Schmollywood Babylon

Vengeance of an Assassin (Panna Rittikrai, 2014)

The only good thing from a certain horrible relationship I once had, many years ago, was that it introduced me to the works of Panna Rittikrai. We traveled to Thailand together and there saw something with Rittikrai and fell in love directly! I quickly tried to get all the movies I could find at night markets and obscure, hard-to-find, movie shops, directed or starring this Thai Jackie Chan, often on VCD and in mediocre quality. When so finally Ong Bak was unleashed on the world I wasn’t alone any more in my fascination for Rittikrai, he was of course the man behind all the stunts and fighting in Tony Jaa’s seminal martial arts classic, under the supervision of blockbuster director Prachya Pinkaew. Around the same time Rittikrai got the offer to direct a movie of his own, and the result became Born to Fight - an in name only remake of one of his earlier films, this time focusing his energy on stuntman Dan Chupong. And the last movie he made, after dying from kidney failure last year, was Vengeance of an Assassin, also starring Chupong and in the same brutal style as Born to Fight. But can it live up to the hype?

The story is overly complicated and I never got a chance to fully understand it, but I guess this plot summary on IMDB kinda explains it: “Natee (Dan Chupong) became a killer for one reason- to discover who killed his parents. As he gets closer to uncovering a secret network of power and corruption, he's double-crossed on a job, making him a target and putting everyone he loves in danger. Betrayed, exposed, and hunted by the deadliest killers in the business, now Natee has a new code. Be faster. Stronger. Hit harder. Survive."

In many ways Vengeance is a fantastic film. The fights are violent and graphic, with blood drawn constantly and some truly neck-breaking stunts makes you feel the pain home in the safety of your sofa. I love Dan Chupong, he’s a great actor - with a lot more depth and charisma than the wonderful Jaa, and even if he clearly uses stuntmen from time to time he rules the movie. Several of the younger actors from Rittikrai’s fun, but ultimately too stupid and quite homophobic, Bangkok Knockout shows up, in bigger better parts. My favorite from that movie was Chatchapol Kulsiriwuthichai, a long-legged goofy-looking actor and stuntman, whose appearance seems unlikely but fights like a fucking monster. In Vengeance he gets a better part, a trashy gangster with a neck tattoo and a hipster haircut and boy he’s good.

So how’s the action? It’s up and down. There’s a couple of fights which is extremely good, and because most of them are set in very rough environments like car repair shops, factories etc they hurt a lot to watch. There’s also the traditional gimmick scene, this time the boys are playing football in the most impossible way inside a factory. Two of the scenes are very long takes, involving lots and lots of squibs and stunts - imagine the one take scene in Tom Yum Goong, but more or less without fighting. Chupong and Rittikrai did a similar scene in Born to Fight. I guess the biggest scene was suppose to be the train fight, but because most of it is shot in front of a green screen and with some very primitive computer graphics trying to fool us they’re real around it falls flats. Which is a damn pity. Could have been epic!

But for anyone with an interest in martial arts movies this will give a kick of energy. If you’ve been following the career of Rittikrai you might have noticed how he tried out stunts in many movies until they’re perfect, and often ending up in his bigger movies - like this one or stuff with Tony Jaa (that whole chase sequence in Ong Bak is something Rittikrai borrowed from one or two earlier movies he himself starred in during the late 80’s and early 90’s for example). Vengeance also throws in small references to stunts and gags originally invented by Jackie Chan, and in here we both see football fighting on hot coal, a scene where a lot of glass panes is broken in similar style as in Police Story etc. Rittikrai always took the best and made it even more insane.

Vengeance of an Assassin might not be that last big masterpiece Rittikrai should have directed, but compared to a lot of other action films it’s superior and delivers some truly spectacular ass-kicking and squibilicisious carnage.

Dyke Hard (Bitte Andersson, 2014)

How to describe a movie like Dyke Hard? Hmm. Let me tell it like this: Dyke Hard is the best 80's martial arts musical since Miami Connection!

