Well, this is a very interesting article by Mark Pollard, of Kung Fu Cinema.
Source:
http://www.kungfucinema.com/2005/062701.htm
Embracing the dark side with 'SPL'
by Mark Pollard
Martial arts action movies are at a crossroads. What once was a largely-singular trend sparked by Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers studios and revitalized by the likes of Tsui Hark is facing a divergence in the age of computerized escapism, desperate scrabbles by studios to squeeze money out of market-tested product, and a new movement to embrace the darker side of screen fighting. Within Hong Kong's struggling movie industry, there is no better example of this latter movement than Wilson Yip's gritty martial arts actioner
Sha Po Lang.
What holds the key to martial arts genre's vitality and growth? Early trends in the new millennium have suggested that technology is the answer. Through the use of advanced camera techniques, green-screen computer effects and wires, fantasy-laden films like
The Matrix,
Daredevil and
The Legend of Zu offer up the image of popular actors turned into martial arts dynamos, capable of exaggerated physical abilities previously only imagined in the pages of comic books. In a now dormant project, a Korean media company has even attempted to digitalize Bruce Lee and revive cinema's most iconic screen fighter in a live-action feature film, thus making fears of an actor's obsolescence a potential, but as yet unlikely reality. At its best, this phenomenon has evolved to fully embrace its fantastic nature by going to frenzied and comical extremes in
Kung Fu Hustle or by breathing a dose of eye-popping realism into animated screen fighting with the likes of the computer-anime film
Appleseed (2004).
In today's reality, however, it is the editor who rules supreme in the world of martial arts cinema. This is the case, whether working with a rough and tumble brawl as seen in
The Bourne Supremacy, a montage of training sequences in
Batman Begins or a frantic kickboxing match in
Star Runner. While editing has always been an integral part of screen fighting, its use in these and other films has increasingly become a matter of pasting a series of disjointed shots and blurred motion into a cohesive fight that primarily generates excitement from the edited arrangement, rather than from an actors' abilities or the fight coordinator's choreography.
Mainstreaming of martial arts action for a broader audience has led to other, more troubling developments within the genre. Martial arts movies have always held onto a certain cult status for a select audience accustomed to flying guillotines, high-powered sprays of blood from samurai warriors and disproportionate amounts of screen time lavished on aggressively complex fight scenes as seen in Jackie Chan's kung fu classic
The Young Master. But the recent rise in popularity of Asian cinema and more dynamic action, inspired by Hong Kong's movie masters like John Woo and Yuen Wo-ping, has led to watered-down eye candy devoid of meaning or artful execution tossed into cross-genre films engineered to maximize marketing potential. Employing both computer technology and creative editing, films like
Catwoman,
Elektra,
The Twins Effect II, and
The Tuxedo are examples of films built to please the widest audience possible with high-profile actors and an even mix of romance, action and comedy. But as is usually the case, audiences and critics alike prove to be smarter that studio execs and can easily see these movies for what they really are.
Amid this soulless commercialization and artificial modernization of the martial arts movie is a growing interest in returning the genre to its extremes, particularly in regard to stripped-down and unflinching depictions of screen violence. It comes in many forms, but generally revisits the stylized neo-realism and fringe explorations of '70s-era cult cinema.
In Hollywood there is the gleeful celebration of martial arts cinema's more exploitive nature in
Kill Bill and to a lesser degree
Sin City. In these films screen fighting is excessively violent and stylized to the point of becoming surreal. In contrast, films such as
The Bourne Identity and
Collateral offer up equally brutal, but far less sensational screen fighting that emphasizes realism. In the indie filmmaking world, stuntman-turned-director Jesse Johnson combines full-contact, mixed martial arts, arguably a more purely Western representation of the genre, with the excess of '80s action films in the rugged action film
Pit Fighter, which is stripped of many undesirable conventions that keep most of today's low-budget action movies below even the forgiving expectations of genre fans.
In Japan, Takeshi 'Beat' Kitano has put his own spin on a beloved franchise and on the chambara genre itself with
Zatoichi, while Takeshi Miike turns his already extreme filmmaking tendencies toward the genre with the ultra-violent, sci-fi samurai tale
Izo. At the opposite end of the genre spectrum is Yoji Yamada's
Twilight Samurai and
The Hidden Blade, both meticulous recreations of 19th century Japan that explore the end of the samurai era with thoughtful eloquence and unpretentious martial encounters.
In South Korea, where the local film industry has experienced an unprecedented rebirth in the last five years, talented filmmakers like Park Chan-wook (
Old Boy), Ryu Seung-wan (
No Blood No Tears) and Kim Jee-woon (
A Bittersweet Life) are taking visual cues from the likes of David Lynch and crafting stylized, urban crime dramas with edgy and violent screen fighting. This emphasis on unpolished and increasingly realistic fisticuffs evokes the kind of unflinching street violence that appears in the '70s-era films of Martin Scorsese and Kinji Fu-kasaku.
The greatest attention paid to martial arts cinema at the moment may be directed at Thailand, where director Prachya Pinkaew, action director Panna Rittikrai, and stuntman Tony Jaa have teamed up for
Ong Bak, a film that returns martial arts and action cinema to a time when Jackie Chan and his crew were wowing the world with one outrageous action sequence after another. Although the action scenes take reality to extremes, the stunt work and choreography going into them are very real. This is what earned Chan the respect and admiration of millions of fans worldwide and Jaa appears to be doing the same with this and subsequent projects.
Once the center of martial arts and action moviemaking, where several hundred films were released annually, Hong Kong's film industry has become a mere shadow of its former self with only a couple genre-related films released a year. Unfortunately, many of them have adopted the Hollywood model of trying to serve the widest audience and have ended up serving no one. A serious lack of young, creative talent within the industry has also served to stifle the quality of Hong Kong's limited action films. Yet talent remains, both with long-time veterans who have been working outside of Hong Kong in recent years and with untapped talent left toiling in China's prolific local television industry. Attempting to cast light in an otherwise darkened corner of the moviemaking world comes
Sha Po Lang (
SPL), a film that takes the kung fu movie into leaner and meaner territory.
Eschewing pop star roles, juvenile comedy and fantasy computer effects,
SPL offers the promise of gritty martial arts action that pits some of the genre's finest screen fighters against one another in the setting of an equally gritty crime drama. It is a film that Donnie Yen is especially proud of. "This is the highest peak in my career, I doubt I'd be able to better it. Perhaps, because of my predilection for modern-day fighting, I find contemporary kung fu movies really hard to film. I gain some confidence in myself only after shooting
SPL. It's the embodiment of [the] modern actioner that I'm pursuing. "
It is clear that
SPL is taking Hong Kong martial arts action in a direction we haven't seen much of lately and that's a good thing. Donnie Yen, who had a major hand in the creation of the fight choreography, has seen his past work as action director treated with mixed response. Arguably his most personal and challenging work to date is
Legend of the Wolf, a film he also directed that possesses frantic action some have hailed as daring and others as chaotic. But there's no denying that in this and his other directorial efforts,
Ballistic Kiss and
Shanghai Affairs, Yen is attempting to advance the art of screen fighting with emotionally-charged performances and challenging fight choreography.
Donnie's acting ability is also the subject of debate, but in an advance
review of
SPL, Grady Hendrix of Kaiju Shakedown is favorable in his appraisal. Truth be told, as a martial arts star Donnie has rarely had the opportunity to stretch his acting ability onscreen. One of those opportunities is in
The Kung Fu Master television series. Fans may get a better taste in
SPL.
As is usually the case, an action director's best work is also born from his collaboration with a talented cast and crew. In the case of
SPL, we have Wilson Yip as helmer, whose previous work is diverse and includes the exuberant horror comedy
Bio Zombie (1998) and the well-received triad drama
Juliet in Love (2000). Hendrix describes the film as Yip's "most controlled" and "best sustained." He also describes Sammo Hung's acting performance as the best he's ever seen from the martial arts actor and filmmaker, who "turns out to be the movie's dark heart." In
SPL, Sammo makes a somewhat rare screen appearance as a villain, in this case a tough triad boss.
Anyone who has seen Wu Jing (
The Tai Chi Master) in his many television roles or even in his few theatrical appearances knows that he's one of China's most talented screen fighters. In
SPL he plays a triad member, who ends up battling Yen in a climatic fight where Hendrix asserts that "camera tricks and 'cool' action get left in the wastebasket and Wu Jing is allowed to deliver his stuff, piping hot and as fast as he can." This happens with fighting that he more or less states is less refined and emphasizes strategy.
Not to be left forgotten is Simon Yam (
PTU) playing a cop, determined to take down Sammo. He's not a martial artist, but a terrific actor as many of his film roles prove. He's a good choice to add dramatic weight to the film. As a relatively low budget film attempting to get back to genre basics with few chances of breaking into wider international circulation,
SPL is unlikely to make a significant impact on the industry or the future of martial arts cinema, especially with no new talent to highlight. Yet it does present evidence that Hong Kong action filmmakers are not only refusing to lay down, but willing to take a few risks in order to deliver the goods. It's also tapping into a wider interest in seeing screen fighting portrayed with less sugar and more spice. Whether intentional or not,
Sha Po Lang, which is expected to be released in November, is part of a global trend to break screen fighting away from the mainstream fantasy that '90s wire fu movies created and back to cult status where it belongs. Only here can martial arts action truly thrive, on the fringes of civility and good taste. It's a place where action and storytelling merge into one, bodies may pile high and trained screen fighters engage in a finely-crafted dance of death and mayhem that no computer or visual effect can replace.
; the fighting sequences are few and far between
