Don't Go Breaking My Heart

DON’T GO BREAKING MY HEART (Daan gyun naam yu)       B-

Hong Kong (115 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Johnny To       co-director:  Wai Ka-fai

What’s a film festival without a Johnny To tribute to romanticized love stories featuring plenty of eye candy, an over saturated color scheme, young up and coming professionals in love, and enough ongoing silliness to recall the days of Love American Style, a popular early 70’s TV show that featured an ongoing rotation of celebrities, or some variation like MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE (1964) with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni?  What’s not to like, as this is as sugar coated as movies get, a light and breezy love triangle that features two guys trying to get the same girl?  Louis Koo showing his best Bruce Lee profile is a playboy seen in the opening driving his Mercedes convertible (later a Maserati) through the streets of Hong Kong as Shen Ran, the CEO of his own investment company, who spots the adorable girl of his dreams riding on a bus, Zixin (Gao Yuan Yuan), but loses her in the crowd.  Instead, she’s immediately helped by a street drunk Qihong (Daniel Wu), an overly friendly helpful guy who offers her a hand just after she’s been dumped by a Video game loving, toy collecting, and frog-possessing former boyfriend who’s moved on with a pregnant and overly hysterical new girlfriend.  Zixin unloads all her unwanted ex-boyfriend’s possessions on Qihong, including his entire liquor supply and pet frog which are most appreciated, pretty much dumping the rest.  It turns out Qihong is a former architect who’s actually designed several buildings in Hong Kong, so Zixin asks him to stop drinking and design another, agreeing to meet in a week, which of course, never happens, as life takes some crazy turns.    

Wouldn’t you know, Shen Ran’s skyscraper office faces the desk of Zixin in the neighboring building, where he starts plastering notes and pictures in the window to get her attention, which actually works, also attracting the attention of another buxom office worker, Angelina (Larisa Bakurova), who works a few stories below thinking all the attention is directed at her.  When he suggests they meet, he gets smothered by the sexualized Angelina, who takes his mind off Zixin, who sees them together the following morning, posting “asshole” on the office window.  This turns into a game of hard to get as she never wants to see him again, set in the financial turmoil of the international economic crisis, where each company was forced to make big cutbacks, but Shen Ran eventually buys Zixin’s company, becoming her boss, where he immediately finds ways to make her busy and keep her close at hand.  He orders her to pick out a new luxury car, a penthouse suite, as well as the interior furnishings, all ultra-stylish examples of extreme wealth on display, where he attempts to buy his way into her heart.  And it nearly works, until she realizes why she doesn’t trust the guy.  Incredibly, a cleaned up Qihong reappears in the office across the way, as he’s back designing buildings, including one in Zixin’s home town of Suzhou, where he’s forced to compete in this office window charade of attracting the girl’s attention through playful originality, and the guy’s a born natural, featuring a sentimental singing frog. 

What to do, what to do, as she’s got her heart falling for two gorgeous guys, each one loaded, where Hong Kong is back in the flush of money and success, where the city is once again a showpiece on display in a Hong Kong film which is fortunate to have such a panoramic skyline and backdrop for movies.  Despite all the love and silliness, the film doesn’t sustain the interest throughout, lagging somewhat as the game gets prolonged, as the competition just elevates to the ridiculous, as these guys are like super characters with the money and power to accomplish just about anything.  Zixin’s talent is her joyful optimism, as she’s a cheerful addition to any room, where even in her most gloomy state, she continues to radiate warmth and affection, though her playfulness is a bit girlish.  Koo exudes his playboy charm, still something of a snake at heart, while Wu also has a boyish and trustworthy nature, the kind of guy who’s not nearly as interesting, but is reliable and dependable - - hint:  marriage material.  Who would you rather be married to, the charming, James Bond style international playboy who commands instant respect wherever he goes, or the likeable guy adored by your family for all the right reasons, as he’s never full of himself, placing her interests first, but he’s also not nearly as much fun to be around as the snake?  As for the sexual sizzle, which guy?  Her indecisiveness takes forever, which can get annoying, where you might start to root for a third option, like dump the girl and let the guys have a go at it, which would at least be a surprise.  Whatever happens, expect all is right in the ever invigorated Hong Kong film industry which keeps churning out the hits.   