(Also, I'm actually in this movie. But my scene was deleted and parts of it is in the end-credits. But that fact have nothing to do with my opinion about it!)

With that out of the way; recently I reviewed Faust 2.0 and mentioned how complicated it is to review movies people you know have made. But my motto is this: if it's bad, just be politely quiet and look the other way...and if it's good, great, awesome etc: just scream it out as loud as possible.

Now let's me get serious here: Bitte Andersson's Dyke Hard is a genuinely great movie, made with tons and tons of passion. Here's the story:

After the egocentric and way too difficult lead singer and guitarist Riff (Lina Kurttila) ditches her band and befriends an evil billionaire, Moira (Josephine Wilson), who want to restart Riff’s career again, the rest of the band - the not always so bright Bandito (Alle Eriksson), the chain-smoking Peggy (Peggy Sands) and absurdly self-controlled Scotty (Maria Wågensjö) goes on a road trip to find a new goal with their lives. But shit hits the fan and they’re trapped in a ghost house, gets accused of murder and ends up in a brutal prison - and finally, maybe - at least trying - to get into one final music competition which might kick start their career again. On their way they makes friend with martial arts expert Dawn (Iki Gonzalez Magnusson) who inspires them to go on to reach their dreams! But will the evil Moira put a stop to their plans? And will bartender-turned-prison guard Buck Blossom find his true love? These things and many more awaits you in… DYKE HARD!

I know for sure the director of Dyke Hard, Bitte Andersson, is a big fan of Miami Connection and it's visible. But what Bitte and her team brought with them is foremost a very healthy message that everyone is valuable. There's really no bad people in Dyke Hard - misguided maybe - but never evil. That leaves you with a feeling of complete happiness afterwards, like when you're on shrooms. Not that I never tried that, but hopefully you all know what I mean.

It's hard making a movie and toying with badness and still make it a fun, real movie. Troma have succeeded from time to time, so Astron-6, and Dyke Hard is so amazing in its lovingly homages, references - and spot-on comedy performances from the whole cast. But I've seen so many filmmakers try and never been able to reach that goal.

The band, Dyke Hard, reminded me a lot about old-school comedy groups, each member with their own personality and style. It gets very broad from time to time, but that's also the charm with it. Nothing is small here, everything is big, bold and colorful. Sprinkled through the movie is also a bunch of awesome musical numbers, in different styles. My favorite one - but it's hard to choose - is the romantic and My Little Pony-esque neon-shining showstopper with Buck Blossom (Alexi Carpentieri) and The Beast (Peter Ahlgren), which is very hard to describe!

But the movie is carried on the backs of the wonderful troupe of actors playing the band: Lina Kurttila, Peggy Sands, Maria Wågensjö, Alle Eriksson and Iki Gonzalez Magnusson. They’re all fantastic, but my personal favorites - if I must choose two - goes to Maria Wågensjö as Scotty, which is a comedy genius. She’s right out from The Three Stooges - and the vulnerable, sensitive character of Peggy, played by Peggy Sands. It means a lot when the actors really becomes their character for the duration of the movie and never strays from that path. It’s dedication. Alexi Carpentieri as Buck and Josephine Wilson as Moira is also wonderful...oh, everyone is wonderful. Really, it’s impossible to dislike this movie!

Another fine thing with it is that it keeps the pace all through the story. It's easy to settle down in some less funny, more boring, simpler scene - but that's for lazy filmmakers. Bitte Andersson and her team, among them visual effects supervisor Martin Borell and cinematographer Alexi Carpentieri, makes every scene full of life, humor and just when it's about to be boring, Dyke Hard moves along to the next set-up and it's full speed again. 

Dyke Hard delivers so much passion and heart into the tired Swedish film industry, since many years rotten to the core. Dyke Hard is the injection it needs. This movie doesn't judge people, it dares to change the unwritten heteronormative and conservative rules about who's allowed to be funny or awesome in front of the camera, which is "it" with this movie. It fucks around with expectations and conventions.

