I’ve been a fan of Zhang Yimou’s[1] films since, well, for a while now. But I’m also a huge kung fu fan — Jackie Chan especially — so House of Flying Daggers was quite a treat.

It’s not that I didn’t like Hero, or that Daggers was particularly funny. To the contrary, it’s tale of complex characters who don’t end well. That might be story enough, but every scene is richly photographed and styled — a hallmark of so many of Yimou’s films, but wonderfully so in Daggers.

Trivia: Viewers may be surprised to learn it was filmed in Ukraine, but the silver birch in so many of the forrest scenes is not native to China.

[1]: there is some debate about whether it’s “Zhang Yimou” or “Yimou Zhang” and I’m ashamed to say I don’t know enough to know better. I learned it as “Zhang Yimou,” and that’s how Wikipedia has it.

tags: film, hero, house of flying daggers, jackie chan, kung fu, movie, silver birch, ukrain, yimou zhang, zhang yimou

I’m embarrassed to be in the middle of Fantasy Mission Force, a kung fu movie that demonstrates a brand of Asian humor that I haven’t yet learned to appreciate. I’m watching it because I’m a sucker for Jackie Chan flicks and Netflix makes it too easy to queue up bad movies. David Chute wrote the Amazon editorial review:

Jackie Chan makes a brief guest appearance in this surreally goofy action comedy, a high-spirited shambles from 1982 that hovers awkwardly somewhere between Monty Python and The Three Stooges. When all else fails, cult director Chu Yen-ping (Island of Fire) resorts to exploding cigars, guys making funny faces, men dressed in women’s clothing, even a ghost or two. The nominal star, ’70s kung fu veteran Wang Yu (The One-Armed Swordsman), is an Allied agent assembling a troupe of commandos for a mission behind enemy lines during World War II. (Although the landscape is obviously Asian, there are Hogan’s Heroes-style Nazis scampering through the jungle.) Every member of this movie’s mismatched clown-squad seems to hail from a different planet, including one inexplicable fellow who looks like an Elvis impersonator in a kilt. Most of the exhilarating action is handled by the glorious Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia, from Peking Opera Blues and The Bride with White Hair, who kicks heads and looks smashing in a red-and-black-leather jumpsuit.

As bad as it is, though, I’m intrigued by something I’ve not seen in other kung fu movies: evidence of the deep hostility between China and Japan. Here’s the synopsis from Netflix:

When Japanese soldiers kidnap a group of generals, the Chinese offer a reward to the roguish Don Wen (Jimmy Wang Yu) if he can return the captives alive. Now, Wen and his motley band of miscreants — including a con man, an escape artist, a thief and an ex-wrestler — must fight their way behind enemy lines to make a profit. This Dirty Dozen-style comedy co-stars Jackie Chan and Brigitte Lin.

Movies in the US have exploited most every possible national dispute, but why haven’t I seen any mention of China’s conflict with Japan in a kunf fu movie before? Even here, most of the action is directed inward at trials among their own people.

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