Martial Arts Movies

‘Enter the Dragon’ Movie and 4K Review

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

The following review was written by Ultimate Rabbit Correspondent, Tony Farinella.

My unofficial title of a film buff might be revoked when I reveal this is the first Bruce Lee film I have ever watched. I do have “Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits” on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection, but I have yet to dive into those films.  “Enter the Dragon” was the last film Lee completed before his untimely death.  With it being the 100-year anniversary of Warner Brothers, they have taken it upon themselves to give this film the 4K treatment.  While I have some issues with “Enter the Dragon,” for the most part it was a decent introduction to Lee.  I look forward to checking out more of his films with my Criterion box set.  There are too many films out there and not enough hours in the day.

Bruce Lee stars as Lee, a skilled and proficient martial artist and instructor, being approached by Braithwaite (Geoffrey Weeks), a British intelligence agent, about entering a martial arts tournament. The tournament is being run on a private island by the villainous Han (Kien Shih). He needs Lee’s help as he suspects Han is involved in prostitution and illegal drug trafficking. He needs Lee to enter the tournament and find out the inside scoop on Han and his operation.  It’s also a deeply personal mission for Lee as he finds out one of Han’s goons has caused Lee’s family pain and misery.

Lee is joined in this tournament by a compulsive gambler named Roper, played by film veteran John Saxon, and the smooth-talking Williams, played by Jim Kelly. They are treated to beautiful women and told to stay in their rooms and not ruffle any feathers.  One night, Lee goes out looking for clues and evidence, which leaves Han wondering what is going on with his security team. Can he trust his men to keep Lee, Roper and Williams in line? Lee seems to be one step ahead of Han, but Han has an army of men and will stop at nothing to keep his enterprise up and running.

“Enter the Dragon,” overall, was a mixed bag for me.  The first hour of the film really lost me, and it seemed to move at a glacial pace.  I’m all for building up the story, the characters, and giving us time to digest everything before the final battle. I’m on board with that one hundred percent, and I like interesting characters and a good build-up to a grand finale. However, the first hour is tedious and rather boring.  It doesn’t really go anywhere.  When we get to the last half-hour and Lee gets to do his thing, it’s a beautiful movie to watch unfold on screen.  The martial arts sequences are put together like a work of art and are truly out of this world.

Maybe I’m asking too much for a martial arts movie to have a better story, but it’s more about the pacing.  There is no sense of urgency in a film that is only 99 minutes or 102 minutes if you watch the special edition of it.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely was enthralled with the last act when it comes down to Han and Lee. The way they use the mirrors and what’s around them had me on the edge of my seat, literally. Bruce choreographed the fight scenes himself, and he has a great screen presence.  I didn’t feel like he had a ton of screen time, but when he’s on screen, he really makes his scenes count. It’s remarkable how lightning fast and intense the fight sequences are, and they are flawless.  You have to give credit to Bruce for looking the part, playing the part, and putting so much into this film.

Many people have talked about the spy aspects of the film and compared it to the James Bond franchise. I didn’t really feel like they fleshed out those aspects enough.  I really wanted more of the meat and potatoes of the story. I know Lee was a silent but deadly killer in this film, but the rest of the cast can be a little too cartoonish at times.  Again, I was blown away by the final 30-40 minutes.  If they had properly built it up in the first hour, I would have considered it a classic, which many film critics and historians out there have labeled it.  Maybe I need to give this one another watch, but on my first viewing, I can’t say I see the historical significance of this film.

* * out of * * * *

4K Info: “Enter the Dragon” is released on a single disc 4K from Warner Brothers Home Entertainment.  The theatrical cut of the film runs at 99 minutes while the special-edition version runs at 102 minutes. The film is rated R for martial arts violence and brief nudity.  It also comes with a digital copy of the film.

Video/Audio Info:  The High Dynamic Range on this 4K release is very, very strong here.  The film was released in 1973, and many scenes were incredibly bright, colorful and eye-popping.  It still has a little bit of the old-school charm to it, but it’s also touched up. That being said, it isn’t so touched up that it looks too clean.  This is a prime example of a film that is improved with a 4K release, but it still keeps its classic look at the same time. The Dolby Atmos track is perfect here.  It also comes with subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.

Special Features:

Introduction by Linda Lee Cadwell

Commentary by Paul Heller and Michael Allin

Should You Buy It?

Film criticism is subjective, and I really wanted to love this film. I’ve loved what Warner Brothers has been doing lately with their restorations of classic cinema.  I’m always looking to learn about new films and classic Hollywood stars.  With that being said, I was bored and uninterested in two-thirds of this film.  For a classic, it shouldn’t be the case.  I will give credit where credit is due and say the final 30-40 minutes feature some of the best martial arts I’ve ever seen in my life.  I didn’t expect the film to be wall-to-wall action, as that wouldn’t be feasible, but I was hoping for a little bit more out of the characters, pacing and storytelling, even in a martial arts movie. If you are a Bruce Lee fan and you adore this film, you won’t be disappointed in the least by this 4K release and transfer.  I’m willing to watch this film again and see if I missed something. In the end, it’s one with a grand finale that needed a story and some build-up to accompany it.

**Disclaimer** I received a copy of this film from Warner Brothers to review for free.  The opinions and statements in the review are mine and mine alone.

Steven Soderbergh Teams Up With Gina Carano For ‘Haywire’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: This review was written back in 2012, long before Gina Carano’s acting career went in a certain direction which she did not benefit from.

Watching Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire” brought back a lot of great memories I have of watching action heroes kicking serious ass in movies. I grew up watching Steven Seagal snap arms in half in “Hard to Kill” and “Marked for Death,”, and I always found in intensely satisfying to see him lay waste to those enemies who dared to cross him. There was also Chuck Norris who you could always count on to inflict serious pain on his adversaries and perform a pitch perfect roundhouse kick in “The Delta Force.” Those films came out in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Now we are in the year 2011, and it feels like it has been far too long since we have had an action star who can punch and kick in ways I can only dream of doing myself.

With “Haywire,” Soderbergh introduces us to Gina Carano, a now retired mixed martial arts fighter. As he did with Sasha Grey in “The Girlfriend Experience,” he throws Carano into her first mainstream acting role to see how she swims in the competitive world of Hollywood. But whereas Grey had unknown actors to work with, Carano is placed in a sea of top-notch actors which include Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas. Taking this into account, I cannot help but think Grey had it a lot easier than Carano.

“Haywire” is another one of those innocent people framed for a crime they didn’t commit movies with Carano playing Mallory Kane, a black ops agent who is assigned to covert operations. Kane is quick to discover she has been set up to take a fall, and she plots her revenge against those who foolishly underestimated her vicious talents. You know she will eventually get the upper hand on her betrayers, and seeing her take them on is terrific fun as she performs stunts which I don’t always see Stallone or Schwarzenegger doing as well.

Yes, Carano’s acting range only goes so far, but she does have a strong presence whenever she’s onscreen. Furthermore, she manages to hold her own against actors who could have easily run her over and embarrass her without remorse. Having said that, she really comes alive during the action sequences which are exhilarating as she doesn’t have some stunt person filling in for her. It should be no surprise that, being MMA fighter, she can really take a punch and dish one out which looks far more painful than the one she was forced to endure.

Actually, when you think about it, Carano gives all the actors opposite her a tough acting challenge as they have to appear as tough, if not tougher, than she is. Certain actors (you’ll know them when you see them) look inescapably sheepish around her, and they look even worse when they prepare to throw punches in her general direction. Even when she’s not strangling a guy with her legs, tackling another, or smothering an unluck bastard with a pillow, those eyes of her stare at you like shiny daggers to where you feel like you should have known better than to mess with her.

The one actor who gives Carano a run for her money is Fassbender with whom she shares a dynamo fight scene where they literally beat the crap out of each other. Fassbender never makes it easy for his co-stars as he challenges them to be better than they already are, and this takes on a new meaning when they tangle to where one character’s victory is truly earned and not easily predicted.

“Haywire” may never be ranked among Soderbergh’s greatest works, but it is diverting fun as it plays around with the action movie conventions set up by the Bourne trilogy and various spy movies released over the years. It also allows him to team up again with his “Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen” composer David Holmes for another groovy music score which always proves to be so much to play on my stereo system. It will be interesting to see where Carano’s acting career goes from here. Will she advance to action star status, or will she end up in straight to video realm where many stars past their prime end up? Whatever you may think of her acting skills, she did create a memorable presence here onscreen.

At the very least, Carano is bound to have more luck on the silver screen than Howie Long has had to date. He may have been a cool dude in “Broken Arrow,” but his lead role in “Firestorm” left little to be desired.

* * * out of * * * *

Underseen Movie: ‘JCVD’ – The Muscles From Brussels Lays Himself Bare

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

I have never really been a fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme. He has the moves, but he has never been much of an actor. I still vividly remember watching “Cyborg” with my brother and a friend of his on the family VCR years ago. My dad even watched it with us, and he could not stop bagging on Van Damme throughout the whole monstrosity which was made by those creative geniuses from Cannon Pictures. This is some of what he said:

“This is the single worst actor I have ever seen in my life! His face is completely immobile! He’s like Stonehenge!”

Oh, the memories! You’d figure after us seeing “Cyborg” that none of us would ever bother watching a Van Damme movie ever again, but he was everywhere for much of the late 80’s and early 90’s. “Bloodsport” was nothing extraordinary, but those fight scenes were pretty awesome.

“Death Warrant” was one I only saw because my best friend from high school wanted to check it out. It was alright, but this is probably being generous. I got a little pissed when that nerdy kid with glasses wanted to watch “Star Trek,” but the hot lady played by Cynthia Gibb did not want to bother. She would rather be screwing Van Damme’s character while he was taking a break from working undercover in a prison to catch a killer. Seriously, not all “Star Trek” fans are this geeky!

But following the commercial failure of “Universal Soldier: The Return,” Van Damme went from being a Hollywood star to being thrown into the hard to escape realm of straight to video movies, and he also went through drug problems and several divorces. I always wondered how people like him or Steven Seagal deal with going from big Hollywood action movies to direct to video crap which continues to define their careers to this day. I imagine they are not happy being in this movie star limbo. On one hand, they are still making a living, but at the same time I keep thinking they must miss where they were before Hollywood abandoned them in the wake of several box office disappointments.

“JCVD” is a fictionalized answer to this question, and is not your typical martial arts ass kicking epic. Van Damme plays himself, and we can what years of drugs, court battles, and many B movies, most of them lousy, have done to him and his face. As the movie opens, we see him arguing with the director of his latest movie, but the director is more interested in throwing darts at a postcard with the Hollywood sign on it then in listening to a man whose only distinction is getting John Woo to come to America and make “Hard Target.”

We see Van Damme at court fighting for custody of his daughter (played by Saskia Flanders), and his ex-wife’s attorney presents his movies as arguments against him as a person. They pile up so high to where he excuses himself to go to the bathroom while the titles are still being read off. His problems keep mounting as he can’t get cash out of the ATM, and his lawyer calls saying he still owes him money. Then his custody suit hits an impasse when his daughter says she doesn’t want to live with him because, whenever a movie of his is on television, she gets picked on by all the kids at school. Even worse, he just lost a film role to Seagal just because he offered to cut off his ponytail.

So, Van Damme heads back to Belgium to reconnect with his roots and where he came from (hence his nickname “The Muscles from Brussels”). He is still treated as a big star and a hero back home, and as a man who helped put the country and its people on the Hollywood map. But soon after, a hostage situation erupts at a nearby post office and, yes, all hell breaks loose. At first, it looks like he is robbing the post office, but events are seen from different perspectives, and it turns out he has arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time. This time, he can’t rely on his martial arts moves to get him out of this situation. Van Damme is not seen as an action hero here, but as a regular man who is caught up in a situation not of his making.

“JCVD” is presented as a comedy/drama hybrid, and while the tone is a bit uneven, there are some very funny moments. We see one of the robbers buddy up with Van Damme and talk to him about his movies, and he even gets him to show off one of his classic moves. While the other robbers couldn’t care less, this one wants his autograph. In the meantime, the townspeople have come out in force to support the fallen celebrity for what he is doing. In many ways, the movie is a look at the crazy nature of fame and a celebrity is forever trapped in a prison because of it.

The big question I had when I went out to see “JCVD” was this; has he gotten any better as an actor. Even Los Angeles Times film critic Sam Adams in his review of this movie said that “most of the acting in Van Damme’s films takes place below the neck.” Surprisingly, the answer is yes, he has. In fact, in “JCVD” he is really good playing a fictionalized version of himself. My dad’s description of him as “Stonehenge” does not apply to him here, and while he will never be Laurence Olivier or Sean Penn, this movie is a big step up for him creatively speaking.

The movie has one tremendous moment of pure raw emotion from Van Damme when he suddenly rises above the film set and starts talking directly to the audience. His monologue lasts for several minutes, and he talks about how he always wanted to be a movie star. All these years later, he feels as though he is being punished for it. Granted, he admits to his mistakes like taking drugs, and I felt like he is still paying a price for his usage even while he is staying clean. The star never fakes a moment during this scene, and the scene is alone worth the price of admission. Van Damme has said doing this movie was like therapy for him, and I have no doubt about that.

The concept of “JCVD” is by no means original. We have seen many movie stars play themselves and have jokes played at their own expense to show they have a healthy sense of humor about their image. But while we have them take this route like John Malkovich did in “Being John Malkovich,” I can’t think of any others who have put themselves on the line like this. I can’t see Chuck Norris doing this as I am certain he would rather do an action movie where Mike Huckabee is President and he has to rescue him from being held hostage by pro-evolution terrorists.

If there was one big problem I had with “JCVD,” it’s that its subtitles were at times almost impossible to read. The movie, directed by Mabrouk El Mechri, is shot in a grungy style which is very close to black and white but not quite. As a result, the subtitles which are presented in white lettering almost blend completely into the background, and I had to keep leaning forward to better see what was being said. Considering how many of my friends hate subtitles and would rather watch movies dubbed in English, this certainly does not help.