Oddly enough Dyke Hard turns out to be, in the end, a powerful statement of love, solidarity and 80's soft metal. Oh, and with a dash of wacky jokes, slapstick, nude ghosts, a Lloyd Kaufman cameo, bikers, martial arts, parkour, gore, male strippers and the nastiest asphalt face plant I've seen in quite a while!

Dyke Hard is out in cinemas and VOD now in Sweden. Troma handles the distribution in the U.S., what I understood - so beware everyone in the rest of the world; it's soon your turn...

The Protector (James Glickenhaus, 1985)

It took many years for Jackie Chan to get a break in the US. It started with the very uneven Battle Creek Brawl (why do people think it's a good thing making him fight against heavy, motionless giants - it automatically lacks the energy) and a year later in Cannonball Run and three years later in Cannonball Run II, both produced by Golden Harvest - but featuring Jackie in just glorified cameo roles. But in 1985 it would happen: The Protector! A big budget action film, directed by the successful James Glickenhaus, co-starring professional slob Danny Aiello and shot in both New York and Hong Kong. Once again produced by Golden Harvest, of course, and distributed by Warner. 

Jackie is tough New York cop Billy Wong, who hardly can't speak English. After a violent shoot-out where his partner is killed - and himself takes revenge (resulting him getting a cliché slow-clap tribute from his colleagues at the station) - he's back to patrol, this time with Danny Garoni (Aiello) and gets mixed up in a kidnapping. The traces leads to Hong Kong and he and Danny goes there to finally, once and for all, stop the dangerous heroin smuggler Ko and save the girl! Cue a lot of action and nudity.

The legend says Chan and Glickenhaus didn't get along well. The Protector feels like a very American movie. It's bloody, have some boring nudity, sex-jokes and foul language - stuff that's very uncommon to see Jackie Chan mixed up with. Danny Aiello is also a very unsympathetic character and the whole sequence with him using the blow-job massage bench is possible the most disgusting thing I've seen - and you don't see shit. Just the thought makes me puke. It doesn't help Aiello looks like a typical western paedophile fucking young Asian girls. But Aiello is good. He's a fine actor and he makes the character convincing and terrible, so I blame everything on the writers and director. 

But make no mistake here, when I say it feels like a typical American action movie it's also made in 1985 and have some truly spectacular and violent action scenes. Glickenhaus has an eye for carnage and there's enough blood, explosions, slow-motion stunts and random craziness to make everyone happy. I like it a lot, even if it's far from perfect. 

The Protector has just been released on blu-ray in Sweden and this release also includes the re-edited and slightly re-shot version supervised by Jackie Chan himself. Chan is a star and he was very unhappy by the resulting movie. So he took his crew, shot extra scenes featuring Sally Yeh and Lee Hoi-shan - including two completely new fight scenes, one more funny slapstick-ish sequence in a gym and another one brutal, gritty down at the waterfront. Great stuff. He also used a couple of different angles in the chase scenes - the biggest difference is when Jackie jumps with a motocross from the harbor to a boat, in the HK version there's a much wider angle which also make it look a lot more dangerous. The biggest difference - except the new scenes and characters - is the end fight against Bill Wallance. The US version is good, but quite slow and with low energy. Here Jackie, Bill and the stunt team went back and reshot a lot of it making it a much, MUCH more spectacular and dangerous fight, with better editing and yeah, a whole lotta better! 

The end song is also switched. The US version have one of the worst songs I ever heard, some shitty country and western crap, and the HK version have a more eighties, action-oriented synth-esque end song. 

How's the blu-ray then? It's by far the best version I've seen, but not really perfect. It's a bit murky and sometimes not so sharp, especially in the evening and night-scenes. I guess it's a typical uneven transfer. The bonus HK version looks like one of those cheap DVDs released in Hong Kong years ago and only in standard definition. But I'm very happy both version is there and they'er licensed from Fortune Star, so I guess they're the only versions available. So I'm grateful, very grateful.

The Protector is hardly the highlight of Jackie Chan's career, but for us who enjoy super-violent eighties action with crazy stunts and crappy one-liners, this is it. 

