Hong Kong Cinema

[yoloswegmaster]

I posted this in another thread but it's also relevant here:

MoMA is hosting a Johnnie To retrospective next month, with the following titles:

Justice, My Foot!
The Heroic Trio
Executioners
Loving You
Lifeline (35mm)
Expect the Unexpected
The Mission (35mm)
Running Out of Time
Needing You…
My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (35mm)
PTU (aka PTU: Police Tactical Unit) (35mm)
Breaking News
Throw Down
Election (35mm)
Election 2 (35mm)
Exiled (35mm)
Triangle (35mm)
Sparrow
Vengeance
Life Without Principle
Drug War
Blind Detective
Office
Mad Detective

Missing some key titles like Romancing in Thin Air, A Hero Never Dies, and Fat Choi Spirit but it's still a great looking series and I'm very jealous of anyone who gets to catch it.

[Orlac]

Is The Butterfly Murders part of the Golden Princess catalogue that the current licensors only want to license to foreign labels in its entirety for an unreasonable sum? Aren't the Chinese Ghost Stories and all classic Woo films affected too?

Butterfly Murders is owned by Seasonal. They don't seem to have had any of their titles restored recently, barring the two Jackie Chan films licensed by Sony. The DVD of Butterfly Murders used a rather dammaged and truncated print.

It was recently restored and screened in Hong Kong a couple of months ago

Hooray!

[Orlac]

I do hope Seasonal's Legend of a Fighter gets a restoration one day. Hong Kong Legends released it back in 2000, but cropped it to high heaven!

Original trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oglqxaDNdsw

HKL trailer, with heavy cropping - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxJNAaEBunE

And HKL's reason for the heavy cropping?

The following comes courtesyof the DVD Debate,which answers the query and it comes straight from Brian White,Head DVD producer at Medusa :

“The reason we decided to re-master this movie into 16:9format was to cater for the widest possible commercial audience. The hard-core collectors may all prefer 2:35:1, but we have found that many kids with 14, 17 and 21” television sets are amongst the most regular buyers of Jackie Chan movies.

Unfortunately, due to the tiny viewing area offered with the 2:35:1 format on smaller TV sets, we often get asked by this target audience to provide ‘pan & scan’ versions of our movies. As the hard-core collectors detest ‘p & s’ with a passion, I thought the 16:9 anamorphic/1:85:1 widescreen ratio, would be a good compromise that would appeal to both markets.

In addition, had we conformed the feature to 2:35:1 anamorphic standard, most of the nation’s DVD players, are currently not equiped to handle this ratio correctly, and therefore the image would be stretched.”

https://dvd-fever.co.uk/snakein/

[yoloswegmaster]

Posting this here since the label hasn't been confirmed yet but Frank Djeng posted on his Instagram page that he recorded a commentary for When Taekwondo Strikes alongside Michael Worth, which will be a part of a massive Golden Harvest boxsets being released in the U.S. early next year. He says that it's "two volumes, 14 titles", but I don't know if he means 7 or 14 titles in each set. I would bet that it's going to be released by either Shout or Arrow.

[Orlac]

I expect Shout as they did similar-sized Shaw sets.

[dwk]

It'll be Shout, they are streaming When Taekwondo Strikes.

And unless Arrow has struck a new deal with Fortune Star or got WB license out some of their HK titles, they've released all the Golden Harvest titles they licensed.

[yoloswegmaster]

Some HK films I watched this week:

City War (1988): I'm not gonna lie, I was totally convinced by the title that this was going to be a gritty and dark "Cops vs. Triads" film in the vein of a Ringo Lam film. In reality it's just your average heroic-bloodshed actioner, with inconsistent tones as the first two-thirds of the film is basically a crime film with Norman Chui being released from prison after serving 10 years and wanting revenge on the cop (played by Ti Lung) who put him there and made him impotent after shooting him in the dick during the arrest. Also mixed is a romantic comedy-drama happening between Chow Yun-Fat, who's Lung's buddy and officer/superior, and Tien Niu, who is Chui's girlfriend (ain't that a surprise). Ti Lung and Chui are both wasted here since neither have much to work with, and the romance between Chow and Tien is not that interesting since there isn't much of a chemistry between the two (though they both do try their best!). Then the last 30 minutes happen and it shifts to a hard-boiled revenge film after Ti Lung's family gets murdered by a couple of assassins who are hired by Chui, and there's a big action sequence at the end that goes big and contains some cool sequences, like where Lung gets an ax slammed into his chest, but admittedly does feel a bit one-note and wouldn't be out-of-place on any other heroic-bloodshed film. There's also traces of copaganda in it, as Ti Lung spends a chunk of the film complaining and moaning about how he's not allowed to use excessive force on people and getting in trouble with his superior, which the film tries to get you to agree with by placing him in situations where it's clear that the excessive force is needed. Also interesting to note the hints of anti-China sentiment in it, as they are solely portrayed as assassins who are smuggled in a boat from China and are hired to mercilessly kill Ti Lung's family.


Corpse Mania (1981): A Shaw Bros giallo that I really enjoyed! I'm gonna admit that I'm just not a big fan of the giallo genre, but there is something about this film that sets it apart from the giallo's that I have seen. Maybe it does have some inconsistencies with its plot, but honestly, who cares. It's constantly oozing creepiness and sliminess from its pores, like there is a scene early on depicting a man having intercourse with the dead body of a prostitute and is later found swarming with maggots all over the corpse. There some other scenes that I can talk about, but I think that it's best to go into this blind. It also helps that it's aided by some gorgeous production and set design, from the dilapidated buildings that are covered in dust and cobwebs and the streets that are covered by a thick layer of fog. I'm glad that we are seeing a 4K release of this coming from Vinegar Syndrome since the version I watched was just an 720p upscale from the DVD, which doesn't show the full potential of the atmosphere.

[yoloswegmaster]

I'm jealous, you got to see 100 Yards! I've been waiting to see this––or any new Xu Haofeng film––for years now.

German blu coming out in October

[Mr Sausage]

Corey Yuen

In honour of the recent announcement of his death, I decided to watch a bunch of Yuen films I'd never seen, plus two I hadn't seen in a while. I wouldn't rank most of the films here among his best, but it was nice to get a sense of Yuen's range as a filmmaker. He seems to've invested a lot of energy in comedies in the early 90s. But while my intention was to learn more about Yuen, I actually learned a lot more about Stephen Chow. Aside from some early supporting roles, I'd never seen Chow in anything. I'd no idea Yuen was responsible for his first breakout hits. Now that I've filled my Stephen Chow gap a bit and gotten a sense of him as a performer, I can say that while his style of comedy is not for me, it's no worse than HK comedy in general, and often a bit better. I can appreciate him as a performer: unlike so many HK comedians who have exactly one note, hysteria, Chow knows when to deadpan, and in general has a fun charm to him. So now the plan is to watch some more Stephen Chow.


Fong Sai-Yuk (Corey Yuen, 1993)

I first saw this in high school under the title The Legend, in what was probably a recut and rescored version for American viewers. This is my first time seeing the Hong Kong cut. A nationalist story about semi-historical folk hero Fong Sai-Yuk’s fight against the Manchu-led Qing dynasty on behalf of his fellow Han Chinese. Despite the inclusion of sometimes brutal violence, this is a lighthearted, goofy, frequently stylish kung fu film. The goofiness is offset by the charm of the cast, especially a regal but eccentric Josephine Siao. There’s also a strain of meta humour that’s unexpected, with people dropping the real names of the cast and director, and even other popular directors. Jet Li, needing a fake name, strikes the Wong Fei-Hung pose, Once Upon a Time in China music swelling, to declare himself Wong...Jing, the B-movie filmmaker. At another point, curling his mother’s hair, he explains he learned the English word “wonderful” from Josephine Siao, ie. the very actress playing opposite him. Given that director Yuen and fellow Little Fortune, Yuen Tak, are fight choreographers, you can expect the fighting to be terrific. The early fights have a comic energy, like the ‘floor is lava’ fight across the heads of a crowd of people. There’s also a fun, queer romance between Josephine Siao and Sibelle Hu after the former fights her dressed as a man. The plot has a fun folk tale aspect to it, with the two lovers, Jet Li and Michelle Reis, engaged to each other without realizing the other person is their secret love, each thinking their real love is somewhere else (something that darkened rooms and face veils help accomplish). While the movie takes a turn towards the serious and even brutal in the second half, overall it's a lot of light entertainment. Looking back on Yuen’s directorial career, serious, brutal action films like Righting Wrongs, She Shoots Straight, and Women on the Run were rare. He preferred the comedic, directing numerous outright comedies in addition to his action comedies. While I wouldn’t rank this as high as Twin Warriors or Once Upon a Time in China I and II, or even Corey Yuen’s My Father is a Hero, it’s still one of Jet Li’s better films and a solid entry in Yuen’s filmography. Also, Ann Hui(!) is credited as production designer.


Fong Sai-Yuk II (Corey Yuen, 1993)

Same deal, saw this in high school as The Legend II. The only thing I remembered about it was a bit of intolerable goofiness where Fong Sai Yuk’s mom thinks she’s pregnant after gas causes her belly to balloon, and a moment of unexpected brutality where someone’s fingers are broken and shoved backwards, causing an ugly open fracture. Corey Yuen has a small role here, too, as a member of the Red Lotus Society seeking the overthrow of the Manchus. As you might expect from a sequel, this is much heavier on action and lighter on story, character, and coherence. This is less a proper movie than a collection and amplification of everything that worked in the first one. The fights are more frequent and elaborate, and the comedy more exaggerated and juvenile. It’s a movie of extremes for sure. Michelle Reis is sidelined so Jet Li can have another romance, here with Amy Kwok. That leads to yet another competition to win a bride. It’s also one of Yuen’s most stylish and beautiful movies, full of unnecessarily pictorial shots, including an amazing fight down a corridor full of falling red leaves, blowing dust, and magic hour sunlight peeking over the walls. There is no reason for a furious action spectacle to look so lovely, only that it expresses the emotional extremes of the moment in a way that's so satisfying and artistic. A briskly moving, brightly coloured extravaganza that shows Yuen has learned how to take the silly comedy of his Chow films and marry it with the martial arts action he's known for.


No Retreat, No Surrender (Corey Yuen, 1986)

Yuen’s first foray into the American film market, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme in his first proper film role as a villainous Russian. That Yuen made this comical piece of trash between Yes, Madam and Righting Wrongs, two legendary HK action films, is kinda stunning. You would not suspect the same man made all three. The ghost of Bruce Lee (played by the guy who played Bruce Lee in Game of Death) appears to a young karate student and Bruce Lee fanatic to teach him to fight so he can get the girl, handle the local bullies, and deal with out of town gangsters who want to muscle in on the local dojos. There are a lot of plot strands in this movie, a bunch of which I haven’t even mentioned. The movie’s vision of urban America with its rap, skateboards, break dancers, jive-talking black kids, and fat local bullies is cringe inducing and the source of so much unintentional comedy. As an ‘American’ film, it’s unpersuasive because it feels like a set of American signifiers rather than a real location, a world constructed from American movies and tv rather than lived experience. At the same time, it doesn’t feel particularly Hong Kong. The only thing that gives away its Hong Kong origins are the fight scenes, which have a tell-tale sense for rhythm and timing and a preference for intricate strike combinations over the single flashy moves favoured by American choreographers. Otherwise its story of dedication to personal honour, achievement, and success is alien to Hong Kong filmmaking, but can be found endlessly in American sports movies. It’s interesting how the magic of Hong Kong filmmaking never seemed to survive past its borders. Every attempt by HK filmmakers and actors to make American films in the 80s and early 90s ended up as flaccid failures.