You really have to give Van Damme a lot of credit here. Not many action stars would even risk being seen like he is shown in “JCVD.” Here, he lays himself bare to show us the man he has become through many mistakes and bad movies. I came out of it with a renewed respect for him, and it makes me want to see him get better. “JCVD” is not a great movie, but it is fun and kept me enthralled throughout its running time. Where he goes from here remains to be seen, but hopefully some good will come out of his performance here.

* * * out of * * * *

Dave Bautista on Playing Brass Body in ‘The Man with the Iron Fists’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: This interview took place back in 2012.

David Bautista has made a big name for himself during his time in World Wrestling Entertainment where he became a six-time world champion. Like many major athletes, he has since turned his attention to acting, and he gets one of his biggest roles in RZA’s “The Man with the Iron Fists” in which he plays Brass Body, one of the main antagonists and a mercenary who can turn his body into metal. This makes him almost completely invulnerable; much like Bautista seemed like whenever he was in the ring.

While at a press conference for “The Man with the Iron Fists” which took place at the House of Blues in Los Angeles, Bautista talked about what it was like making the movie. Co-starring alongside him was Cung Le who plays Bronze Lion and was also at one point a major kickboxing champion. Bautista was asked what it was like working with Le and if he had ever fought with him “in the cage.”

Dave Bautista: I never fought with him, but we actually trained a lot together in China (where the movie was made). I wish we had some scenes together. I’m determined in my life to do a movie with Cung Le just so I can get that fight scene with him just because he’s so dynamic and so intense. So, we never fought together but I picked up a lot of good things from him.

Bautista said he accepted the role of Brass Body without even reading the script and that the character originally only had one or two lines as it was more of a physical role. This soon changed once he was cast. The biggest challenge for him, however, was filming the fight scene between Brass Body and Blacksmith who is played by star and director RZA.

Dave Bautista: The fight scene itself took days and days and it was just a pain in the ass. It was cold, it was brutal, and RZA had those damn iron fists on and they were just killing my arms because he was hitting me. I had scratches and I was bleeding. We actually started the fight scene a few days after I arrived in China, and then we had to go back to it at the end and finish it because it was so drawn out. The two characters (the Blacksmith and Brass Body) were so strong and kind of invincible that we really didn’t know where to go with the fight scene. We really went without a plan and thought we could wing it and ad-lib and come up with stuff here and there, so that was really a challenge in itself.

One of Brass Body’s other big scenes comes when he viciously attacks one of the female characters, and Bautista said shooting it was “awkward.” He described himself as a “passive” person especially when it comes to women, and since this was essentially a “rape and murder scene,” it became very uncomfortable for him to do.

Dave Bautista: I kept coming out of character because my first instinct was to tell the actress, are you okay? But she actually made it a lot of fun for me because I had this little thong on and I was freezing because the set wasn’t heated. Even when I picked her up, I didn’t know where to touch her, so I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder and I’m trying not to grope her because I don’t want to make her uncomfortable. Then RZA stepped in and said ‘you gotta make it look more real. Grab her over her ass because it’ll help her out because it will cover some of her stuff up.

The actress Bautista was working with thanked him for doing her that favor.

In addition to wrestling, Bautista is also a skilled mixed martial arts fighter. The first martial art he learned was Kali which comes from the Philippines and emphasizes weapons-based fighting with sticks, knives and other weapons. When asked if he tried to influence his fighting style in this movie, Bautista replied he did to a certain extent but that it only went so far.

Dave Bautista: The stuff that we were doing just didn’t translate as well as we thought it would on film, so we had to switch it up a lot and bring Corey Yuen (the movie’s fight choreographer) in to help us through this. We wanted this to look like a traditional kung fu fight movie especially with the characters being so strong, but I did utilize a little bit of my Kali.

Those who have seen “The Man with the Iron Fists” can agree Bautista is perfectly cast as Brass Body as he truly comes off as a badass who cannot easily be defeated. When asked if he shares any similarities to his character and if he could offer advice to those of us who are not as athletically inclined as he is, Bautista’s response was actually quite surprising.

Dave Bautista: I never felt like I was invincible. Throughout my whole life I always felt like I was an underdog. It’s kind of hard to relate to a kung fu action hero. I was trying to stay in character to where he (Brass Body) would always feel invincible and how he would react when he realized he wasn’t invincible and started to break down. I tried to get that in my head and I tried to make it come out on film, but not being the best actor made it kind of a challenge for me. I wouldn’t be the best person to give advice on how to be invincible because I’ve never felt that way. Everything’s a challenge for me, but I’m a hard worker.

Before he concluded his time with us, Bautista was asked what his dream role is.

Dave Bautista: I hate to sound cliché but I’ve always wanted to do a vampire movie. Any kind of superhero stuff, that’s what I’m a fan of. I wouldn’t mind doing that, I just don’t see myself as a leading man type character. I like the drama; I just don’t know if I fit that type of role. But that’s the kind of stuff I like to watch though.

John G. Avildsen’s ‘The Karate Kid’ is Still the Infinite Crowd Pleaser

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

The Karate Kid 1984 poster

I wanted to write about “The Karate Kid” because it’s one of those movies which stays with me to where I know every piece of dialogue in it. I got to see it at the long-gone Melody Theater back in Thousand Oaks where I saw many classic 1980’s movies. I still vividly remember seeing it with my older brother and mom, and it was one of the few movies she would ever take us to see in a theater back then.

It has now been more than 30 years since the original it came out, so I guess it’s safe to say you all know the story by now. Ralph Macchio plays Daniel LaRusso, a high school teenager who moves with his mom from New Jersey to California. Having moved a lot as a kid, I can appreciate his frustration at having to adapt to new surroundings which are not prepared to welcome you with open arms. He runs afoul of a tough gang known as the Cobra Kais, and they are led by Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). When he sees Daniel flirting with his girlfriend Ali (Elisabeth Shue), Johnny lays down the law and kicks Daniel’s ass without any pity.

“The Karate Kid” had a strong impact on me. I got picked on a bit when I was a kid, and seeing him get messed around with filled me with a sadness and anger in how unfairly people get treated. You want to see him get his revenge against these guys even though it will likely bring the same vicious reaction from the Cobra Kai. When you see him get beat up again, I remember how angrier and angrier I got. But that’s when this movie gave us one of its best moments as Mr. Miyagi came to the rescue and kicked ass. Seeing Miyagi coming from behind in the shadows got my heart and excitement up, and it was a pleasure to see him give those bullies the beating they deserved.

Mr. Miyagi is one of the best characters to come out of the 1980’s, and he remains one of my favorites from that decade. He is basically an Okinawan Yoda, and he is brought to life by the late Pat Morita in a performance I was so hoping would snag him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar he was nominated for. Although this character became a cliché for many other movies, the guy who does a low profile and lonely job but who is actually a war hero with the greatest of skills and training, Morita is brilliant in how he shows the seriousness of Miyagi as well as his joyous and humorous side as well. I did not realize Morita was a stand-up comedian before he did this movie. Then again, he was on “Happy Days” for a while.

After all these years, “The Karate Kid” still proves to be one of the few movies which really shows us the truth about karate. Karate is a spiritual thing more than anything else, and it was not about being trained to attack the way John Kreese (Martin Kove) taught others to do. It was about defense more than anything else. Moreover, it was about making yourself a better person on the inside as opposed to just the outside. I have heard from my closest friends about how studying karate helped raise their self-esteem to where they felt better about themselves. I even studied karate for a bit to experience it for myself, and it’s something I hope to continue in the near future.

The friendship between Daniel and Miyagi is one of the best I have ever seen portrayed onscreen. You are pretty much in Daniel’s shoes as he tries to figure out what the heck is going on when Miyagi has him washing his cars, painting his fence, sanding his floor and painting his house instead of teaching him karate. This leads to one of my favorite moments where Daniel realizes Miyagi has trained him in karate without him even knowing it. All these chores give him reflexes which have become ingrained in his consciousness to where they are practically automatic, and it is then that he realizes he has long since learned how to defend himself.

As Daniel LaRusso, Macchio gave us his quintessential performance from the 80’s. In the first two “Karate Kid” movies, he found a balance between being obnoxious and sincere, and he makes LaRusso a likable guy to where his transformation into a true karate student feels real and authentic.

Shue was so beautiful in this movie, and I liked how she embodied her character to where she practically spits at the clichés of the typical spoiled rich girl we have seen in far too many movies. Shue and Macchio might seem like a highly unlikely couple, but these two convince you they could be together. I always hated how Shue’s character got dumped in “The Karate Kid Part II.” I never really bought how that all came about, and I thought it was really shitty to not include her in the sequel. Shue was a wonderful and vivacious presence here, and she went on to give an unforgettable performance in “Leaving Las Vegas.”

Morita’s career went downhill after appearing in “The Karate Kid.” Seeing him doing local car center commercials was frustrating, but what he does here with Miyagi is amazing. It’s one of those performances where the actor becomes the character to where you never really see him acting, and that’s great film acting.

John G. Avildsen, best known for directing “Rocky,” helmed this movie with the same level of confidence as he did with the one he won a Best Director Oscar for, and he gives us a rousingly good time at the movies in the process. Since he has two great actors in the lead roles, he doesn’t waste time trying to manipulate our emotions because he makes everything in “The Karate Kid” feel very real. You’re not just watching this movie, you’re experiencing it along with the characters.

