Saving General Yang

Another film based on the Yang Generals legend from director Ronny Yu (see LA).

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Raymond Lam misses "Yang Brothers"
From Cinema Online Exclusively for Yahoo! Newsroom – 11 hours ago

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Raymond Lam misses "Yang Brothers"

25 Feb – Ever since he wrappd up filming for his latest historical war epic, "Saving General Yang", TVB actor Raymond Lam revealed that he missed everything about the filming and particularly his Yang brothers.

As reported on Popular Asians, while speaking to the media recently, the actor revealed that although the upcoming "Saving General Yang" was not the first movie he ever made, the war epic is definitely the first big milestone of his movie career.

The actor stated, "Director Ronny Yu is very supportive. As a rookie film actor, I now have more confidence with my own acting style."

Having spent many weeks filming the movie with the rest of the cast, Raymond expressed that he missed their good relationship with one another. The actor stated, "I am looking forward to doing the press tour for the film. I will be able to see everyone then. We are really as close as family!"

The actor, who plays the fifth brother Yang Wulang in the movie revealed, "When I first heard that I will be playing Yang Wulang, I literally exploded with happiness! I grew up watching Jet Li's "Shaolin Temple", and know that the Wulang's Eight Diagram Pole is composed by Wulang! If there will be a sequel [to Saving General Yang], I will not mind shaving my head for the role!"

To be released worldwide on 4 April, "Saving General Yang" also stars Xu Fan as She Taijun, Ekin Cheng as Yang Dalang, Yu Bo as Yang Erlang, Vic Chou as Yang Sanlang, Li Chen as Yang Silang, Raymond Lam as Yang Wulang, Ady An as Princess Chai, and Bryan Leung as Pan Renmei.

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Review: SAVING GENERAL YANG is Solid with Glimpses of Greatness
James Marsh, Asian Editor
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Journeyman director Ronny Yu (The Bride With White Hair, Fearless) delivers his first film in seven years, a solid if unremarkable retelling of the legendary Yang family, with sporadic visual flourishes but a lightweight script that fails to develop its large roster of characters.

Despite being in love with Liulang (Wu Chun), sixth son of revered General Yang (Adam Cheng), the beautiful Princess Chai (Ady An) is betrothed to the son of a rival clan leader. Defying their father's orders, Liulang and his younger brother enter into a duel for the Princess' hand, inadvertently starting a war that will destroy the clan - and much of the kingdom along with it.

General Yang is forced into battle, only to find himself cut off and surrounded by enemy troops, under the leadership of Boyan (Shao Bing), son of Yang's supposed allies. The general is then used as bait to lure his seven sons out and attempt a rescue, who ride right into Boyan's trap.

There is a strong Siege of Troy vibe to the plot of Saving General Yang, as two mighty clans go to war over a woman, and waste the lives of thousands for the hand of just one. But at its heart, this is a story of honour and loyalty, and a family who were willing to put their own lives at risk for the sake of each other, and the stability of the nation.

Local audiences will be familiar with the Yang Family, whose heroic exploits that span numerous generations are chronicled in books, plays and folktales. The most popular chapter follows immediately after Yu's film and depicts the Yang widows, who were left to fend for themselves after many of the clan's men died in battle. In fact, this project was at one point going to be an all-woman affair, only to be reworked into its current incarnation at the last moment. This might have had something to do with Frankie Chan's endearingly poor Legendary Amazons, which arrived in late 2011, just as production on Saving General Yang began in earnest.

Whatever the reason, the last minute overhaul is glaringly apparent, as the biggest problem with Saving General Yang is its flimsy script. It's a story with seven heroes, dozens of superfluous family members, and at least three separate armies of antagonists in a film the clocks in at a brisk 102 minutes. That doesn't leave much breathing room for nuanced character development. Fortunately the seven brothers - played in descending order by Ekin Cheng, Yu Bo, Vic Chow, Li Chen, Raymond Lam, Wu Chun and Fu Xinbo - pretty much always refer to each other as "First Brother" or "Third Son", so names aren't that important.

However, we get very little insight into their relationships - as sons, brothers or lovers. They simply exist - loyal, bonded by blood, and heroic to the last, while differentiating between them becomes impossible. Before long they have become simply "the one with the bow", "the one with the scar on his face" and "the one who started all this". Clearly this is a result of the project being retooled but the results make it difficult to engage with the film on anything more than a surface level.

