From: wildman@athena.mit.edu (Timothy Worsley)
Subject: Re: HK Movies (Was: Diary of a Hitman)
Keywords: frogs evil
Reply-To: eprice@sql.sybase.com
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 07:32:10 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.013322.19589@iti.gov.sg> hcleong@iti.gov.sg
(Leong Heng Cheong) writes:
>In article <1992Jul27.133741.8344@athena.mit.edu> eprice@sql.sybase.com writes:
>>Have you *seen* HARDBOILED??  I thought it was great.  Not as good as
>>THE KILLER, but certinaly an order of magnitude superior to *any*
>>American action film I've seen this summer.
>
>No, I didn't see the movie.  But as I have stated, the reviews were bad.
>The box-office was bad.  I might like the movie as reviews are just
>another viewer's opinion.

And, as has been pointed out many times in rec.arts.movies:

  Just cuz a movie makes lots of money doesn't mean it's good.
  Just cuz a movie makes lots of money doesn't mean it's bad.
  Just cuz a movie makes no money doesn't mean it's bad.
  Just cuz a movie makes no money doesn't mean it's good.

I don't pay much attention to reviewers.  I have my own idiosyncratic
views about film, and my own tastes and interests.  I can't rely on
the critics to have the same approach.

>>Who do you consider the greatest directors in HK then?  I'm curious!
>
>One director that I consider to be good is Tsui Hark.

I think he's good too (I've seen A BETTER TOMORROW 3, GUNMEN, and ONCE
UPON A TIME IN CHINA so far).

>HK movies tend to have good action scene.  If one is familiar only with
>LETHAL WEAPONS or RICOCHET, many of the action scenes in HK movies will
>blow one away.

They are indeed impressive.  And I don't believe it's just because of
the number of people that get killed--there are many American action
films that have astronomical body counts but remain uninspiring...  It
is the way the scenes are filmed, the framing, the camera movement,
the editing, just look at the second scene of THE KILLER and compare
exactly how the director has communicated an ordinary story element
(assassin kills roomful of people, wounds innocent bystander) in an
extraordinary manner.  LETHAL WEAPON has nothing like this.  RICOCHET?
You must be joking...

>However, usually these are only violence for violence sake.

People always say that...  TAXI DRIVER is a perfect example of a film
that was criticized for "glorifying" unnecessary violence, which is
absurd.

They don't usually have anything to do with the plot (if the plot
>exist...:-)), and are just another excuse to show more blood.  A good
>movie should have a tight plot, in my opinion, and these scenes certainly
>don't help better the films.

Plot doesn't actually interest me any more than cinematography, sound,
editing, imagery, etc...  I've seen superb movies with little or no
plot (KOYAANISQATSI), or with a stupid plot (SUSPIRIA).  Others may
have different priorities of course.

You don't give any specific examples here.  Perhaps in the bad films,
what you say is true, but there are plenty of them here in the USA as
well.

>>Give me A BETTER TOMORROW 3 over LETHAL WEAPON 3 or ALIEN
>>3 *any* day.
>
>In my opinion, A BETTER TOMORROW 3 was much worse than LETHAL WEAPONS 3.

Well, that I find shocking.  I always try to make allowances for
differences of taste, but I thought LW3 was horrendously bad.  It was
boring, predictable, stupid, no excitement at all, and had a truly
moronic script (the few good lines of which were all in the previews).

>At least LW3 has entertainment value with a not-that-difficult-to-believe
>storyline.

No, it didn't entertain me at all.  The storyline was idiotic and
incoherent.

>And the direction is at least not bad.

I thought it sucked.  NB: I am not going to give reasons for this
statement, because to do so I would have to watch the movie again.
Please spare me that! :-)

>A BETTER TOMORROW 3 has an unbelievable story where the good guys
>will not get killed, even if he or she runs through rains of bullets.
>A reference to Hong Kong's 1997 was made in the movie (approx. "Why
>should I go back to Hong Kong when I still have to leave in 97...")
>when this incident hasn't even be brought up during that time.  The
>direction is just copies of scenes from other movies.  A very
>tell-tale sign is the constant use of spotlights to shine onto the
>smoke in the background, which was rather a trendy scene during that
>time.

OK.  There is a point that is worth making here.  I watch some of
these HK films as, say, more like "opera".  That is to say, quite
often (at least at first) I see them with either no English subtitles
or with very bad subtitles.  So, the details of the plot are by
necessity secondary to the audio/visual qualities of the film.  One
could call this a "sensual" appreciation of a film as opposed to
"analytical".  (However, this is not just the result of not being able
to follow the dialogue, because I have similar tendencies with respect
to English-language films--I guess I don't mind substance, but it
should *never* be at the expense of *style*!)

A BETTER TOMORROW was the second John Woo film (or HK film in general)
that I saw, and it was on laserdisc imported from Japan: therefore no
English subtitles, but it was letterboxed.  Naturally, what I
concentrated on was the camera work, the composition of the shots, the
sound, etc.  And in these respects I believe A BETTER TOMORROW is very
well done (in the theater it's even more impressive).

A BETTER TOMORROW II was not at all as interesting to me, despite the
nice mass slaughter at the end.  There was too much plot (as Joe Bob
would say), and some of the characters were kind of annoying.  In some
ways I think one could compare the progression of these two films to
the original LETHAL WEAPON and its sequel.  LETHAL WEAPON 2 was a much
more straightforward action-comedy than its predecessor, and, sure, it
was enjoyable, had more explosions and stuff, but I find it a lot less
worthwhile than the first one.

A BETTER TOMORROW III breaks this similarity to the LETHAL WEAPON
series, because while LETHAL WEAPON 3 was more of the same (or perhaps
I should say, *less* of the same -- a lot less), A BETTER TOMORROW III
diverged from the "formula".  It was, at least for me, original.  The
only version I've seen is on video, not letterboxed and therefore with
virtually (sometimes entirely) unreadable subtitles.  After repeated
viewings I understood most of the story and dialogue, but visually and
sonically I always enjoyed the movie despite the superficial
incomprehensibility.

Yikes, this has become rather lengthy!  I hope I've made my point:
sure, most HK films suck, but so do most American films, so does most
of almost anything.  At least for me, according to what I find
entertaining, there is a very worthwhile 10% to explore.  Maybe when
the novelty wears off, and these films become less foreign (which they
might *not* do, after all they are literally foreign) to me, I will be
able to quietly agree to most of your statements (except for the bit
about LW3!!).  But for now, I'm having too good a time immersing
myself in the visceral pleasure of the best of the hyper-accelerated
action scenes of THE KILLER (my favorite shot is probably when Chow
Yun Fat gets that one guy with the knife, the rhythm of that sequence
is really great, if that makes any sense to anyone--I think Tarkovsky
said (in his book _Sculpting in Time_) that editing does't just
logically connect events, but gives them a rhythm--again, this is sort
of the "analytical" vs. "sensual" issue...), the dense soaring music
over alternating shots of a sorrowful parting and a bomb being defused
in BULLET IN THE HEAD (one of my favorite parts, but only in the
theater--on tape it loses most of its power), blood gushing out of
Chow Yun Fat's mouth against a background of a huge red neon sign on
top of a building, and later him striding down the driveway in a
parking garage with the large red "No Smoking" sign behind him (A
BETTER TOMORROW).

Well, sorry about that, I'm getting carried away, and I hope you'll
excuse me for simply sharing my enthusiasm... :-)

Happy movie-going,

Ed Price              (not Tim Worsely) `Do you believe in God?'
eprice@sql.sybase.com (not wildman@...) `I am the God.'
Organization: Senior, Economics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA