The Last Samurai (2003) R3 DVD

Ken Watanabe's dream is to die in the arms of Tom Cruise when the cherry blossoms bloom

The Last Samurai feels like Dances With Wolves so much, I wanted to call it Dances With Kimino. The entertaining yarn tells the tale of a battle-shocked veteran of General Custer’s Indian campaigns. Reduced by white man’s guilt and the bottle into a travelling sideshow performer, Captain Algren (Tom Cruise) is given a chance at meaningful existence – he is invited by representatives of Emperor Meiji of the Empire of Japan to help train the Imperial Army in modern warfare and suppress a samurai rebellion in Satsuma. When the army is forced in a strategic error to engage the samurais too early, the imperial forces are decimated, and Algren is captured by General Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe).

During his captivity, Algren comes to appreciate their culture, gain their respect (it involves taking more frequent baths), and learn the ways of the samurai. In short, he goes native, just short of joining their cause.

History and Japan buffs will complain about the exoticised, romanticised, and wildly inaccurate setting of the movie. I call on them to ignore that for the time being and just enjoy the flick. Tom Cruise is great as a clumsy oaf who manages to master the katana, sufficiently to dispatch 6 opponents in single combat, with an instant replay! Ken Watanabe is perfect as a poet-warrior who longs for nothing more than to die in Tom Cruise’s arms as the cherry blossoms fall!

The script is full of wildly improbable and ridiculously overwrought lines like "They are an intriguing people... I have never seen such discipline" (a nod to appreciating different cultures), "What does it mean to be samurai?" (a nod to intercultural understanding), and in a nod to pseudo-Eastern crypto-religious philosophy, "You believe a man can change his destiny?" "I believe a man does what he can until his destiny is revealed", or even "I am a living god, as long as I do what they think is right." Like Dances With Wolves, Cruise’s white male hero gets to teach Emperor Meiji the ways of the samurai, to save the Japanese from amoralistic American villains.

All this is trashy and laughable nonsense, but it works on some level anyway. It still manages to thrill, excite, and entertain, despite the inaccuracies and poor dialogue. Tom Cruise is at his charismatic best since Born on the Fourth of July, while Ken Watanabe deserves his Best Supporting Actor Oscar award. Kabuki star Shichinosuke Nakamura brings an elegant restraint as the Emperor, while Timothy Spall was deliciously enjoyable as a colonial Brit interpreter.

The whole struggle of modernisation vs tradition thing adds depth to this Hollywood epic. Of course, some liberties were taken – Japan enthusiastically adopted firearms in the 16th century with the arrival of the Portuguese traders, and in the historical Satsuma rebellion, the samurai fought with cannons and firearms, but were overwhelmed by numbers, not necessarily superior technology. And by the Meiji era, the samurai were not much of a warrior class, but an aristocracy steeped in the arts, and serving as bureaucrats and administrators.

In The Last Samurai, Hollywood has remade Dances With Wolves with gleaming Western technology mowing down primitive Japanese samurai instead of Indians.

DVD Extras

History buffs will appreciate the balanced “History vs Hollywood” feature, a mini-documentary that can stand on its own, if it were broadcast on the History Channel. Indeed, the best features are geared towards students of history and historical re-creations, from costumes to weaponry to production design. “A world of detail”, “Silk and armor”, “Production design with Lilly Kilvert” and “From soldier to samurai” will satiate your historical cravings.

The conversation between Cruise and the director is too creepy for words. It’s like these men have a mutual admiration thing that goes too far, while Tom Cruise explains the major themes and his artistic vision of the film in “A warrior’s journey”.

There are only 2 deleted scenes in the DVD feature, but they make a world of difference to the movie. Zwick explains why they were cut even though these were arresting scenes (a samurai beheads an official who openly mocks him in a street) and important (Elgren and Katsumoto discuss artillery weapons in their first conversation). Given the soppy, fairy-tale like ending of the theatrical release, I was expecting an alternate ending that was rejected because it would not appeal to American audiences.

The Japan premiere feature is botched up. While the actors all speak in Japanese, there are no English subtitles available for people who can’t read traditional Chinese, Korean, Thai, or Bahasa Indonesia.

First published at incinemas on 9 May 2006

Bewitching Attraction (여교수의 은밀한 매력) (2006)

Remember to respect your elders and teachers; Korea is more Confucian a society than China.

Despite limping far worse than Herr Otto Flick from ‘Allo ‘Allo, vocational college lecturer Cho Eun-sook (Moon So-ri) exudes confidence and raw sex appeal. An environmental activist and poet in her free time, the prof charms a succession of men into relationships with her. After conquering her male colleagues in the university, Eun-sook is in the middle of a genuine love affair with a production director (Park Won-sang) from a television station when comics illustrator Park Suk-gyu (Ji Jin-hee) is hired by the college cartoon illustration department. The new arrival disconcerts Eun-sook, whose distress unnerves Mr Yoo (Yoo Seung-mok), a fellow environmental activist who has been carrying a torch for the prof. Will Mr Yoo get the woman of his dreams to reciprocate his love? Will he unravel, then get over the possibly scandalous secret that ties Eun-sook and Suk-gyu together?

Since 2000, Lee Ha has produced and directed a series of short films that have won local and international awards. Even in his eventual leap to commercial feature films, the director retains his arthouse and independent streak and creates a film that engages the funny bone easily, and through its twisted sensibilities, also provides food for serious thought on the hypocrisy of people in real life.

The humour in Bewitching Attraction is deliciously perverse that it qualifies as black comedy. On the surface, the movie merely links together sex scenes of Eun-sook and her lovers with sequences of her meticulously plotted (yet bizarre) seductions, which are often funny in themselves. The key to Lee Ha’s masterpiece is to treat it as a social farce poking fun at strait-laced Korean society. Polite, respectable society (as well as respectable mainstream films in Korea) studiously ignores the bodily self. As Montaigne puts it, “Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses”, and what better way to illustrate that non-rational, untameable part of humanity than to suggest that professors, who are accorded the highest respect by Koreans, are even more obsessed with sex than ordinary people? Or that when they do it, it is just as noisy and messy.

The other half to this movie’s comedy is its subversion of idea of romantic love. Subverting Schopenhauer’s claim that love is merely an uncontrollable, subconscious and non-rational programmatic response of otherwise rational humans to the will to life and the continuation of the species, Lee Ha’s script proposes that these urges, in reality, are more of a cosmic joke that brings people completely wrong for each other together, for all the wrong reasons, with nothing less than disastrous outcomes. That all the players in Bewitching Attraction misunderstand their own motivations in the game of love, their own objective attractiveness to potential partners, put on all the wrong moves - and still manage to get what they want! - provides much situational comedy that at times veers into farce.

In this anti-comedy, the characters are so consistently off-beat, off cue and off colour that they become perfectly on note, and the comic payoff, perfectly timed. It takes great skill to produce a script that delivers the laughs from such a difficult concept. If you watch only one movie a month, save it for Bewitching Attraction. It is a truly entertaining and funny black comedy on sexual and social mores, and movies like this don’t come often.

First published at incinemas on 13 July 2006

Voice Letter 여고괴담 4: 목소리 (2005)

Beware the Korean Horror out-of-nowhere twist ending!

The horror genre is one of the most resistant to innovation in cinema. So when someone makes a groundbreaking horror film, every other director will follow his lead and for the next few years, audiences will be subjected to diverse variations on the same theme, produced with varying degrees of skill – mostly decreasing. That is essentially the story of Ringgu and the current Asian Horror Wave. As a stickler for innovation and quality in cinema, I’ve been looking forward to the arrival of Voice, the latest instalment in the Yeogo Goedam franchise of horror films set in Korean all-girls’ schools. While Whispering Corridors and Memento Mori set the tone for the series with their serious social commentary on life in Korean schools, Wishing Stairs was a major let-down in terms of story (a muddled mess), thrills (riping off sequences from Ringgu and other Asian Horror Wave films), as well as social subtext (petty competition between friends isn’t as hard-hitting as abusive teachers or sapphism). Voice will either rejuvenate the series or sink it entirely.

There isn’t much horror in Voice for me to play up on its horror angle. Instead, the selling point of the movie is in its twist: budding choral singer Young-eon (Kim Ok-bin) is apparently killed by a ghost when she stays back in school one evening to practise her pieces, and now her ghostly self must work together with her best friend and classmate Jee-myun (Seo Ji-hye) to piece together who killed her and why, before more killings take place, as well as search for her missing body. It’s almost like a Sixth Sense in reverse. Topping up the cast for the ghostly mystery are the school’s resident psychic and psycho Cho-ah (Cha Ye-rin) and Heui-yeong (Kim Seo-hyeong), the creepy but sexy music teacher who appears to know more about the disappearance of her favourite student than she lets on.

Since this is a Yeogo Goedam film, do expect the obligatory lesbian sub-plot and attempts at creating arresting cinematography. These feature nicely in sequences where Young-eon’s ghost steps through a metaphysical gateway into the world of her memories. The effect and lighting is good, but I thought the cinematographer could’ve chosen a different look – the transitions he chooses accentuate the special effects rather than highlight the psychological turn of this horror film.

Indeed, the psychological turn is so important that it replaces the customary Yeogo Goedam focus on serious social problems in schools. Voice invests much of its script to explore the depths of the relationships between Young-eon, Jee-myun, Cho-ah, and their teacher. There is more than sufficient material to create a classic right there, but director and writer Choe Ik-hwan is unable to resist the gestures towards the horror genre. But tell me, why should a ghost be afraid of sudden and ominous noises at all? The attempts to inject horror into a perfectly fine supernatural thriller tend to go off-key and sour. The intimate and psychological drama that the writers took to develop carefully quickly unravels into incoherence as they cannot resist adding last minute revelations that create more plot holes instead of illuminating the viewers, a tragic feature of lesser Korean horror films nowadays. If you can figure out the confused ending and the incomprehensible coda that plays out at the end credits, you are either the writers of the movie or a psychic.

In the story, 3 of the main characters are either talented singers or musicians, but the soundtrack of Voice is surprisingly awful. The instruments are fine, but the actresses (most making their jump from television to the big screen) simply cannot sing at all. Not only do they sound perpetually out of breath, they also seem to be singing from a phonetic script that mangles every possible vowel and consonant in the beautiful Latin and English pieces they perform throughout the movie.

While Voice is clearly an improvement over its disastrous predecessor and a brilliant concept movie, its sometimes weak execution make it a lesser film than Whispering Corridors and Memento Mori. Horror fans itching for a radical twist in the genre may want to look forward to the next Yeogo Goedam instalment (with fingers crossed), or the forthcoming Death Note (a horror-murder mystery from the point of view of the murderer) movies in June and December.

First published at incinemas on 11 May 2006

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

I declare M:I3 the summer blockbuster product placement action movie of the year!

JJ Abrams is better known as the writer, producer, and director of gripping television spy series Alias. With this experience, JJ Abrams has a deeper understanding and respect of television serials than the previous directors of the Mission Impossible series. You can count on Abrams to deliver a script that is more true to the feel and vision of the original television series, and one that is just as intelligent and complex as any episode in the series, or even a James Bond movie.

Audiences will realise even as the opening credits roll, that M:I3 is not just far superior to M:I2 (John Woo’s music video bulletfest dramatic ballets felt so out of place), or everything the Mission Impossible series should have started out as, but it rivals even the James Bond series, in terms of villains, explosions, and explosive chase sequences involving multiple forms of transport, and a plot set in various corners of the globe. Abrams also sets down what audiences expect to see in future instalments as well: the traitor/mole betraying Ethan Hunt’s entire team, Ethan Hunt hanging suspended by a cable wire, latex masks, and the prerequisite amount of plot twists, reversals, and double-crosses.

Abrams, Kurtzman and Orci begin the movie with great storytelling – in a flashforward, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is apparently captured by cold villain Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who is about to extract some valuable information using a most nasty and painful method. In present time, the film begins again with a mission that will be familiar to fans of the original series: Ethan and his team must retrieve an agent who has been captured by Hoffman’s international weapons smuggler. However, the agent possesses a secret that may lead to the identity of the agency operative who betrayed her, as well as Hoffman’s most dangerous arms deal to date.

The rest of the movie is decently plotted, with minimal plot holes, a fine balance of action sequences alternating with slower espionage/mindgame scenes, and for once, Abrams correctly focuses on the M:I team as a collaborative effort instead of just a supporting cast for Ethan Hunt’s superspy character. While Tom Cruise impresses by acting in his own stunts, the rest of the cast really shine in their portrayal of a well-honed and close-knit operations team. Rhys-Meyers is the pilot and driver, Rhames is the tech specialist, and Maggie Q is the explosives expert. In a sly wink to Alias, there’s even a computer nerd (played by Simon Pegg) in headquarters who helps the team out.

Mission: Impossible got off on a bad start by making Ethan Hunt, instead of the team, the centre of the movie, John Woo made it worse by changing the spy movie into a Hong Kong stylised gunfight stuntman show, but finally JJ Abrams brings the franchise to the level it was destined for. Mission: Impossible is to the World Cup as James Bond is to the Olympics.