Adam Cheng, star of such classics as Tsui Hark's Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain, stars as the benevolent patriarch, who is so loved and respected by his children that even after repeatedly whipping them, they still willingly help him into his armour with a smile. We quickly learn that the real strength of the family comes from its women, particularly Madame Yang (Xu Fan), who supports her husband and sons in their bloody pursuits, but is alone in worrying about the ramifications of their actions.

Unfortunately Princess Chai, the trophy wife-to-be is barely given any time in which to convince the audience that she is worth shedding a single drop of blood for, and while Taiwanese actress Ady An is an attractive young lady, she's hardly a face that would launch a thousand ships.

With characterisation this flimsy, Saving General Yang lives or dies on its action and to his credit, Yu does produce a couple of gorgeously-staged sequences. There is an arrow fight amidst a field of tall grass towards the end that is worth the ticket price alone, but the film really needed more such moments. Had each son been given his own signature scene, or visual motif, then the film might have been excused its lack of narrative nourishment. For a film so reliant on action, the fight sequences are surprisingly bloodless, with the few overtly violent moments that do occur either staged compassionately - when Yang's wounds are tended to - or played for laughs.

Saving General Yang proves a competent exercise in large scale period filmmaking, and certainly more exciting than recent misfires like Andrew Lau's The Guillotines. Had Yu not recently confirmed that he has turned down the chance to direct Silver Vase, Iron Knight, I would be encouraged by what is on display here that he'd do a good job with that (presumably) more substantial material. As it is, the brief moments when Saving General Yang does display genuine visual flair can only tease at what might have been with a better script.

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My interview with Ronny Yu from 2006: Ronny Yu is FEARLESS

All-heartthrob cast? That might be the dealbreaker for me. :(

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Ronny Yu
Posted: 27 Mar 2013

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Fearless director Ronny Yu tells Edmund Lee why he’s made Saving General Yang with an all-heartthrob cast.

The fact that Ekin Cheng and Raymond Lam are in just the next room has perhaps made it slightly more awkward than it’d otherwise be when the question about his movie’s casting is brought up to Ronny Yu. After all, Saving General Yang has uncharacteristically rounded up many of the (allegedly) hottest male actors from Hong Kong (Cheng and Lam), Taiwan (Wu Chun, Vic Chou) and mainland China (Yu Bo) to recount the heroic feats of the celebrated Yang family of generals from the Song dynasty.

Yu was first approached, about three years ago, to helm the project by Raymond Wong, who last worked with him by co-producing two of the filmmaker’s most representative titles: The Bride with White Hair (1993) and The Phantom Lover (1995). For the veteran director who has inadvertently found a niche in Hollywood horror sequels – with 1998’s Bride of Chucky and 2003’s Freddy vs Jason – the historical action drama represents a welcome return to his Chinese roots following the Jet Li-starring Fearless (2006), which was based on the folk legend of martial artist Huo Yuanjia.

Currently splitting his time between Sydney, Los Angeles and Hong Kong, Yu is already in preparation for an Ocean’s Eleven-like action thriller that will hopefully be able to reunite his gorgeous-looking acting ensemble. Apart from confirming that he has turned down Harvey Weinstein’s offer to direct the much-rumoured Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel, Yu also talks about the making – and his unusual expectation – for Saving General Yang when he sits down with Time Out.

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After the preview screening of Saving General Yang, quite a few critics have said that they’re being reminded of the vibe of 1980s and 90s Hong Kong cinema.
That’s only appropriate – as I started my film directorial career around that time. I guess it’s the pace of my film that especially reminds the audience of that bygone era: movies tended to be brisk and very entertaining then. And it’s the right approach for this movie: telling a historical story like this, it’s impossible to reach out to the younger generation if the narration was done in a more conventional way. So how do I inject some modern sensibilities into it? I shot the movie as a thriller. It’s important to have fun. I tried to adopt the coolest approach and told the story with the coolest young actors I could find.

It’s interesting that you mentioned your casting, which is, shall we say, rather idiosyncratic. Your main cast consists of mostly male idols who aren’t exactly known for either their acting or their martial arts skills.

I was looking for three attributes: I want them to be real, truthful and dynamic. By ‘real’, I want the audience to feel that these young actors are really on the battlefield – that they’re not merely acting. By ‘truth’, I want them to come up with their own movement and dialogue, and I want them to ride on real horses and wear real armour. It’s good that these actors were not used to filming action scenes because they wouldn’t seek to find an easy way out like the veterans sometimes do. As for ‘dynamic’… you know what I mean when it comes to action filmmaking.

It’s been a while since your last film Fearless…

[Interrupts] It’s been seven years.

So what have you been up to?