No Retreat, No Surrender 2 (Corey Yuen, 1987)

Here we go. The action is pure Hong Kong: relentless, ridiculous, and expertly timed and cut. No half measures to appeal to Americans. The actors are just as bad as the first, but a lot more charming. This is 80s action cheese of just the right kind, buttressed by action sensibilities far beyond anything America had at the time. It’s not a real sequel: there are no shared characters or story beats. This involves a young guy who travels to Thailand to visit his fiancee and gets caught up in kidnappers, drug runners, and a Khmer Rouge conspiracy to kidnap a wealthy man’s daughter. The movie is mostly comprehensible, too, with a proper plot. Maybe not among Yuen’s very best, but a surprisingly fun bit of braindead 80s action.


Fist of Fury 1991 (Rico Chu, 1991)

Yuen is producer, stunt coordinator, and actor on this one, tho’ this is really a Stephen Chow film. Chow is a mainlander with a comically strong right fist (but seemingly nothing else) who arrives destitute in Hong Kong and tries to survive in various ways that contrast his country bumpkiness with the dog-eat-dog world of Hong Kong. For a movie of this title you’d expect something like Fist of Legend, not a Stephen Chow comedy with at most a couple mild Bruce Lee parodies in it. It’s not even a Bruce Lee parody all through, like Enter the Fat Dragon. Just a scene or two. The film is just as often a parody of Rocky and Raging Bull. The comedic sensibility here is literally the same as your average ten year old: jokes about spit fights, smelly butts, and sodomy whenever two guys are in close enough proximity. Tho’ in typical Hong Kong fashion, there are wild tonal shifts, where wacky hijinks stop dead so we can watch brutal, blood-soaked beatings, including a shot-for-shot recreation of Sugar Ray’s beatdown of Lamotta in Raging Bull, blood sprays and all. I think this is my first Stephen Chow movie. I’ve seen him in one or two things where he was a supporting character, but nothing where it’s his movie. Corey Yuen’s contributions are the best part, tho’. The fight scenes bring a sense of invention and visual dynamism to an otherwise conventionally shot movie. You feel Yuen’s talents wasted on lowbrow slapsticky bullshit. One of the coolest edits/transitions I’ve ever seen involves cutting from a closeup of a dark brown coat that’s just been thrown over someone’s face, to a closeup of an open umbrella pointed directly into the camera that suddenly closes, the similarity in colour hiding the cut. The effect is terrific, a sudden coat-draping turning unexpectedly into the dynamic movement of the umbrella. Stuff like that is wasted in a movie like this, but so goes Hong Kong, where brilliance could be stuffed in anywhere.


Fist of Fury 1991 II (Rico Chu & Corey Yuen, 1992)

Fist of Fury 1992, surely? IMDB has Yuen as co-director, but I assume the work was divided the same as last time. An immediate sequel, with Stephen Chow dealing with the aftermath of winning the big tournament, where he’s made poor again after his friends immediately lose his prize money and the brother of the last film’s villain arrives to get revenge. Meanwhile, Josephine Siao and Natalis Chan, who had cameos in the first as these same characters apparently, play a fight-obsessed dimwit and his aunt who’s secretly a masked superhero. Then there’s all sorts of subplots, like Chow’s girlfriend believing he’s secretly gay (which makes room for endless homophobic jokes), Kenny Bee avoiding his clingy fiancee while her father tries to hurt him, and Natalis Chan’s cousin (who looks exactly like Chow’s girlfriend and is played by the same actress) arriving from out of town and falling in love with Chow. The movie is thick with plotlines. The jokes are juvenile and offensive, but are delivered with such gusto that, much to my embarrassment, I started to enjoy them. The fights are terrific, too, helped immeasurably by Yuen Wah as the villain. Josephine Siao is a great addition to the cast in a role that prefigures her character in Yuen’s Fong Sai Yuk movies. And despite the movie being a lumbering mess, the exuberance of all this excess plot, character, and energy makes for a more fun experience than its mostly lame predecessor. This is not a good movie, but there’s something oddly likeable about it.


All For the Winner (Jeffrey Lau & Corey Yuen, 1990)

A mega hit for Chow. It has the same cast and basic set up as as the later Fist of Fury 1991. Chow again is a mainlander newly arrived in Hong Kong who has magic powers, this time instead of a super strong right arm, he can see through barriers, including what cards or mahjong tablets people hold, and do other random supernatural things. So naturally his uncle wants to use him to win big at gambling, turning Chow into the Saint of Gamblers and the movie into a parody of both Rain Man and God of Gamblers. Chow again meets Sharla Cheung and Wan Yeung-Ming during a big fight/misunderstanding, falling in love with the former and becoming mortal enemies with the latter. This is also a gentle, goofy comedy that periodically breaks out into brutal, mean spirited violence that wouldn’t be out of place in a John Woo film. It also clarifies a couple other movies: Chow cameos as his Saint of Gamblers character in The Banquet and Fist of Fury 1991. The first half hour is dull and painfully unfunny, but it gains a lot of energy once Chow adopts his Saint of Gamblers persona. Too bad it can’t seem to find much narrative momentum, bouncing among plots and conceits without ever seeming to lead where it should. So when you do finally end up at the big tournament, it’s out of nowhere. A similar problem affected Fist of Fury 1991. I thought this was mostly pretty lame. It’s hard for me to believe that Hong Kongers would love this so much it broke box office records.


The Top Bet (Jeffrey Lau & Corey Yuen, 1991)

I guess Stephen Chow was busy, because they send his Saint of Gamblers character on a random round-the-world trip and bring in his hitherto unmentioned sister (Anita Mui), also sporting magical powers, as their new ringer. But she’s a PRC prude who won’t gamble, so the film also brings in the Queen of Gamblers, a cardsharp played by Dodo Cheng who feigns magical powers until the situation is out of hand enough that she needs someone to teach her real magic. Dodo Cheng steals the show and singlehandedly keeps this comedy aflaot with her charm and amusing facial expressions. She's the main reason anything here works. Otherwise, it's loud, broad, and childish, with a loosely structured plot there just to hang the random comedic situations and nonsequiturs on. I think what caught my eye about these gambling films is that skill, integrity, and personal development plays no part. The hero is not the most virtuous person, but the one who cheats the most effectively. These movies are very much in the spirit of Renaissance dramatist Ben Jonson, whose plays were grotesque working-class comedies full of sharpers and conmen all out to one up each other, with the hero being the cleverest cheater left. These gambling movies have more sympathy for their main characters than Jonson ever felt for his, and give them sentimental backstories to soften their edges; but the characters are still all tricking, conning, or attempting to exploit each other for money no matter the danger. And that’s of real interest in these energetic but lame comedies: a vision of Hong Kong full of greed, venality, corruption, and sweaty desperation disguised as everyday hustle, with social connections held together by mutual opportunism rather than fellow feeling. A social vision as cynical as Ringo Lam’s, but couched in the guise of goofy comedy rather than thrillers.

[feihong]

I'm jealous, you got to see 100 Yards! I've been waiting to see this––or any new Xu Haofeng film––for years now.

German blu coming out in October

Oh, thanks for the heads-up! This looks promising.

[yoloswegmaster]

For anyone living in the London (or anywhere near there), BFI is hosting a Maggie Cheung retrospective.

[Finch]

My Heart Is That Eternal Rose would make for quite a memorable lovers-on-the-run double bill with Benny Chan's A Moment of Romance from the following year. I've seen both The Sword and My Heart for the first time this year and both have been such exciting discoveries. I really hope the Eureka and Kani releases of both are followed by more Western releases of the rest of Patrick Tam's films (what else stands out? I'm all ears!).

I particularly remember the extended scene in the bar where Lap drinks with Shen and his Japanese guests and is then asked to sing a song while Gordon Liu's character (was an unexpected treat to see Liu play a slime ball for a change) humiliates her father who tries to drown his feelings of guilt and shame with alcohol. The entire scene is bathed in a melancholic blue from the neon lights and it reminded me of the Roadhouse scene in Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me where Julee Cruise sings of the loss of everything you've cherished and Laura starts weeping, overcome with emotion. The other moment that hit me hard was when Ah Cheung tries to see Rick and Lap off

SpoilerShow

and in order to hide his real reasons for staying behind, he lurches forward and kisses Lap

and he steps back and he smiles in that disarming way that Tony Leung does so well, and I'm thinking of Chaplin's line "smile even when your heart is breaking", and it just hits me in the solar plexus. Tam freeze frames on Cheung smiling and raising his hands in farewell but you just know it's not ending there. Tam also employs freeze frames to amazing effect in the finale and it reminded me of Peckinpah's freeze framing his opening credits but here Tam uses it for a split second or so to emphasise the characters' reactions, and I felt like my heart was skipping a beat each time he did it.

If Radiance release My Heart in the UK, I'll double-dip. Kani's disc was quite watchable though I did notice two or three spelling mistakes in their subs. The translation was good, however.

[Mr Sausage]

His other major films are Nomad, a strange, cool, sexy kind of thing about lost youth in HK, and Love Massacre, a formally dense riff on thriller films. Sadly neither have decent releases.

[mrb404]

His other major films are Nomad, a strange, cool, sexy kind of thing about lost youth in HK, and Love Massacre, a formally dense riff on thriller films. Sadly neither have decent releases.

Well, the recent 4K restoration of the Director's Cut of Nomad is currently on preorder in France from Carlotta (release date Nov.19), but it only includes French subtitles. I guess an English-friendly release is bound to show up somewhere.

[Finch]

Thank you for the recommendations!

[feihong]

Xu Haofeng's 100 Yards finally appeared with English subtitles on Apple TV, thanks to WellGo. The movie looks great––as a movie, it IS great, though perhaps a little less completely perfect to my eyes than The Final Master. This time the theatrical artifice of Xu's style is really brought to the fore, in a film that offers notes of mystery, romance, and intrigue to a tale of two would-be masters fighting a series of duels for succession. The movie makes clear how much of Xu's oeuvre centers around this idea of passing down martial arts traditions in an era of modernity, and Xu expertly utilizes the flaws of two legendarily terrible actors to carrying the point across in such a remarkably convincing way (the effect is similar to watching Keanu in The Matrix as far as stunt casting goes––Jacky Heung and Andy On are perfect foils in all the worst but absolutely ideal ways).

I don't think there's been a real successor to King Hu in the martial arts film until Xu Haofeng. To me he takes the martial arts movie into some really new and welcome territory, mixing in elements of history, artifice and pageantry, and multiple other genres––proving that a film about two guys fighting some duels can be about so much more.

[Mr Sausage]

One thing I appreciate about the movie in retrospect is how it complicates and frustrates who the hero and villain are supposed to be, switching between the two leads until the idea kinda collapses into amorphousness, the hero and villain being whoever happens to be most put upon in the moment. What hits home is not that just that the inciting incident is random, but that it's revealed as a kind of 'who knew?' shrug in the coda, the thing having seemingly no weight despite how many ugly and unbrotherly emotions sprung from it. And then you're left with this sense of loss and the passage of time, but also that everything changes and moves on. The big catastrophe was not an apocalypse; the world continues on, with or without you.

I don't think I quite appreciated how good the movie was when I was watching it.

[mrb404]

If Radiance release My Heart in the UK, I'll double-dip.

Well, there it is, bundled with Nomad.

[pistolwink]

What precisely is the Nomad director's cut? My understanding is that Tam was taken off the film at some point and never got to shoot the climax he had written. The climax in the version I've seen—the showdown on the beach—was shot by somebody else.

I actually quite like the release version of the film, even if it departs significantly from Tam's conception, so it may be a bit of a shame that it won't be available on this release.

All that said, Nomad is one of my very favorite HK films. It's incredibly atmospheric, with some remarkable cinematography and (especially) editing. So everyone should give it a chance.

[Mr Sausage]

We talked about it here.

[feihong]

One thing I appreciate about the movie in retrospect is how it complicates and frustrates who the hero and villain are supposed to be, switching between the two leads until the idea kinda collapses into amorphousness, the hero and villain being whoever happens to be most put upon in the moment. What hits home is not that just that the inciting incident is random, but that it's revealed as a kind of 'who knew?' shrug in the coda, the thing having seemingly no weight despite how many ugly and unbrotherly emotions sprung from it. And then you're left with this sense of loss and the passage of time, but also that everything changes and moves on. The big catastrophe was not an apocalypse; the world continues on, with or without you.

I don't think I quite appreciated how good the movie was when I was watching it.

I've been thinking about exactly this all day so far. Neither combatant is precisely hero or villain, in a way. Andy On is portrayed as a little sleazier, but when I think back on the movie, that's mostly because he is "inside" all of the politics of the martial arts school, trying to effect the deceased master's explicit plan for change. Jacky Heung's character is kept on the "outside," and it becomes clear over the course of the film that his father's plan for him is to live an entirely modern life, working in a bank, with a mixed-race wife, boldly looking towards China's oncoming, modern future. Jacky's return to the martial circle actually disrupts all of his father's plans for change within the system, which he has invested in his most accomplished pupil, Andy. The conservatism within the school takes advantage of any emergent force for change, subverting it––so the film is, in one sense, about conservatism subverting a generational rush towards modernism. The school will remain the same––though the somewhat radical idea of a woman spokesperson will be a new tradition, woven into the institution as if it had always been part of tradition––a modern figure used to engage modernism, keeping it from seeping into the school itself. The 100-yard arbitrary barrier of the title is a wonderful representation of the envelope of influence of that conservatism; the school remains the same within its make-believe barrier, while immediately outside are the encroaching signs of a polyglot modernism. It seems like a tragedy, in a way; neither son nor star pupil are able to bring forward their father/master's idea of modernism––though Xu really refrains from characterizing the approach of modernism. From the context of the school, it seems only an approaching threat.

There are two Xu Haofeng movies coming in the future––though who knows when they will finally arrive. There's a movie about martial artists trying to heist a precious painting, called Decent Things (looks amazing), and there's this picture with the wonderful Zhou Xun, called The Weary Poet. Shot before Decent Things, I believe, the IMDB lists it as still being in postproduction, while Decent Things appears to be either about to be released or already released? It would be amazing if this augurs a Xu Haofeng renaissance, and we finally get to see The Hidden Sword, as well. But maybe upon seeing my own 100 yard boundary, I'm wondering, like Andy, how far it can extend.

[Mr Sausage]

That's interesting you bring up insider vs outsider, because it seems as mutable as good vs bad. When the movie starts, Andy On is the golden student set to inherit the school, yet he returns from years abroad to take this role, making him the outsider to Jacky's peeved insider. But the roles are immediately reversed, with On assuming his leadership role and Jacky leaving, the latter now an outsider both at the school and in the western world of business he's thrust into. But this is reversed again when On is accused of murder and forced to prove his own innocence. He then assumes a traditional outsider role, that of the young student who must discover some secret martial world knowledge in order to defeat a more knowledgeable, usually senior rival in a position of power--except this is an irony, as On is the senior with the greater position of power, so the role sits oddly. And in the end the whole thing is revealed to be a trick, there is no secret knowledge, and On cannot fulfill his conventional role by defeating his opponent and becoming an insider. So On leaves the martial circle and Jacky assumes his place as insider...except Jacky decides to exit the 100 Yard limit, and in doing so becomes an outsider in On's new street martial school. Now Jacky takes on a conventional outsider role, the young martial prodigy who must fight the gauntlet in order to best the villain at its centre and restore what was broken to wholeness. Except here, too, irony reigns because he also cannot fulfill that conventional role: the gauntlet is interrupted before it completes and the two men are banished, now both outsiders. The movie runs its characters through different conventional roles only to destabilize the narrative structures that come with those conventions. It's...very odd. I can't think of another martial arts film that does that.

I think the film has an ambivalent attitude to conservatism and tradition as well. Not only does it undermine traditional martial arts narratives and conventions in its two lead figures, but it offers this coda that subtly undermines any conservatism you could read in the movie's climax. The martial school guardians come together to banish the two destabilizing figures and return the martial world to wholeness and stability, which is conservative. But when Jacky returns, he doesn't return to an unchanged city, which would symbolize the conservative values of permanence and tradition while showing that institutions can preserve order. No, things are different, the old masters have started to die off, and the martial schools are in decline. The resolution of the plot hasn't preserved the old order, merely delayed its dissolution. Jacky now accepts modernity as his dad had wanted, leaving the martial schools to their uncertain place in modernity.

[feihong]

The Final Master does something somewhat similar, in that its hero is a man steeped in an almost secret tradition (the film posits him as the only surviving master of Wing Chun), attempting to fulfill what he understands to be his duty by passing on the art form to a future generation. It inspires him to enter Fujian and "play the game," insinuating himself into the world of martial arts schools. The system there is almost entirely sinister and manipulative, dispensing power and denying it in a game of strategy. Modernism––in the form of the nationalist military––comes in like a rocket, trying to dismantle and reform the fight schools of Fujian, and the institution essentially ends up using the "final master" of Wing Chun as its catspaw (just what the military leaders were also hoping to do) to rid the town of the military threat and take the fall for the elimination of the agent of modernity. That film posits the Wing Chun master's capitulation to either side as a betrayal of his own morality––even as either choice would in some sense fulfill his teacher's wish of perpetuating the Wing Chun tradition. That film ends with the Wing Chun master on the run, opening a book filled with the blood of the student he betrayed in order to try and teach in Fujian, and the blood is a splatter of moral outrage that implicates him as he stares at it. How does tradition face modernity? In Judge Archer the judge's role is preserved, even though we all come to learn that the man using the name and the role is not the real Judge Archer. There is the sense in these movies that tradition endeavors to continue unchanged, but that the agents of tradition will compromise wherever needed to save the bulk of it. 100 Yards also suggests, as I think you point out, that modernity arrives without necessarily deposing tradition entirely, and that tradition is breaking up, even if it has maintained itself at this one, critical juncture.

I feel like the film offers Jacky's character a potentially appealing version of modernity ultimately––but to embrace it, he first has to prove to himself he was good enough to have a place in the martial circle. That means ultimately fighting Andy for real. My impression is that the final exchange, the last move between the two of them is the first time they are stepping out of confines of the martial world's formalism and theatricality, and truly fighting one another without a safety net. Before this there are layers upon layers of tradition, rules, and artifice to their battle. Each exchange is stiff, artificial in a way the other fights in the film aren't. The film wastes no time showing us that the two fighters are reticent to really hurt one another, but it becomes clear over the course of the movie that in this particular case, they are both holding back. All the way until the end, when Jacky finally strikes an overwhelming blow. He doesn't kill Andy, but Andy seems stunned by the force and the violence, and in his eyes we think he knows he was about to lose his life. That last attack is more brutal, rough, and out-of-control than all the others; it wins the day for Jacky, but it ends the game of martial combat between them, for good. I was a stuck for a while trying to figure out the scene where Jacky is told by the majordomo that the school's guards had been holding back for years when he fought them. The way Jacky says he was the one holding back seemed at first arrogant and undeserved on the character's part. But the movie goes on to insist Jacky was right; he was the one holding back, to avoid toppling his father's edifice, the school. When Jacky meets the slingshot gang from the docks, he realizes that his father never presided over them, as he had claimed, and it shattters the illusion of merit and fairness in the martial world for him, revealing some of the flim-flammery beneath. I think the film wrestles as much with the artifice and reality of martial arts as it does with tradition and modernism. And it's interesting that the film opts to have these characters facing the change find individual paths to meaning. Both of them are thrust into the modern world, and neither gets what they expect out of it; nor do they fulfill their master's wishes. But they each seem to be thrust into their new era. It reminds me of the last lines of Eileen Chang's novel, The Young Marshall: "It was the twentieth century at last, thirty years late and he with two wives but he got in. China was in."