Miami Connection (Y.K. Kim & Woo-sang Park, 1987)

I’ve finally seen it, the legendary action classic Miami Connection. I’ve heard about it for quite a while, there’s an old DVD – so it’s been released before the great big hype last year. But I want to see movies in as perfect quality as possible and I decided to wait until I’d bought a region all blu-ray player and see it in HD, the next best thing after 35 mm.

No, not really. I really dislike watching movies in cinema. The smells, disgusting unknown people sitting way too close and sounds I can’t control etc. Blu-ray home in my own sofa is the best way for me to watch a movie. A cat or two in my knee, just a step and I can be on the balcony, the fridge isn’t far away. And if I get bored I can just press pause and do something else for a while.

That’s my kind of movie magic.

Yesterday was a typical boring Sunday. Sunshine outside, but too lazy to do something constructive. So after cleaning the whole apartment (including scaring the youngest cat with the vacuum) I could finally sit down and enjoy Miami Connection as it should be seen: at home.

It’s a pretty silly movie, to say the least. Dragon Sound is a not so cool but still super cool “rock” band with hits like Against the Ninja and Friends. They perform in Tae Kwon Do clothes, sports some awesome mullets and they’re best friends forever! All the men live together in one house, often bare-chested and behaving very dorky. Somehow they get involved with an evil gang who’s leader is the brother of the only female member in Dragon Sound, when they can’t accept his rules (they need to get out, or get killed, and John – the goofy tall martial arts guy – MUST stop seeing the sister). Dragon Sound is good guys so they can’t accept this, and when one of them is badly hurt during an attack by MOTORCYCLE NINJAS – they need to fight back!

When Y.K. Kim shopped around the movie to distributors everyone told him it was trash. And yes, it’s trash. It’s garbage.  But it’s sinfully entertaining trash. What it lacks in talent it wins in enthusiasm, lots of it. We can all see friends having a lot of fun here, from the leader – Kim – moving around like a middle-aged Korean man with his trouser up to his chest, the dorky Vince Hirsh – cute as hell, but probably a typical male bimbo, the groovy black guy. And all of them are orphans. That’s high concept. Here’s the logline I would have used when pitching the idea to investors:

“A rock band, Dragon Sound, consisting of ethnically diverse grown-up orphans fights against evil motorcycle ninjas to the background of an emotionally charged sibling-relationship”.

I would fund it.

Miami Connection isn’t just unintentionally funny, it’s packed with action. Lots of action. Often very silly and often quite good. It looks like a lot of full contact (and according to an interview on the discs a lot of it is real, because they were afraid to flub the take!). The blood sprays frequently, it’s have a few gory moments here and there. So it delivers a lot of explosive stuff, not only cheese.

But most of all is Miami Connection an example of a very enthusiastic movie. It’s made by people having a lot of fun. This shines through in most of the scenes and even if the actors are far from good… it’s easy to buy their performances just because you like them so much!

If you’re gonna see one fun and charming movie this year, choose Miami Connection.

The Kick (Prachya Pinkaew, 2011)

Last year I visited Thailand for the second time and even if I bought at least 50 movies there, met movie legends and had a blast in every way possible, I think The Kick one of the first Thai movies I've watched in almost a year. It's not that I got tired of Thai films, it's that I miss Thailand (and Bangkok) so damn much. Watching these flicks makes me go into some kind of post-Thailand depression - and it happens every time. I never travel to Thailand to drink cheap booze or lay on the beach, for me it's about meeting fanastic people, getting lost in the labyrinth of Bangkok streets... I feel at home there, which is odd - I dislike when it's people everywhere. But Bangkok makes me feelt at home. Need to go there soon again...

The Kick is director Prachya Pinkaew (Ong-Bak, Tom yum goong) latest movie to be released, and it was in 2011 (I'm ignoring Elephant White from the same year, which just felt like another boring American action film). But it's never been released in any easy accessible English (or Swedish)-friendly release - until I noticed that Swedish company Njuta Films would release it! One way or another it found it's way to me and hey, this isn't bad at all!

