in offering continued emotional heft and heart to the Peruvian bear’s further adventures. It isn’t, however, quite as funny.

Even suggesting such a thing sounds curmudgeonly, given the universal applause greeting the movie, but I say that having revisited the original a couple of days prior and found myself enjoying it even more than on first viewing. Writer-director Paul King and co-writer Simon Farnaby introduce a highly impressive array of set-ups with huge potential to milk their absurdity to comic ends, but don’t so much squander as frequently leave them undertapped.

Paddington’s succession of odd jobs don’t quite escalate as uproariously as they migh…

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

I added sixty on, and now you’re a genius.

The Avengers 4.3: The Master Minds
The Master Minds hitches its wagon to the not uncommon Avengers trope of dark deeds done under the veil of night. We previously encountered it in The Town of No Return, but Robert Banks Stewart (best known for Bergerac, but best known genre-wise for his two Tom Baker Doctor Who stories; likewise, he also penned only two teleplays for The Avengers) makes this episode more distinctive, with its mind control and spycraft, while Peter Graham Scott, in his third contribution to the show on the trot, pulls out all the stops, particularly with a highly creative climactic fight sequence that avoids the usual issue of overly-evident stunt doubles.

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

Farewell, dear shithead, farewell.

Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
(SPOILERS) I saw Highlander II: The Quickening at the cinema. Yes, I actually paid money to see one of the worst mainstream sequels ever on the big screen. I didn’t bother investigating the Director’s Cut until now, since the movie struck me as entirely unsalvageable. I was sufficiently disenchanted with all things Highlander that I skipped the TV series and slipshod sequels, eventually catching Christopher Lambert’s last appearance as Connor MacLeod in Highlander: End Game by accident rather than design. But Highlander II’s on YouTube, and the quality is decent, so maybe the Director’s Cut improve matters and is worth a reappraisal? Not really. It’s still a fundamentally, mystifyingly botched retcon enabling the further adventures of MacLeod, just not quite as transparently shredded in the editing room.

In a way, that’s good, as there can be no real defence that the fault lies elsewhere. What was Russell Mulcahy thinking? What was anyone thinking? Th…

So, you want to go overseas. Kill some Nazis.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
(SPOILERS) I suppose you have to give Kevin Feige credit for turning the least-likely-to-succeed-in-view-of-America’s-standing-with-the-rest-of-the-world superhero into one of Marvel’s biggest success stories, but I tend to regard Steve Rogers and his alter ego as something of a damp squib who got lucky. Lucky in that his first sequel threw him into a conspiracy plotline that effectively played off his unwavering and unpalatable nobility and lucky in that his second had him butting heads with Tony Stark and a supporting selection of superheroes. But coming off the starting block, Captain America: The First Avenger is as below par as pre-transformation Steve himself, and I’m always baffled when it turns up in best of Marvel Cinematic Universe lists. The best I can say for it is that Joe Johnston’s movie offers a mildly engaging opening section and the occasional facility for sharp humour. For the most part, though, it’s as bland and impersonal as…

I once fought for two days with an arrow through my testicle.

Kingdom of Heaven Director’s Cut (2005)
(SPOILERS) There’s an oft-cited view that Kingdom of Heaven, in its unexpurgated as-Ridley-honest-to-goodness-intended director’s cut – in contrast to some of his other, rather superfluous director’s cuts, in which case – is a goddam masterpiece. It isn’t, I’m afraid. First and foremost, Orlando Bloom is not miraculously transformed into a leading man with any presence, substance or conviction. But there are other problems, more than evident, mostly in the form of the revisionist pose William Monahan’s screenplay adopts and the blundering lack of subtlety with which his director translates it.

Definitely the perfect prisoner’s friend.

The Avengers 1.20: Tunnel of Fear
(SPOILERS) As Alan Hayes observes (in the booklet accompanying the DVD release of this recently discovered Season One episode), there’s a more than passing kitchen sink element to Tunnel of Fear. You could almost expect it to form the basis of a Public Eye case, rather than one in which Steed and Dr Keel get involved, if not for the necessary paraphernalia of secrets being circulated via a circus fairground.

I apologise for Oslo's low murder rate.

The Snowman (2017)
(SPOILERS) Maybe Morton Tyldum made Jo Nesbø adaptations look deceptively easy with Headhunters, although Tyldum hasn’t show such facility with material since, so maybe Nesbø simply suits someone with hackier sensibilities than Tomas Alfredson. It’s a long way down from the classy intrigue of John Le Carré to the serial killer clichés of The Snowman, and I’m inclined to think that, even if Alfredson had managed to film that 15% of the screenplay he says went awry, this wouldn’t have been all that great.

An initiative test. How simply marvellous!

You Must Be Joking! (1965)
A time before a Michael Winner film was a de facto cinematic blot on the landscape is now scarcely conceivable. His output, post- (or thereabouts) Death Wish (“a pleasant romp”) is so roundly derided that it’s easy to forget that the once-and-only dining columnist and raconteur was once a bright (well…) young thing of the ‘60s, riding the wave of excitement (most likely highly cynically) and innovation in British cinema. His best-known efforts from this period are a series of movies with Oliver Reed – including the one with the elephant – and tend to represent the director in his pleasant romp period, before he attacked genres with all the precision and artistic integrity of a blunt penknife. You Must Be Joking! comes from that era, its director’s ninth feature, straddling the gap between Ealing and the Swinging ‘60s; coarser, cruder comedies would soon become the order of the day, the mild ribaldry of Carry On pitching into bawdy flesh-fests. You Must Be Joki…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog