Well this film doesn't waste any time getting to the point. First we get a text crawl of Ezekiel 25-17.
Did they get a correct?
No of course not.
But sadly it's still more accurate than Pulp Fiction.
We open on a typical shot of New York City in front of a massive Cathedral. There's what seems to be a local family and a few other people coming out of the service. They're then immediately gunned down by the very Chinese looking Italian mafia.
This gets the attention of the ever powerful and intimidating Sonny Chiba. Or at least his name in the movie is just Cheba. Maybe he has some other name but the English dub decides to go with his actual name so it doesn't make any difference here.
Chiba is a martial arts champion and he's decided to take the mafia directly on. And the first thing he does is take a plane to Tokyo because we can't be shooting any more scenes in New York.
He takes on an incredibly awkward and weird assignment. He goes on the local TV and proclaims to the entire country. ''I am here to be hired as a bodyguard for anybody willing to give information about the local Mafia.''
Which seems kind of weird to me, you're just putting whoever signed you on as a bodyguard into the Limelight which will probably get them killed by the mob.
Also when I say local Mafia I mean the Italian mafia who I guess is here in Tokyo?
I don't know why they didn't use one of the other mobs. Maybe they just didn't want to insult anybody or get harassment from some local Group by using a Chinese or Japanese gangs.
Perhaps they were trying to capitalise on the American audience and decided to use a more localised group.
And this isn't just a dubbing problem either. There's a scene later on in the movie where one of the gangs carve* there "name" into a girl's arm. Which proclaims them to be the Costa Nostra.
The whole story turns into a series of who can trust who. At first you think this woman who hired Sheba to be your bodyguard his interested in him and you find out later on that she was part of the drug cartel to begin with and then she breaks free of it to get involved in the Gang who's kind of running with the mafia but may not be running with the mafia and then they're also involved with a bunch of soldiers who were bringing in weapons and possibly other forms narcotics.
So the film is comprised of three major set pieces. Dialogue, pointless environment scene and Kung Fu Fighting.
Now maybe in the original language the dialogue wasn't too bad. I can't imagine it was anything great given the Kung Fu movies have never been known for their Stellar acting. But still perhaps there's a chemistry there that I'm just not seeing with these poorly done English dubbed voice actors. It makes the entire feeling a little melancholy.
Then we have the environment scenes. These are just big long-drawn-out shots of people doing stuff. Sometimes it's a group of men walking around looking menacing. Other times it's a random strip club that's there just to provide TnA.
With a lot of scenes of strippers getting abused by said mobsters. I don't know if they're just trying to build tension, if they're just trying to fill time or what the gimmick is. But it all just feels kind of weird because half of it isn't link of our main character.
And finally there's the Kung Fu.
This is one of the movie should really shine. I mean after all it's a fighting film.
But it's all oddly done.
They have people who know how to fight and the main character is a surprisingly good fighter but the camera work is so choppy and it constantly switches back and forth between different scene so you never really see any choreography. It's similar to watching one of those modern day Christopher Nolan Batman films where it just keeps cutting from scene to scene. And I have no idea why they do that.
Overall it's a slow movie. The kung fu scenes are a bit spastic, the dialogue isn't all that interesting (not helped by the bad dubbing) and the second half of the film becomes more dominated by gun fights that feel more at home in a western flick than they do a kung fu movie.
It's not a bad movie but it's not a great one either. And there's no shortage of kung fu flicks both in the 70s or in the modern day. Maybe if you're a big Sonny Chiba fan in might be worth watching. But otherwise there are better options out there.
*and when I say carving what I really mean is write the name Costa Nova with ketchup and pretend as if that was blood on some girls arm.
Comments
Post a Comment