I also want to mention Kove’s performance as John Kreese as he proves to be the real villain of “The Karate Kid.” He trains his students viciously as if they are in a constant state of military basic training you would rather see end sooner than later. Kreese has programmed these kids to hurt and inflict punishment, any they look up to him for all the wrong reasons. But towards the end, they come to see Kreese is not all he is cracked up to be. There’s a great moment where he looks at Zabka as he is taking a break in the climatic fight with Daniel LaRusso and tells him to “sweep the leg.” Zabka’s character of Johnny Lawrence looks at Kreese like he is out of his mind, and it adds another to where it keeps the characters from becoming a pair of one-dimensional jerks we have seen too often.

“The Karate Kid” is a well written movie directed to near perfection and acted with supreme skill. After all these years, I never get sick of watching it, and I don’t think I ever will.

* * * * out of * * * *

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-sword-of-destiny-poster

Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is one of those few movies I can describe as being truly exhilarating. It combined amazing martial arts sequences with a great story filled with compelling characters you were eager to follow along with from start to finish. To simply call it a martial arts movie was not fair as Lee gleefully subverted the genre to give us something completely mesmerizing, and it went on to become one of the most successful foreign films ever made.

So it’s a shame to see its eagerly awaited sequel, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny” doesn’t come even close to recapturing the spirit of the original. Michelle Yeoh returns as Yu Shu Lien and Yuen Woo-ping, who choreographed the action of the original, steps in as director, but those who loved the original are bound to feel like something is missing. While Woo-ping still delivers some amazing action scenes, he lacks Lee’s poetic touch.

“Sword of Destiny’s” greatest strength is definitely Yeoh who looks fantastic at 53 years old and can still kick ass and do her own stunts like nobody else’s business. She is the only cast member from the original to appear in this sequel, and she makes it almost worth a recommendation as her performance is as powerful and heartfelt as it was before.

The movie takes place 18 years after the events of the original and sees Yu Shu Lien coming out of solitude and heading back to Peking where her lover Li Mui Bai’s legendary sword, the Green Destiny, is being held. However, it doesn’t take long for her to encounter resistance as her carriage is attacked by several warriors. In the time she was away, various clans have wreaked havoc in the martial world in an effort to gain control of it, and many have their eye on stealing the Green Destiny which will allow them to rule it with unimpeachable power.

The Green Destiny was a major focal point of the original as Jen Lu (Zhang Ziyi) stole it in an attempt to engage in the warrior lifestyle she had become envious of. That sword is a focal point in the sequel as well to where I began to wonder if perhaps destroying it instead of keeping it safe and locked up would have made more sense. It certainly would have saved the martial world a lot of trouble. Then again, destroying that sword would also have meant destroying the past, so perhaps that’s why the characters are not eager to obliterate it even for their own safety.

We get a lot of characters thrown at us this time around like Wei-Fang (Harry Shum, Jr.) and Snow Vase (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), both of whom want the sword for their own purposes. There’s also Silent Wolf (Donnie Yen) who faked his own death because he was in love with Yu Shu Lien and preferred a life of solitude as he knew Li Mu Bai was the one she loved more. And then we have Hades Dai (Jason Scott Lee), the West Lotus warlord who learns he must obtain the Green Destiny as it will allow him to rule the Martial World.

With all these characters and their various plot threads, it’s hard to get involved in their individual dramas and they are nowhere as compelling as the ones from the original. Many of the characters we see here feel like typical kind martial arts movies tend rely on. Snow Vase in particular feels like a generic version of Jen Lu, and the latter only appears a footnote in this sequel. They all fight like the best warriors, but the action feels ordinary and less than thrilling because we don’t care that much for them.

Another thing about “Sword of Destiny” is the actors speak in English instead of Mandarin, and this proves to be a big mistake. While there are many who can’t stand subtitles, seeing the dialogue spoken in English makes it seem all the more clichéd and uninspired. It’s like watching the original “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” dubbed in English; it’s still cool to watch, but everything sounds rather laughable in another language. In Mandarin, there was at least a beauty to the words they otherwise would not have had.

But perhaps “Sword of Destiny’s” biggest sin is its overall look. While the original only used CGI effects to remove the wires which helped the actors to fly all over the place, this movie looks like it bathed in them. As a result, everything looks artificial to where “Sword of Destiny” has the appearance of a video game, and not a very good one at that. In fact, the movie at times looks quite ugly because you can easily tell that what’s on the screen is not at all real. While Lee made collapsing buildings look exciting, Woo-ping is not able to recapture that magic as scenes of warriors crashing through floors of a tower looks inescapably fake and all done on a computer.

Coming out of this sequel, I wondered if “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” even needed one. The stories of both movies connect, but this one looks like it exists on a different planet. Time will only tell if there is to be a “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 3,” but “Sword of Destiny” doesn’t make much of a case for one. Yeoh is great as always and Woo-ping does pull off some nice stunts, but this sequel feels uninspired and routine at best. Perhaps it’s time for the Green Destiny to be laid to rest once and for all. Just look at what Harry Potter did with the Elder Wand in the “Deathly Hallows;” problems were solved and the wizarding world was balanced out. It’s that simple.

Copyright Ben Kenber 2016

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Exclusive Interview with Josh C. Waller about ‘Raze’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

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Filmmaker Josh C. Waller has led a very interesting life so far. Born in 1974 to a cattle rancher/businessman and an actress mother, he spent his youth going to theatre rehearsals and watching movies on the weekends where his interest in filmmaking began to peak. After graduating high school, he joined the Marines and eventually worked for a private educational center which dealt with children afflicted with learning disabilities. This job ended up taking through different parts of the United States before he finally settled down in Los Angeles where his career as a filmmaker started to take off.

Waller’s film “Raze” stars Zoë Bell (“Death Proof”) as Sabrina, an abducted woman who wakes up to find herself imprisoned in a bunker where she and other imprisoned women are forced to fight one another to the death. On the surface it looks like another exploitation movie, but it soon becomes clear Waller had a lot more on his mind than that as he takes the characters and their story more seriously than you might expect.

I got to talk with Waller about “Raze” and what it was like to make the movie. Considering it was done on a very low budget, I was curious to see how he managed to pull off all he did with the little he had to work with. We also talked about what fighting styles were used in the movie, how his time in the Marines has influenced his work as a filmmaker, and he told a great story about how he managed to get all the sets for “Raze” built in just one day.

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Ben Kenber: From the poster “Raze” looks like a typical exploitation movie, but it ends up going a lot deeper than that. What inspired you to make this film?

Josh C. Waller: To be honest, I had been working for years on another film completely different that I directed called “McCanick” with David Morse and Cory Montieth. That was something that I had been developing for about nine years with my producing partner who also wrote it, Daniel Noah, and it’s a tough project. It’s a drama with some very heavy subject matter and it was a bit of a bitch to get made, but it finally got green lit. But about the same time my friend Kenny Gage, he wrote a little short film called “Raze” which was like maybe seven or eight pages, I can’t remember exactly. He just asked me if I would take it home and he was just like, “Hey man, take a look at this thing and I’d love to hear your thoughts.” It wasn’t like, hey take this home, I think you should produce it, I think you should direct it. He was just like, hey take a look at this, I’d love to hear what you think, and I did. So I took it home that night and checked it out, and I thought there was something there. It was essentially the first fight between Jamie (Rachel Nichols) and Sabrina (Zoë Bell), then that was the short. It was a tad more exploitative of what the film ended up eventually being. Women were wearing a bit more revealing clothes and I think it mentioned something about it being particularly busty, and I brought it back to Kenny the next day and I was like, “Dude, there’s something here. I don’t know if I’m down with all the exploitative stuff, but there’s something here.” It got my mind going, so Kenny and I just started like bouncing things back and forth immediately, and the way that he and I were working together was so organic. The ideas just kept flowing and flowing and flowing, and I think that I really was interested in being a part of it and directing it because it’s not the kind of film that I would normally gravitate to nor is it the type of film that I would normally direct. I didn’t really watch the women-in-prison exploitations films from the 70’s and 80’s stuff, not at all. In fact, I was never really a fan of any of the exploitation films like “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” It just wasn’t my thing, the Roger Corman films. So I was like okay, if I am going to do a film that kind of fits within that world, I’m going to have to take it as seriously as I would take “McCanick” or any other film, you know? I think that that was in my mind, then and still now, the only way we could possibly deal with something like this. And also it was incredibly exciting for Kenny and I. Kenny, before he got in the industry, was an undefeated professional boxer, and it was important for him and I and Zoë to try to show the most visceral, intense female fights that we had ever seen on the screen. And because every time you see women in a movie in some kind of fight, it seems to be all over the place in the trades and everything like that. That fight scene from “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” (between Paula Patton and Léa Seydoux), people were like, “There’s the biggest catfight of all time in it!” And I saw it and I was like, “They what?! Man, you guys could have gone like so much further on this!” So we were like let’s see how far we can push this, and trust me when I say that we have so much more footage that we could’ve put in the movie.

BK: Regarding the fight scenes, Zoë said there were different fighting styles used in the movie. Were you looking to employ any particular fighting style or were you just open to whatever worked?

JCW: No, in fact we wanted to avoid looking for fighting styles. But what was interesting to me was to try to use the action… It was a little bit of like an experiment to see how much we could use the action to propel the narrative forward as opposed to dialogue or like emotional sequences. That said, the fight sequences themselves are pretty damn emotional, so being able to use those fights to like propel the movie forward emotionally and the narrative, that was something that was super interesting. So it wasn’t so much about looking for specific fighting styles in terms of like, this girl does Muay Thai and then this girl does Brazilian jiu-jitsu. That didn’t really work. We just needed to make sure that their fighting styles, however their fighting styles were, were a physical representation of who they were as women and what they were going through because they’re supposed to be normal women plucked from society. So occasionally you’ll have like one of the characters that knows how to fight. In the case of Sabrina, she has a military background and is well versed in hand to hand combat, so that’s the way that she fights. She fights very efficiently and she fights like a soldier. But if you start putting different martial arts styles on it… We didn’t want it to be like the female edition of “Best of the Best” or something like that like “Bloodsport” or “Mortal Kombat.”

BK: I read that you served in the Marines for a time, and thank you for your service by the way.

JCW: You’re welcome.

BK: Did any of what you learned in the Marines influence the making of this movie for you?

JCW: The guards down below I definitely fashioned after Marines. They’re most obvious trait are their Marine haircuts. All of those haircuts I maintained. I was the one who was like, “No, no, no,” and then I’d run outside with clippers and be like, “Sit down, sit down while I cut your hair!” Their uniforms, making sure their boots were polished, making sure that their haircuts were clean and not like all nappy and plain looking. Bruce Thomas who plays Kurtz, he and I had a lot of talks about his performance and how he could mimic the sound and the essence of a Marine drill instructor, so we would talk about a lot of stuff like that. I would put all the guards through a little closed quarter drill or boot camp over in a parking lot outside the set. In terms of fighting styles, not really; the military thing didn’t inform too much of that stuff. I can definitely say that, in terms of being a filmmaker, I would not be the filmmaker that I am today without it. Whether people think that’s good or bad, I would not be who I am as a man without the Marines. Almost every day, so many aspects of my life are informed because of my choice to join the corp.

BK: Absolutely. I bring that up because I have a family friend who was in the marines, and it has definitely influenced him in how he lives life today, and I think in a very good way.

JCW: It becomes one of those things because the Marine Corps is so daunting, and you end up graduating from boot camp and when you earn that title, you are filled with such an immense sense of price and accomplishment for earning that title. You feel a little bit like, “Well if I can do this, I can do anything.” So when you look at other tasks throughout your life, you’re kind of like, “This is lame. This is easy!”

BK: Zoë said that the total budget on “Raze” was less than a million dollars, but it looks like it cost more than that. The thing I continually find fascinating about low budget filmmaking is how it forces you to be more creative as a result. Would you say that was the case on this film?

JCW: Absolutely. I mean a perfect example of like how you’re forced to be creative is that like… Zoë was right, the budget was below a million, and if we had 19 action sequences, the shooting ratio on action to straight drama is like 10 to 1. It’s so drastically different. So to say that the shoot was an ambitious shoot is like stating something stupidly obvious. I think in terms of getting creative, there was one time where I was trying to figure out how the hell we were going to be able to afford… Because all of our sets were built, we shot everything on a soundstage, everything. We didn’t know how we were going to be able to pull that off with the money that we had, and I went home one night and I was sitting with my younger brother, and the flipside is as a youth I was the product of a divorce. On the father’s side, I was raised by a Marine cowboy father, and on the other side my mom and stepdad were into theater and dance and jazz and all of that stuff. I would go with my mom to movies on the weekend and I would watch movies like “Arthur” and “Zorro the Gay Blade” and stuff like that. I went home and I was hanging out with my little brother, and we were watching “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” and there’s a big musical number in the movie where all the brothers get together and with people in the neighborhood, and like an Amish community they have a big barn raising, dance and a big party, and I was like, “Holy shit man! That’s it! We’ll basically do a barn raising for all of our sets!” So I told the guys, “Look, all we have to do is throw a party, we’ll invite our friends, we’ll make teams of four people each and our production designer will be our foreman. And we’ll give a cash prize to whoever finishes their part of the build the fastest.” We had a DJ, we had food and beer and all that kind of stuff, and we built all of the flats for all of the sets in three hours on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We all drank beer and barbecued. We never would have been able to do it (the regular way). It would have cost us 2 to 3 weeks of labor costs, so that was one of the creative ways. It was fun.

BK: That’s amazing! IFC Midnight is promoting this movie. How does it feel to have them promoting it, and what can you tell us about IFC Midnight?

JCW: IFC has been amazing. The person that I’ve been particularly involved with at IFC Midnight has been Mike Winton, and I have to say that it’s been an absolute pleasure. IFC Midnight also put up “Maniac” which my producing partner Elijah Wood was in, and they function within the same world that I function and we function in. Working with them is like working with our friends. It’s been a pleasure. I love it and I can’t wait to work with them again.

I thank Josh C. Waller for taking the time to talk with me, and I again want to thank him for his service to our country.