[Laughs] The reason I haven’t made a movie was that all I was offered in the US were horror movies, and I was getting bored with them. I tried not to repeat myself and I went through the process of reading a script, refusing a script, reading one, refusing one… until I was approached for the project of Saving General Yang and came up with a new approach for the story. I found it at once challenging and exciting.

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What was the main reason you took up the project?

I want to remind the younger audiences of the traditional Chinese values of loyalty and filial piety. This is a story that deserves to be told – just like the time when Jet Li approached me to make Fearless, because he wanted to spread the spirit of Chinese wushu with that movie. Ever since, I made a promise to myself that whenever I had the chance to make another Chinese movie, I’d only tell a story that advocates Chinese traditional culture. I don’t want to make just another random action movie – I mean, I’m so old already! I don’t have much time left, so I want to do something more meaningful. It’s a mission I gave myself.

Personally, what’s your expectation for Saving General Yang?

To be honest, I really hope that my audiences, immediately after they come out from the cinema, will pick up their phones and call their family members. Whether they’re calling their brother, their father or their mother… it doesn’t matter. Just say hi and let them know that you’re family and you care.

Saving General Yang 忠烈楊家將 opens on Thu Apr 4.

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...is that the same as emotional content? I think not.

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Film Review: ‘Saving General Yang’
July 14, 2013 | 10:12PM PT
Ronny Yu's latest delivers reliably robust action but shows little concern for emotional finesse.
Maggie Lee

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Based on a Chinese legend from the Song dynasty about seven brothers who fought Khitan invaders to rescue their father, “Saving General Yang” reps a curious cross between brawny machismo and sexy eye-candy. Veteran Hong Kong helmer Ronny Yu (“Fearless,” “The Bride With White Hair”) delivers reliably robust action but shows little concern for emotional finesse. Nevertheless, the shrewd casting of pan-Chinese pop idols alongside veteran actors lends a hip spin to an old-fashioned tale of chivalry. Pic did middling biz in China, which is showing signs of war-epic fatigue, but sales to Europe and Asia have reportedly been satisfactory.

The historical saga of the Yang family, whose members dedicated their lives to defending the Chinese border from invasions by the Khitan people (nomads from Mongolia and Manchuria), has been recounted in serial novels and opera for centuries, and has also spawned several films and TV series. However, the Yang wives usually took centerstage in prior tellings, as in 2011′s “Legendary Amazons,” helmed by Frankie Chan. Yu recharges the old conceits by bringing the men back to the fore and representing them as spunky, studly dudes rather than straight-laced patriots, giving the film a go-for-broke masculine intensity reminiscent of Andrew Lau’s “Young & Dangerous” (1996). Edmond Wong’s screenplay also brings a welcome degree of narrative coherence to a chronicle that spans three generations in prior versions, singling out one decisive episode that took place around 986 A.D.

While competing for the hand of childhood sweetheart Princess Chai (Ady Ang) in a martial-arts championship, Yanzhao (Wu Chun), the sixth son of Gen. Yang Ye (Adam Cheng), accidentally kills the son of deadly rival Lord Pan Renmei (Leung Kar-yan). When the Khitan forces attack the town of Jinshatan at the northwestern border, a conciliatory Ye agrees to subordinate himself to Pan, who has angled for the position of commander of a 60,000-strong defense army.

Pan orders Ye to lead the vanguard, but retreats as soon as the enemy advances, leaving Ye stranded, and in a rousing battle scene distinguished by sweeping panoramic shots, the general is injured and cornered on Twin Wolves Mountain. He’s held hostage by Khitan commander Yeluv Yuan (Shao Bing), who is bent on avenging his father’s death at Ye’s hands years ago, and who knows that Ye’s seven sons will come to his aid. Ye’s wife, Saihua (Xu Fan), hears of the news and consults a clairvoyant, who delivers an equivocating prophecy: “Seven depart, only six return.” On the night before the expedition, eldest son Yanping (Ekin Cheng) promises his mother he’ll lay down his life to ensure his brothers’ safety.

Riding out with a small brigade, Ye’s sons locate their father with a handful of other survivors. But they’re soon ambushed by the Khitan soldiers, in a breathtaking coup that merges whirlwind movements with thundering explosions, choreographed by Stephen Tung Wai and designed by a Korean special-effects team to show off the speed and ingenuity of Yeluv’s military manoeuvers. From this point onward, director Yu maintains a vigorous pace and a varied range of action setpieces, from chases across treacherous terrain to combat scenes showcasing the Yang brothers’ signature weapons. The violence is unabashedly graphic and bloody, as framed by ace Hong Kong lenser Chan Chi-ying against the majestically barren backdrop of Henan province (standing in for Shanxi).

