Name of the Film: Shaolin
Date seen: 22 January
Format: Cinema
I love chinese cinema. I live in Hong Kong, have a chinese wife and one of my favourite films is The Blade http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112800/
Andy Lau is awesome in quite a few films I love (e.g. House of Flying Daggers) and so naturally I went along to see his latest martial arts film Shaolin also starring Jackie Chan.
My expectations were of a kick ass flick that had some hidden depths... Well one out of two isn’t bad, is it?
The kicking of ass is good but not as good as the recent Ip Man films, but there are some fun touches and good set pieces. That isn’t the problem with the film but more on that later.
After winning a clearly brutal battle that we only see the resulting bodies of, Andy Lau’s Warlord chases his opposing general into the Shaolin Temple, kills him after he surrenders and then defaces the sacred site. Whilst celebrating his glorious victory he tries to screw over his ‘blood brother,’ a fellow warlord, but instead gets betrayed by his second in command resulting in the death of his daughter and his wife walking away from him.
From this point on the film feels like it should be a revenge film and it is... Sort of.
What we actually get is the usual broad stereotypes of the peaceful Abbott who is absolutely kick ass when he needs to be. The evil, unscrupulous general that is shown the error of his ways by the compassion shown to him by the monks and the inadequate second in command who betrays everyone to take over power, as the bad guy.
These are well worked stereotypes and can be used by a film maker to aid the audiences understanding of the characters. Benny Chan introduces the stereotypes but then tries to do something different with them, unfortunately it doesn’t work and what is left is a mess.
Andy Lau’s character is pure evil when we meet him. He defiles a religious site, he makes a deal with his enemy only to shoot him anyway and then he plots to assassinate his closest friend. As a villain he is a very blandly drawn character with little to no redeeming features. He is constantly angry and violent. I guess this was done to make his redemption more epic but it is too extreme. Once his child dies and his wife (the criminally underused BingBing Fan who is there to cry a lot and look worried and not much more) walks away blaming him for everything that has gone wrong, we are expected to believe that a day spent feverish in a hole and a couple of days feeding the poor with the monks will turn him into the calmest and most forgiving man in all of china. The transition is too extreme and too fast. He seems to find this transition very easy and there is no battling of his deamons. It isn’t believable that a man that consumed by violence wouldn’t want some form of revenge at first.
Although during this transition, that might as well be a montage for all the time it takes and the effect it has on us as an audience, we are introduced to one of the better elements of the film. Namely Jackie Chan’s cooking monk. Jackie Chan seems to relish being the unpredictable, wise master character in recent years. This role in many ways is comparable to the part he played in The Forbidden Kingdom in 2008. He is great in the part, it is just a shame that his role is mishandled, after all could a cook that isn’t trained in martial arts take on 6 ‘crack’ troops? I get it, it’s a reference back to his comedic style of kung fu movies but still, really? He almost makes it work but this is a good example of how the script short changes the talented actors involved. There are several examples of how we are told one thing and shown another but this is the most obvious moment.
Nicholas Tse is the evil second in command. He is portrayed as half crazy and brutally merciless. They try to give him some development through the film by making him pause at the beginning, not taking his opportunity to shoot in the Shaolin temple but it is only lip service to characterization and as such he has no real arc and so is not really a character, more a plot device, oh and someone told him that if you clench your jaw really hard then you look evil and menacing, you don’t but sometimes he looks like he is having a seizure. This is then made worse by a daft subplot about stolen treasures and western actors that could easily have been replaced by wooden planks without any detriment to the film.
On a side note this has always been a problem with Asian cinema (see Ip Man 2 for another god example) and to be honest I’m not sure exactly where the problem lies, either writing in another language results in terrible dialogue or they just hire the first white guy they can find that can speak any Chinese. Either way there is no excuse for it and it could be easily resolved just like the truly terrible subtitles which are sometimes inaccurate and often riddled with appalling grammar.
I can see no need for the English characters, story wise. Tse’s character could easily have been stealing the artifacts for himself. The only reason I can see for them to be in the movie is to try to make the film more marketable to a western audience. If this is the case then it is a laughable attempt as they are the worst thing in the film by a long way.
Apart from the western contingent the acting isn’t bad, it’s the script that is at fault and it is impressive that they manage to make a film that is watchable out of the slim pickings that are on offer. Really the shallowness of the characters undermines everything and so when we are presented with selfless acts of bravery and the monks offering up their lives for each other it has no effect because we don’t care. You know you have problems when a child dies on screen and it has little resonance because there are elements in the scene that are almost comedic (unintentionally).
It’s a shame that the characters are so badly drawn because as ever with Chinese cinema the set design is spectacular. Everything looks beautiful and is shot so well wether on location or on a sound stage, the world looks expansive and they have captured the time period perfectly. The costumes are beautiful even though the clothes of the time are slightly less opulent than those found in other epics like The Curse of the Golden Flower for example.
Shot wonderfully and acted reasonably well the big let down is the script. Which is tragic because you can see a great movie trying to get out but the underdeveloped characters, bad dialogue (Buddha be praised is funny the first time but when we have five minutes when that is all that is said it kinda kills it) and a ridiculous plot that doesn’t ring true (if lots of men are disappearing from the villages then why isn’t anyone searching for them? Why is there not outcry from more people? Why is there just one old woman crying outside her tent?) all work against any of the good things that are here.
Ultimately the actors almost manage to save the movie from itself. But still it is a shallow attempt at a film that wants to be a more serious movie than it is. It’s watchable because of the talent on display but it could have been so much more. I was hugely disappointed.
Did I enjoy the film? Kinda.
Would I recommend it to my friends? No probably not.
Will I buy it on DVD/Blu Ray? No
If it was a mate would I let it date my Sister? No, she deserves better, this guy is way too shallow!
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