K-20: Legend of the Mask
AKA: K-20: Kaijin niju menso den
Dir. Shimako Sato (Japan 2008)
Rating: 2 ½ out of 4 Stars (above average)
Capsule Review by: David Austin

K-20: LEGEND OF THE MASK PLAYS AT THE IFC CENTER ON JUNE 20 AT 8:15 PM AND ON JUNE 30 AT 1:45 PM. SEE THE FULL SCHEDULE HERE

K-20 is silly fun; an old-fashioned matinee crowd-pleaser in the vein of The Rocketeer or the Indiana Jones films. Set in an alternate universe where World War II never happened and Japan has retained its Victorian-era stratification of society, the film pits a dashing hero against a cartoon villain – master thief Kaijin 20: The Fiend with 20 Faces - before a steampunk backdrop. It’s definitely kids’ stuff, the sort of film that might star Brendan Fraser if made in the US, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of the showmanship, starting with K-20’s first appearance – ripping off a rubber face at a press conference to reveal a serial villain’s mask and fedora, along with a catchy maniacal cackle. Today’s more serious superhero opuses, with their angst and extreme violence, rarely find time for the lighthearted fun that powers most of K-20.

Takeshi Kaneshiro, whose boyish good looks have matured since his turns in Wong Kar-wai’s earlier films, stars as Heikichi Endo, lower-class circus athlete (shades of Robin’s origin). The mysterious K-20 frames Endo in order to distract ace detective Kogoro Akechi (stone-faced Toru Nakamura) from his plan to capture an electrical doomsday machine created by Nikola Tesla, forcing Endo to adopt an identity as a cat burglar. Meanwhile, Takako Matsu makes for a fun heroine as Duchess Yoko Hashiba – while no Karen Allen or Margot Kidder, she’s spunky and having more fun than anyone else in the movie. For Endo, having to hide from the authorities is cause to bemoan his fate. For Yoko, it is an excuse to break free from the bonds that have stifled her all her life.

K-20 is packed with fun pop culture references and slick special effects. Sato creates a credible world, where police zeppelins co-exist with gyrocopters in a city still caught in the throes of the art deco movement. While not quite on the level of Hollywood’s filmic Gothams, K-20’s Teito, capital of this alternate universe Japan, has great visual appeal and provides enjoyable stomping grounds for the film’s numerous parkour-inspired action scenes. Similarly, K-20’s take on Edogawa Rampo’s Detective Kogoro Akechi, the great Sherlock Holmes figure of Japanese literature, is an interesting one. The film’s Akechi is a cold, removed aristocrat, who first reaction to his fiancée’s attempt at seduction is to suspect a plot.

The plot is full of holes and clichés but, even at over two hours, director Shimako Sato provides K-20 with enough momentum to help viewers endure the occasional slower and sillier stretches, with a few exceptions. The worst offenders are the scenes featuring orphans – these are pure treacle, clumsily illustrating the miseries of the underclass and even going so far as to use the gratuitous and tonally inappropriate death of a child to hammer its point home. However, I’m willing to overlook a certain amount of crap from any director who works in a sly homage to Empire Strikes Back.

AKA: Tau ming chong
Country and Year: China (2007)
Director: Peter Ho-Sun Chan
Starring: Andy Lau, Jet Li, Takeshi Kaneshiro

Review By: David Austin
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)

WARLORDS PLAYS AT THE IFC CENTER ON JUNE 19 AT 6:30 PM AND ON JUNE 23 AT 7:15 PM. SEE THE FULL SCHEDULE HERE

Warlords is an interesting example of how the same tale can be filmed very differently. The true story that forms the basis for the film – the rise of an ambitious Chinese general during the Taiping Rebellion of the late 1800s and his eventual assassination – was previously told by legendary martial arts director Chang Cheh in Blood Brothers, one of his absolute best movies. Peter Chan’s 2007 remake follows the same outlines, but makes significant changes while taking advantage of a far larger budget and a far grander scale. However, though the artistry of the recent film is far superior, and though Warlords has aspirations to be a manly tearjerker of the highest quality, Blood Brothers remains the more emotionally resonant and successful film. While filming Blood Brothers, Chang was at the top of his game and recorded some of the best performances of his career – Warlords, on the other hand, hits all the expected notes and hits them well, but never quite catches fire.

