Something dawned on me this morning. Hollywood has churned out more blockbuster films this year featuring characters skilled in the martial arts than in any previous year: Guardians of the Galaxy II; Wonder Woman; Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets; Atomic Blonde; Hitman's Bodyguard; American Assassin; Kingsman: The Golden Circle; Bladerunner 2047; and I'll include January 2017s release of John Wick: Chapter 2. What's different about these films compared to other years? None of the movie characters are Asian.
Hollywood has learned enough from the fight choreography and camera skills of Asian talent to create their own talent and fight scenes. The fights are pretty good. However, after you watch South Korea's The Villainess or Hong Kong's Paradox, you quickly see what's lacking in Hollywood: artistically creative quality, novelty, and those ultra-cool moments that remind you that Asia is still the master of making martial arts films.
So what's so special about these two films? Come to the Pacific Arts Movement's (Pac-Arts) 18th Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival (SDAFF) from November 9 through 18 to see for yourself, as The Villainess and Paradox are among the 150 films from 20 countries on their schedule.
With Taiwanese roots and in his seventh year as SDAFF's artistic director, Brian Hu joyfully explains, "When you see Villainess, then you will know. When I saw this at the Cannes film festival, it was a world premiere at a midnight screening in front of 2000 screaming French people. I left that theater feeling the way I felt after watching Ong Bak (2003). You're ferociously taken someplace and you feel different in a profound way leaving the theater compared to when you walked in. I felt like it was something I'd never seen before. It's also not done in such a consistent way and that they're announcing that this is going to be their style…as if to say this is going to be our style. I was taken away. It's also an amazing female character."
Hu is referring to the 30-year-old Kim Ok-bin who has a 141 IQ and likes building computers. Though trained in Korean martial arts since childhood (holds a 3rd degree black belt in Hapkido and a 2nd degree in Taekwondo), Kim had to spend two months at the Seoul Action School to learn how to use a long sword, dagger, pistol, rifle and the chop 'em up battle ax.
In The Villainess, Sooh-hee (Kim), is a mentally disturbed, ballistic-bladed assassin who, upon failing to kill her father's murderer, is surreptitiously re-trained by a covert group of assassins to be a calmer, more deadly hatchet-woman. If she doesn't do their bidding, her cute wee daughter and second husband will be slaughtered.
Some Korean filmmakers have made their mark based on the inventive way they were filmed, like Park Chan-wook's Night Fishing (2011) that was entirely shot by iPhone and Bon Joon-ho's Influenza (2004) which used security cameras from a toilet, ATM machines, a bank, store, subway station, a parking garage and a post office. Both of these films have appeared at previous SDAFFs. In The Villainess, director Jung Byung-gil's shtick is what I call ping-pong fight choreography.
Imagine if a ping-pong ball was a camera and if the ball was being struck back and forth, not between players with paddles but between fighters with weapons. The ping-pong ball's POV images would be tight, shaking camera angles laced with rapid zoom-ins and zoom-outs, with snappy rolling pans, tilts and spins. Now take the ping-pong ball and hit it to the ground, up in the air, through a window or a door, off a wall, out of a three-story window, etc, then use all of the fight's offensive and defensive reaction shots of the actors and spatial displacement between them seen in the ball's visual field…and that's how the The Villainess fights look. It's wild to witness.
As for Paradox, 1970s Kung Fu fan Hu shares that he actually likes this film more, saying, "It's like the grand tradition of Hong Kong going back to Chang Cheh (known for his Shaw Brothers Shaolin Temple and Chinese storied wuxia and Jiang Hu epics), where men who are ferocious have a lot of feelings, which Hong Kong male melodrama films do well, especially with their action movies. John Woo's films are also a good example. I saw a lot of that sensibility while watching Paradox. It's angsty and the main character's own difficulty in reconciling his relationship with his daughter comes out in action and it becomes his own way of channeling his sadness and sense of inadequacy as a father. Plus, the choreography is done by Sammo Hung and guest stars Tony Jaa. With Sammo and Jaa, it's like the '80s…those scenes are back."
After Wilson Yip directed Donnie Yen in SPL (2005), which featured gritty bludgeoning fights with Yen taking on Sammo Hung and Wu Jing (Wolf Warrior II), the franchise's directing reigns were passed on to Cheang Pou-Soi in 2015 to shoot the equally vicious SPL 2: A Time of Consequences (aka Kill Zone 2). Starring Wu Jing, Louis Koo and Tony Jaa, it featured mesmerizing brutal choreography by Hung. The directorial reins passed back to Wilson Yip for Paradox (aka SPL3), which reunites Koo, Jaa and newcomer Wu Yue all pitted against the villainous Sacha (Wing Chun man Chris Collins) to deliver yet another sleek and powerful action thriller with outstanding fight choreography compliments of Hung.
Paradox is about widower Hong Kong cop Lee Chung-chi (Koo) who is so overly protective of his only child that when she announces she is pregnant and intends to keep the baby and marry her boyfriend – things he knows nothing about – he freaks out and forbids it. Next thing you know she's in Thailand and has been kidnapped. Lee fears she is being forced into prostitution; instead, she's fallen into the hands of an illegal organ trader. Lee speeds to Thailand and works the case with local Thai cops, Hong Kong expat Chiu (Wu) and the psychic Tak (Jaa) in a race against time to find his daughter before she becomes dis-organized.
And speaking of disorganization and part confusion, there's another film in the franchise on the way, SPL3: War Needs Lord, to be directed by Cheang and produced by Yip. And speaking of sequels, based on the 2005 manga series Shinjuku Swan Kabukicho Skauto Sabaibaru by Ken Wakui, actor Gou Ayano returns as the wild-eyed, yellow-haired Tatsuhiko Shiratori along with most of his same gangland cronies and enemies (many times during flashbacks) in the U.S. premiere of Shinjuku Swan II.
Set in the red-light district of Shinjuku, Tokyo, Shinjuku Swan is the origin story of the broke and jobless Tatsuhiko who meets Matora (Yusuke Iseya), a scout who gives Tatsuhiko a job doing what he does, recruiting girls on the streets to work in the adult entertainment business. What's crazy about Swan is that I've never seen a character get so thoroughly beaten to a pulp multiple times as Tatsuhiko. It's almost funny because he keeps fighting like an out-of-control Tasmanian Devil from a Bugs Bunny cartoon while screaming like an elk in heat throughout each beating. Then from nowhere he does a sparkling Karate move that, based on the way he flails his limbs around like wet noodles, is so out of character that you can't help but to laugh. Yet what's not so funny is the moral ambiguity the film flaunts as Tatsuhiko is basically a pimp. As he watches these girls get physically and sexually abused, he's initially worried about recruiting women, but is easily swayed by Matora that the work improves the girls' lives and many enjoy their work.
Shinjuku Swan II has Tatsuhiko recruiting girls in Yokohama, where he runs into similar problems and angst while still getting pummeled to a pulp numerous times. However, this time around he's become more adept at fighting back as the choreography is sharper and slightly more stylized. Yet it's still just smash'em and bash'em mayhem with moments of glorious counterattacks.
Reflecting on his second year as the Pac-Arts executive director, first generation Chinese American Kent Cheng closes, "This has been a year where I've had many opportunities to think about why am I here and why am I connected with what we do. It's not just the films but for me Pac-Arts…we're like a family. Because we're connecting for a common cause, whether it's just for the enjoyment of film, or whether we're being connected to our community network though Pac-Arts, we exist in part to bring people together and that is the magic of what we do."
