The Wrath of Vajra

[GeneChing]

This is pulling in some good reviews.

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The Wrath of Vajra (Jin Gang Wang: Si Wang Jiu Shu): HK Filmart Review
1:40 PM PST 3/8/2014 by Clarence Tsui


Well Go USA Entertainment
Korean break-dancer "Poppin" Nam Hyun-joon in The Wrath of Vajra.

The Bottom Line
Slick production values prop up smooth action choreography and obscure thin and fantastical premise.
Venue
Public screening, Hong Kong, Mar. 6, 2014
Director
Law Wing-cheong
Cast
Xing Yu (aka Shi Yanneng), Steve Yoo, "Poppin" Nam Hyun-Joon, Jiang Baocheng, Ya Mei
Producer: Pang Hong
Shaolin-monk-turned-actor Xing Yu stars as a Chinese fighter confronting the Japanese death cult who raised him to wreak havoc in his home country during WWII.

For a film set during the second world war and revolving around a Japanese conspiracy aimed at converting POWs and local children into cold-blooded hitmen, The Wrath of Vajra is surprisingly devoid of jingoism: there's hardly a rising-sun banner or a thin moustache in view, and that's no big patriotic speech from the hero before his final showdown with the villain either. It could have been a canny move from the filmmakers to circumvent last year's official clampdown on extremist anti-Japanese fare; whatever the reason, it's a shift which has allowed the bone-cracking martial arts sequence and slick production values to take centerstage.

Then again, to attach message-heavy seriousness to this fantastical and bordering-on-silly premise is probably impossible in any case. Produced by Pang Hong (Painted Skin: Resurrection) and directed by Hong Kong's Law Wing-cheong (part of Johnnie To's Milkyway Image crew), The Wrath of Vajra is more about form: the vividly real action choreography intensified by slow-motion gimmickry, of course, but also playing out these confrontations (as well as taut verbal spars) in noir-like settings.

While Wrath might have disappointed during its short run in Chinese cinemas in September (with takings of just $2 million) - a flop due partly to its lack of big-name stars and the big-budget blockbusters also being released during the same National-Day window - it might find an audience among international kung-fu buffs looking for that mythical dose of unadulterated, VFX-free fights and flights featuring bona fide martial arts practitioners. Opening in Hong Kong on Mar. 6, the film will hit home-video shelves in the US on Mar. 18, and is repped at the Filmart by Media Asia.

Central to the proceedings is the Shaolin-monk-turned-actor Xing Yu (Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, credited here in his monastic moniker Shi Yanneng), who plays a character known in the film simply as K-29 - a handle imposed on him when he was abducted from his parents and then raised to become an assassin by a deadly Japanese cult called Hades. When the film begins, sometime at the tail-end of the second world war, Hades has already been disbanded for 12 years by the Japanese military regime for its fundamentalism, with its leader Kawao Amano (Japanese action-film veteran Yasuaki Kurata) in jail and K-29 leading a new life at a Shaolin temple; as a rogue prince in Tokyo attempts to revive the sect to win the war, the fighter is forced to confront his past in order to save the new batch of children being frog-marched into the cult.

Arriving at the villains' den - which production designers Liu Jingpingand Liu Xiaoyan have created in the style of a traditional roundhouse in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian - K-29 is greeted by Daisuke Kurashige (the Korean-American pop star Steve Yoo), the top fighter in the cult. An warped idealist who firmly believes in his master's teaching of conquest through spiritual strength rather than swordplay - a maxim less grounded in logic but more in rationalizing the bare-knuckles mano-a-mano in the age of machine guns - he would unleash his underlings on K-29, including a towering giant (Jiang Baocheng) and a blood-sucking acrobat (the Korean break-dancer "Poppin" Nam Hyun-joon) before, of course, dusting himself for that final showdown.

Padding up the thin narrative is the presence of a group of captured foreign soldiers who are given the choice of joining the cult or die - with some of them, including the Chinese-speaking American squadron leader Bill (US kickboxer and martial arts actor Matt Mullins), revealing themselves to be former Hades trainees readying for some kind of vengeance of their own as well. This, alongside the presence of the cult master's journalist daughter Eiko (Ya Mei) who disapproves of the plan and files home reports of K-29's triumphs, are just distractions to the neck-breaking moves on show. It's not exactly a film set to reinvent the action-thriller wheel - and the acting can sometimes be as painful to watch as the skull-crushing - but what it does is to offer some easy diversion for genre geeks looking for yet another muscular thrash-about.

Venue: Public screening, Hong Kong, Mar. 6, 2014
Production Companies: Kylin Network (Beijing) Movie & Culture Media and co-presented by Ningxia Movie Group, Media Asia Film International, China Film Co., Beijing Kylin Culture, Beijing Huaming Star International Culture Media, Sanz Group, Beijing Daqiao Tang Film Television Media
Director: Law Wing-cheong
Cast: Xing Yu (aka Shi Yanneng), Steve Yoo, "Poppin" Nam Hyun-Joon, Jiang Baocheng, Ya Mei
Producer: Pang Hong
Executive Producers: Guo Li, Yang Hongtao, Peter Lam, Han Sanping, Shang Jin, Rayman Liu, Yan Xiaoming, Lin Zhishan, Wang Liqiao, Blues Li
Screenwriters: Yang Zhenjian, Qu Linan
Director of Photography: Fung Yuen-man
Editor: David Murray Richardson
Production Designers: Liu Jingping, Liu Xiaoyan
Music: Chen Tao, Wang Bei
Action Director: Zhang Peng
International Sales: Media Asia Film Distribution
US Distributor: Well Go USA Entertainment
In Mandarin, Japanese and English
97 minutes

[GeneChing]

FIRST FORUM REVIEW!
Wrath of Vajra has a simple plot - a Japanese death cult kidnaps kids and trains them to be assassins through fighting death matches. Xingyu (billed as Shi Yanneng here) was a product of the cult who grows up, reforms and becomes a disciple of the Southern Shaolin Temple, only to get drawn back into hell...or Hades in this case. The cult is called Hades, pronounce Hah-dis in Chinese. The rest is a lot of blood-spittin fights, which is really all we want to see in a Kung Fu flick. Good stuff overall. Nice scenery. Classic villainous lair atmosphere. Fights, fights, fights. Lots of slo-mos of people getting their face smashed so hard that their flesh wobbles like jello. There are some good villains to oppose Xingyu: a huge giant played by Jiang Baocheng (height 7" 6 1/2') and Poppin Hyun-Joon, a Korean hip hop dancer, playing Crazy Monkey, who is sort of a Butoh villain, crazy contorted. And there's a lot of random assassins to kill. There's also some distracting subplots involving a cute but clueless Japanese reporter (daughter of the cult leader) and a really annoying shami (child monk) who just cries all the time and needs his face smashed so hard that his flesh wobbles like jello. Xingyu does his best to channel Bruce Lee from Fist of Fury with his Mandarin-collared suit and his emotionally-content-full demeanor as he dispatches hordes of Japanese katana-wielding assassins. So yeah, lots of sword-fighting action which always makes me happy.

Make sure you watch the trailer on our YouTube channel

[Jimbo]

Finally saw it, and it's a pretty good one. I was curious to see how Xing Yu would handle the lead role in a movie, and IMO he brings quite a lot to the table. I enjoyed his style a lot, and the fights have some interesting choreography.

Unfortunately, I had to return two copies of this DVD due to a manufacturing defect that wouldn't allow them to play. At all. Finally, the third one (from a different store) played fine until during the end fight, when it began freezing and finally became unplayable. So I still haven't seen how it ends.

I don't know if this is common or unique to Well Go USA DVDs, but it's frakkin' annoying. I have other DVDs from Well Go that work fine...well, my copy of The Man From Nowhere starts skipping/freezing an hour in, but always corrects when I stop/start it again once. I'm wondering if anybody else has had issues with the DVDs of Wrath of Vajra, or any others by Well Go? Or was there just one big defective batch?

[GeneChing]

See our Wrath of Vajra winners thread.

Jimbo, I've never had a problem with Well Go USA DVDs. You sure it's not your DVD player? Those have become so disposable now. On the flip side, as part of a DVD production company myself, bad batches do happen. Were they helpful with the replacement?

[Jimbo]

I contacted Well Go yesterday, and got a nice response regarding the defects. Dennis at Well Go seemed very interested in the issue, and said I can send my current copy back to them directly so they can look into it, and they will send me a new copy that will be checked for QC.