Warrior

WARRIOR                  B                     

USA  (140 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Gavin O’Connor

While there’s nothing particularly novel about this formulaic story, a ROCKY (1976) picture with Nick Nolte in the famous Burgess Meredith role as the aging fight trainer, with the role of Rocky split between two brothers, Tom Hardy as Tommy and Joel Edgarton as Brendan, split from one another as teenagers and forced to lead very separate and distinctly different lives.  Hardy plays a brooding ex-Marine, a loner with so many complications in his life he can barely utter a word, a guy carrying a grudge who turns into a horrifically brutal fighter, while his brother Brandon is a high school physics teacher, married with two children, but about to have his home foreclosed, forcing him into a state of desperation where he can pick up extra cash from the fight business.  Joel Edgarton is the screenwriter of the very stylish The Postman Always Rings Twice style Australian film THE SQUARE (2008), directed by his brother Nash, and one of the criminal brothers in one of he best pictures of last year, ANIMAL KINGDOM (2010).  Here he plays the older brother who got the better end of the deal, as the younger brother was forced to flee from an abusive father, taking his terminally ill mother with him, basically fending for himself at an early age, losing all contact with his family.  Neither one has any use for their father, who finally after all these years is trying to get sober, but barely even registers as having a pulse with these two guys, as they’ve left him behind ages ago.  Rather than playing football in Mark Wahlberg’s INVINCIBLE (2006), wrestling from Aronofsky’s THE WRESTLER (2008 ), or boxing in David O. Russell’s THE FIGHTER (2010), this movie features the latest fighting craze called the ultimate fighting championship, mixed martial arts, which allows boxing, wrestling, and various martial arts techniques where a fighter wins by points, knockouts or submission holds, where in this case, a round robin battle of 16 leads to 4 fights within 24 hours, the winner takes all, a $5 million cash prize.  

While the actual narrative is familiar, but rather than shown in an indie style picture, which is usually all character development, this is a tense, highly stylized, Hollywood action picture that takes us directly into the center of the ring where it becomes an adrenaline-laced fight picture, an old-fashioned popcorn movie that stars three men who are so damaged they are barely articulate, who haven’t spoken to one another in years, and when they do have the opportunity, they still have next to nothing to say, so it’s all about what happens inside the ring.  Tommy is a former undefeated high school State wrestling champion, but his quick exit from the state curtailed his promising career, while Brendan had a brief, fairly ordinary ultimate fighting career that also came to an abrupt end as his wife Tess (Jennifer Morrison) couldn’t stand to see her husband get pummeled.  But both are completely off the radar when it comes to ranking the best fighters in the world, so just getting into this tournament is something of a stretch.  However, the acting in this picture is superb, among the best performances of the year, where they each complement one another nicely, where Nolte is the odd man out, bruised, beaten, old and weary, who dares to hope against all fading hope that he can reconcile his differences with his two sons who refuse to acknowledge his existence, who spends his time listening to a tape in his ear of a reading of Melville’s Moby Dick.  Tommy went off to Iraq and bulked up, but so little is known about him that his life is a mystery even to himself, as he keeps everything secretly locked up inside, very much in the mold of Stallone in FIRST BLOOD (1992), where fighting is his true release, seen kicking the living crap out of a championship contender as a walk on fighter in a dingy gym, which is how he earns his reputation.  He’s also recognized by a soldier in Iraq as a war hero, but the Army has no clue who he is.  Brendan is a popular teacher, but imagine the looks on the kids faces when he walks into classes with cuts and bruises all over his face, where he’s the talk of the school forcing the administration to step in, as this is not the kind of example they’re interested in setting for young well-educated teenagers.               

While there is a working class setting of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, there is little connection to actual working class problems, as few, if any, American households can attempt to save their homes via ultimate fighting prize winnings.  Most would stand a better chance beating the odds of winning an extreme makeover offered by the Oprah Winfrey show, where they may refurbish, redecorate, and pay a year’s mortgage to save your home from foreclosure.  Instead this is all about the promised lure of dollars, where instead of hunkering down and figuring out what most families would need to do, like sell one of their two high-priced automobiles, they rely upon a Hollywood dream, a clichéd option that really doesn’t exist, only in the movies.  This movie would barely be a consideration except that the production values are excellent, the acting is extremely compelling, the suspense is palpable, using a split screen and quick cut editing technique, all adding to the build up of tension, where the ass kicking action in the ring is riveting, reinforced by the musical soundtrack by Mark Isham, all of which adds up to a remarkably well made motion picture, one that will likely delight audiences as one of the feel good pictures of the year.  The question will be whether this film has any staying power, whether any of the emotional connections have any resiliency, and whether there’s enough fan interest in the action scenes.  The blue collar setting is interesting, but the degree of dysfunctional family relationship is dark and disturbing, where the option of organized crime never intrudes, as these boys would likely have been recruited as teenagers by neighborhood gangs.  As bleak as the unfolding narrative can seem, real life often offers far darker alternatives.  There are weight divisions in every fighting match, including weigh-ins, but that seems to have been thrown by the wayside, where the fight tournament actually resembles Bruce Lee in ENTER THE DRAGON (1973), continually fending off bigger and stronger contenders, where the most patient and disciplined fighter often prevails, defying all odds, where a guy never given a chance still has a chance.  In times of financial ruin, where people are legitimately losing their jobs and their homes, not to mention their pensions and their futures, this film, like the director’s earlier 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey dream on ice, MIRACLE (2004), feels like a hope and a prayer.