It’s a sign that the franchise has finally arrived, when MI:3 has as many product placements and cool gadgets as recent Bond movies. I was amazed at the number of cellphones that Tom Cruise used in the movie, as well as the gorgeous sports cars and SUVs featured. Oh, don’t forget the laptop computers, LCD screens, and the yellow DHL van. The only thing future producers of Mission: Impossible movies need to work on is the title song. Kanye West’s Impossible is bad enough to drive away audiences trying to enjoy the ending credits in the cinema. A more memorable villain might help as well – Hoffman didn’t have much material or screentime to work with, poor guy.

First published at incinemas on 3 May 2006

Fearless 霍元甲 (2006) DVD

Isn't it time Jet Li thinks of another fight pose?

In an example of cultural misunderstanding, the English language trailer for Fearless claims that this will be Jet Li’s final martial arts movie. The Mandarin titles state that this is his most best performance and most representative work to date, but after watching this travesty of a martial arts flick, one might end up wishing this is indeed Jet Li’s final martial arts movie.

Let’s get the plot safely out of the way first, though. Fearless is the fictional account of nationalist Huo Yuan Jia, whose series of exhibition matches against international fighters captured the heart of a nation experiencing daily humiliations from superior and more developed superpowers. In real life, the fighter founded the Jin Wu Men pugilistic society and died shortly after a match from tuberculosis, and has since been immortalised as a patriot. In popular culture, though, his fictitious disciple Chen Zhen (played by Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury) takes the limelight as he avenges the master’s poisoning by the evil Japanese judo team.

Fearless focuses not on Chen Zhen, but on the development of Huo Yuan Jia from an arrogant and scrappy fighter (in the mode of Mike Tyson) surrounded by lackeys and flatterers to a mellow warrior-philosopher. The transformation begins with a fatal duel with an opponent that results in reprisals that claim the lives of Huo’s family and drive him insane, and completed by the gentle care of a blind girl in a village that takes him in.

The plot is serviceable, even though the international exhibition matches bear more than a superficial resemblance to Jean Claude Van Damme’s The Quest. The action sequences, however, go against all that is natural and good in martial arts movies, and show that Jet Li is indeed an aging athlete standing on his last legs.

The Rules

No wire work – this is a martial arts movie, not a wuxia fantasy
No slow motion or mixed speeds in camera work
No cuts in fighting scenes – fighting moves should be shot in one continuous sequence, and no single move should be filmed in 2 discontinuous cuts.

No matter how good it looks, once you break these rules, you are no longer shooting a real martial arts movie. These tried and tested rules were worked out by Bruce Lee and Raymond Chow when their newly established Golden Harvest supplanted Shaw Brothers as the premier martial arts movie studio in the 1970s. When a martial artist resorts to breaking these rules, it’s a sure sign of reduced athleticism due to the aging process. Jet Li breaks not just one but all of them, a sure sign that his time as a leading martial arts actor has come and gone. To add insult to injury, Jet Li’s “killing blow” in the penultimate scene of Fearless is broken with a flashback to an earlier scene in the movie. A flashback.

True fans of martial arts movies will realise that Tony Jaa is the real deal now, and until Jean Claude Van Damme returns to the big screen in 2007 with Bloodsport: The New Beginning, Jaa is the only martial artist worth watching.

DVD Extras
One would’ve thought that English subtitles would be an automatic feature to include in any Region 3 release. Not here, though. Furthermore, the extras have only Mandarin subtitles. The paucity of language options suggest an indifferent release.

The most interesting extra on the disc would be “Jet Li’s world of Wushu”, where the actor expounds on the self-defense and moral philosophy of martial arts. “Searching for the world’s top martial artists” is entertaining, especially since a bevy of pro wrestlers and muay thai boxers ham it up for the camera for their casting trials. The Asia Pacific trailer is way too dark and appears as though someone filmed it with a handycam in a cinema hall.

If you pay attention to the extras, you’ll realise the casting of muay thai boxers. The fight scene between Jet and the Thai boxer were deleted from the theatrical release, although the scene was reinserted for Thai cinema audiences. Michelle Yeoh’s role also got cut on the editing floor. My impression is the extras on this DVD offer very little in terms of deleted scenes (the original cut of Fearless ran 150 minutes) or extras. Buy this DVD if you are unable to wait for a special edition, but this is worth renting.

First published at incinemas on 3 May 2006