Both versions put the focus on a love triangle (really a love quadrangle, given the deep currents of platonic homoeroticism). In Warlords, as in Blood Brothers, the fulcrum around which the plot turns is the historical figure of General Ma – called Pang in Chan’s version and essayed by Jet Li. Warlords opens with the slaughter of Li’s army by the Taiping – a slaughter from which Li emerges despondent and disgraced. Excoriating himself for the loss of his honor and his men, Li falls into the arms of Lian (Jinglei Xu), a sympathetic peasant woman. Later, Li joins up with a group of bandits headed by a nearly unrecognizable Andy Lau (oddly, this fierce bandit chieftain is a bigger transformation for the actor than even his muscle-suit turn in Running on Karma) and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Forging a bond of camaraderie with the two men, Li sets about molding the bandits into a serious fighting force with which to challenge the Taiping and regain his former position. Complicating matters are Li’s own self-loathing and his vague desire to do help the common people through his actions, Imperial power politics, Lau’s disagreements with Li’s methods and, of course, the fact that Lian happens to be Li’s wife.

Chang’s version is similarly star-studded, featuring Ti Lung in the role of General Ma, Chen Kuan-tai in the Andy Lau role, and David Chiang in the Takeshi Kaneshiro role. However, shockingly for a Chang Cheh film, the Lian role is far more interesting in Blood Brothers. Though I love his work, Chang is not normally known for his plots and characters, and roles for women in his films are generally negligible, leading to frequent charges of misogyny. After all, Chang is the guy who practically turned Cheng Pei-Pei’s Golden Swallow into a guest star in his sequel to Come Drink with Me. Chan, on the other hand, has directed female-friendly movies like Comrades: Almost a Love Story and Perhaps Love.

However, as played by Ching Li (veteran of so many Chu Yuan wu xias, a director who usually had far more interest in female roles), the character is far more of a driver of the plot. She is attracted by Ma’s energy and ambition as much as she is turned off by Chen Kuan-tai’s lack of the same. Though cast in the femme fatale role of driving a wedge between the sworn brothers, her actions are understandable and her agony at the resulting tragedy is palpable. Jinglei Xu’s version of the role, by contrast, is more of a cipher – it is far from clear what attracts her to Jet Li (pity?) or why she would turn on her husband, portrayed by Andy Lau as a far more noble and heroic figure (a case of casting dictating character?) than Chen’s buffoonish brawler. As we are given little insight into her motivations, the infidelity aspect of the plot almost feels tacked on, instead of essential.

Similarly, Jet Li’s Pang, though one of his better performances, pales next to Ti Lung’s starkly ambitious and charismatic Ma. It was a rare villainous turn for Ti (an actor who gained renewed attention from John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow series) and a real showcase of his talents as an actor and martial artist. Ma’s near complete amorality was a more original approach than Li’s tortured “ends justify the means” philosophy. By amorality, I do not mean the sort of gratuitous wrongdoing that usually passes for evil in cinema – I mean that Ma simply does not take morality into account at all because he is almost exclusively interested in his own advancement. Personally, I have never been that fond of Jet Li as an actor (as opposed to a martial artist). That said, perhaps contrary to popular opinion, I think he does his best work in more lighthearted roles in films like Swordsman II and Kung Fu Cult Master than when forced to act dour. Li’s role here calls for a lot of glowering while ensconced in increasingly baroque sets of heavy armor, and, frankly, it is less than engaging.

Warlords does far outshine its predecessor in its epically choreographed battle scenes and the stunning production design. Blood Brothers was a product of its times and the cash-conscious Shaw Brothers studio, which tended to recycle the same costumes, sets, stuntmen and locations in its films. By contrast, Chan appears to have spared no expense, and the scale of the melees on display is stupendous. Rather than kung fu fights featuring 30-50 padded stuntmen and interminable (and unintentionally comic) scenes of people rolling down hills, Warlords features a cast of thousands duking it out in bone-crunching, limb-hacking battles that rival those of Braveheart. The proceedings are all insanely gory in that uniquely over-the-top Hong Kong fashion and highly entertaining if you enjoy that sort of thing (which I do).

Sadly, both versions give short shrift to the Taiping Rebellion, an appallingly bloody but fascinatingly bizarre incident in Chinese history. As well-chronicled in Jonathan Spence’s God’s Chinese Son, the Taiping were a quasi-Christian movement fomented among the southern Hakka minority by a total nut and failed official exam-taker who declared himself to be Jesus’s younger brother and whose followers refused to cut their hair into the queue hairstyle required by the ruling Manchurians. Crazy though they were, the Taiping were phenomenally successful as a military organization (at least initially) and won a number of important military victories against the doddering Qin (Manchu) dynasty, and eventually (as touched on in Warlords) controlled the key city of Nanking. At least one of the key incidents in the downfall of the Taiping is reflected in Warlords – the slaughter of the surrendered Taiping.

Recommended? Warlords is solid period piece with an excellent cast and tons of bloody action. Definitely work checking out, but make sure your next move is to see Chang Cheh’s masterful Blood Brothers.

If you like this, you might like: Assembly, Blood Brothers, Musa, Vengeance

© David Austin