To make the male-centric plot more palatable to female audiences, the cast includes several pop idols, notably Wu Chun (a former member of boy band Fahrenheit), Vic Chou (from band F4) and Hong Kong it-boy Raymond Lam (“The Sorcerer and the White Snake”). Cheng and Xu anchor the drama with an air of authority as the clan elders, but sadly, there are so few scenes in which Ye and his wife interact with their children, or with each other, that there’s little ensemble acting to speak of. The other wives and handmaidens in the story get no more than a scene or two, and even then, they tend to disappear into the ornate decor. Princess Chai, the story’s catalyst, makes a grand entrance but fizzles out completely after the prologue.

Production design reps one of the film’s most impressive tech elements, reinforcing the Yang clan’s hallowed heritage through ornate architecture and a courtyard designed to look like a coliseum. Other craft contributions, particularly the lighting with its high contrast between indoors and outdoors, are above average for a standard Hong Kong-mainland co-production.
Film Review: 'Saving General Yang'
Reviewed at Hong Kong Film Festival (Gala Premiere), March 28, 2013. (Also in Udine Far East Film Festival.) Running time: 103 MIN. Original title: "Zhonglie Yangjiajiang"
Production
(Hong Kong-China) A Pegasus Motion Pictures (in Hong Kong) release, presentation of a Pegasus Motion Pictures Prod. production in association with Henan Film & TV Prod. Group Co., Huayi Brothers Media, Pegasus Film & TV Culture (Beijing). (International sales: Pegasus Motion Pictures Distribution, Hong Kong.) Produced by Raymond Wong, Ronny Yu. Executive producer, Raymond Wong.
Crew
Directed by Ronny Yu. Screenplay, Edmond Wong. Camera (color, widescreen), Chan Chi-ying; editor, Drew Thompson; music/music supervisor, Kenji Kawai, production designer, Kenneth Mak; set decorator, Chen Heyong; costume designer, Han Zhong; sound (Dolby Digital), Steve Burgess; supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, Steve Burgess; visual effects supervisor, Kim Tae-hun, Ryu Hui-jeong; visual effects, Next Visual Studios (Korea); action choreographer, Stephen Tung Wai; second unit camera, Davy Tsou.
With
Adam Cheng, Ekin Cheng, Wu Chun, Raymond Lam, Vic Chou, Ady Ang, Xu Fan, Shao Bing, Leung Kar-yan, Fu Xinbo, Yu Bo, Li Chen, Li Qian. (Mandarin dialogue)

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Our LA thread.

I had high hopes for this film based on the early clips I saw released but the film turned out to be ho hum...a Chinese not so magnificent seven. General Yang is captured and his seven sons battle behind enemy lines to rescue him...the story isn't particularly compelling nor is the melodrama built up to make the viewer enticed to stick around.

There are only a couple of nice battle scenes but they are spaced far apart, the action is the most redeeming part of the film there is just not enough of it. I understand this tale is big on virtue, as the 7 sons are revered for their loyalty.

I give it 5.5 Bawangs out of 10.

will u guys never learn? if the cast looks like trannies, there aint gonna be no filial piety.

i recommend sino dutch war if u wanna get all tingly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnwMXB4Jrz0

May all your trannies have the breath of a thousand camels.

I enjoyed the look of the film overall - the armor, the sets, the locations. And I've always loved this tale. I had to revisit it recently for a feature story in our July/August 2013 issue: Dining Table Kung Fu and Yang Family Spear. There are some big battlefield fights, although they are shot a little too tight to see the action well, save for a few nice overhead shots. The best ultravi was with archery, and I'd attribute that to the influence of Korean film. It's the sort of medieval on-the-run war flick where wounds are cauterized with a fire-heated knife and the villains wield wolf-tooth club maces with heads the size of watermelons. The Khitan are particularly heavy-metal Road-Warrior-esque, all in black with strange feather adorned armor, silly goth haircuts and tattoos. The lead villain is in white and a strangely sympathetic character. The review above characterizing the seven sons as all-hearthrob is spot on, and most of the characters were monotone, save Ekin Cheng perhaps. All in all, I was entertained by it visually and engaged with some of the fights, but I'm ready for Ronny Yu to move on to something different.

That's interesting Gene, I thought the armor and weapons looked very plastic and fake. Just look at the above stills...

I said I liked the armor, but not for its reality (note my "wolf-tooth club maces with heads the size of watermelons"). The armor and weapons were very cartoonish. But remember, I like tokusatsu. I'm ok with absurd comic-book-esque armor, as long as it's stylish.