13 Assassins

13 ASSASSINS                      B+                  

Japan  Great Britain  (141 mi)  2010  ‘Scope  d:  Takashi Miike

One of the most peculiar aspects in the history of human development is the evolution into specialized samurai swordsmen in Japan, where the gruesome idea of honor and nobility comes at the price of death by mutilation, either at one’s own hand in hari-kari or on the battlefield.  The history of China going back 2000 years B.C. includes the use of swords by soldiers in battle, but no one took it to the distinctive psychological extremes of the Japanese, where initially the samurai class was a warrior class that protected nobility, seen as servants following the orders of the ruling class.  In this manner, they were bred to fight protecting their Lords, and expected to commit hari-kari in disgrace, (see Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1941 wartime film 47 RONIN Pt’s 1 and 2), if they allowed their Lords to perish or suffer humiliation, an ominous symbolic message to be sending the public during a time of war.  This distinctive view of nobility and disgrace, either one or the other, is exclusively Japanese and part of their national identity, where the culture is obsessed with the manner of one’s death and the degree of honor (or disgrace) associated with the surviving family.  Similar to Christians viewing Jesus Christ’s absorption of earthly punishment and pain as their salvation and redemption, the Japanese likewise see honor in a samurai’s death as the ultimate sacrifice of a human life.  This philosophical view of human sacrifice is at the heart of Miike’s film, which is a fictionalized recreation of historical events, asking what is the role of a samurai when his Lord becomes a ruthless power mad killer?  Do they protect his tyranny, or do they revolt and rise up against him, despite the nobility of his parentage?

Set in the mid 19th century, the country was still ruled by Shoguns, hereditary military dictatorships that established the peace by threat of force, surrounding themselves with huge armies protecting the leaders that are so powerful that no one can stand up to them.  In this instance, Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki), the brother of the Shogun, launches a wicked campaign of rape, torture and perverse violence against his own people as he rises to power, actually killing them for sport, where they are all his subjects and he can do with them as he sadistically pleases, suggesting that is the art of a true ruler.  While his brother Sir Doi is bound by blood not to interfere, he secretly turns to his head samurai, Shinzaemon (Kôji Yakusho), requesting that he exact justice through assassination, assembling a highly trained team of the best samurai warriors for what amounts to a suicide mission to save the nation from the bloodlust of a crazed madman.  Naritsugu’s chief bodyguard is Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), a fellow classmate of Shinzaemon, both well versed in each other’s methods, now pitted on opposite sides.  Hanbei gets wind of the mission, but has to figure out how and where it will take place, beginning the chess match between the two warriors.  Miike intentionally uses a structure based on the original 1963 Eiichi Kudo film THE THIRTEEN ASSASSINS, which resembles a town under siege of Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI (1954), where initially he slowly gathers the forces who are introduced one by one until there are twelve.  Unlike Kurosawa, the character development is sketchy, where only a few warriors stand out.  Only after they begin their journey do they encounter a bizarre yet comic creature living in the forest, Koyata (Yûsuke Iseye), something of a lovestruck bandit who has eyes on a local beauty, apparently living outside all social customs, including the effrontery to think samurai’s are arrogant men, which of course endears him to Shinzaemon, eventually accepting him as the 13th samurai.     

Usually, when one thinks of assassination missions, stealth activities under cover of darkness come to mind, where fewer forces could swoop in and out targeting their single subject, which is the pattern of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  But not under the code of a samurai, where face to face combat is the only true act of heroism, where a few lone men stand up to hundreds, similar to Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone films or the Hong Kong model for Bruce Lee martial arts films.  Like both earlier films, Miike holds the action in reserve, saving the choreography of hand to hand combat for the last 45 minutes of the film, much of it covered in mud, a thrilling non-stop action sequence that rivals the endless bloody carnage depicted in Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969).  While Peckinpah envisioned the last holdouts of freedom and individualism from the frontier era of the West in an especially bleak and futile light, Miike similarly paints with abject depravity the moral void of samurai warriors serving brutally corrupt feudal Lords, suggesting the lawlessness of the era of samurai protected Shoguns was coming to an end, replaced by the Meiji Period which anointed the country’s Emperor, elected a constitutional government, and established a national army, much of it stimulated by the threat to national security generated from American warships entering Tokyo Bay.   However, rather than offer any insight into a more enlightened or progressive future, Miike dwells in the bleak nightmarish hell of total annihilation, like a dragon setting its own tail ablaze, samurai descending upon samurai, wiping each other out to the point of mass oblivion.  Miike has graced the screen with apocalyptic visions of hopelessness before, where the actual universe was coming to an end in surrealist nuclear annihilation in DEAD OR ALIVE (1999), but nothing that matches the grandiosity of his set pieces here and his skilled direction of a cast of hundreds.  While seemingly repetitive at times with wave upon wave of action, the audience is literally under siege through a relentlessly bloody vision of moral collapse.