A South Korean Taekwondo family have emigrated to Thailand to (I guess) run a school and stuff like that. By a coincidence they help saving a national treasure, an ancient knife (the McGuffin of this movie, it could have been an elephant, a Buddha or something else - it's just not that important). The baddies wants revenge and the knife, and attacks the family and kidnaps their youngest kid - and the family is forced to help them steal the knife again! But of course they want to make everything right - together with their Thai relatives, masters of Muay Thai!

The films of Pinkaew (and stunt choreographer Rittikrai) have never been famous for their elaborate plots and it's the same with The Kick. It's a very simple story, almost too simple, but works because one of the best casts so far in one of their movies. The South Korean actors are all very good, and handles both the drama and action very well. The main Thai actors are the BRILLIANT JeeJa Yanin, one of the best female fighters I've seen and also a fine actress, and the famous comedian Petchtai Wongkamlao aka Mum Jokmok. I like him, but he's a very aquired taste - and I'm happy to say that he's bringing us a low-key, realistic performance here with very little of his trademark comedy - and he's great. I hope to see him do stuff like this more. He's perfect as a grumpy middle-aged uncle.

But like all of these films the action is the number one star. Now, this is a family friendly action film so don't expect the bloodshed and ultra-violence of the Ong-Bak or Born to Fight, but it doesn't mean it's spectacular. The fights are as usual filmed in a way so we can see what's happening and they're getting gradually more spectacular the further the story goes. The highlight is the when the teenage son uses his dance moves to fight a bunch of baddies in the jungle. It's a brilliant example of how Pinkaew and Rittikrai always tries to evolve the fights, makes them a bit more unique than the usual stuff. Another fun scene is in a kitchen when Mum Jokmok and the South Korean mother creates a chaotic symphony by destroying everything around them in order to kick the shit out of the bad guys. 

It's a lot of action and some very fine stunts during the last half of the movie. So I'm sure you won't be disappointed. It's a fine co-production between South Korea and Thailand and I'm surprised I haven't it seen it getting better distributon outside Asia. I hope more fans of creative martial arts will get a chance to see it. 

Operation Condor (Jackie Chan, 1991)

I think this might be the first time ever I've written a review of a Jackie Chan film. Really. And that's kinda strange, because Jackie meant a lot to me over the years. I'm sure one of his movies introduced me to Asian cinema - at least after first seeing a photo of Godzilla in an old Swedish encyclopedia - but Jackie was first for real. The sad thing is that most people kinda sees him as this old silly dude who's done some terrible Hollywood movies (I must admit that I have a soft spot for Shanghai Knights, but don't tell anyone!) and always smiles. He's a lot more than that. 

First of all, he's done a couple of the most spectacular action films ever made. Yeah, even compared with those new fancy awesome guys from Thailand and Indonesia (I love them, make no mistake there). Jackie became a star to me when he stopped making historical action films and put the fights and stunts in contemporary storylines. Then all hell broke loose. Just watch what he's doing in Police Story (and also in Police Story 3 and New Police Story), Armour of God, Project A & Project A 2, Heart of the Dragon - yeah, even those ultra-silly Lucky Stars films. Virtually all movies he made in the Eighties are sensational, and up until the end of the nineties he made some fantastic stuff. 

Operation Condor is the sequel to The Armour of God, for god and bad if I can say so. The first one has a couple of the best action sequences I've ever seen - but it also suffers from a quite slow middle part focused on silly romance and slapstick. Now, slapstick in a Jackie Chan film is a fine form of slapstick, but in too high doses it can be quite difficult to handle. Operation Condor has the exact same storyline, but with a different MacGuffin. It even has a spectacular vehicle chase in Spain (which ends in one of the best motorcross stunts I've seen. It's still very impressive!) and the the chase is on until the fat, awesome final in the baddies lair. This time it's an underground (in a desert no less!) nazi base filled with cool stuff to climb and run on - which means Jackie will use all of his talent to battle henchmen in these very cool sets. 

While the fights never become spectacular or hurtful as in Police Story they're very well-made and still looks like they can beat some modern fights I've seen. The stunts is good and the special effects is fine. This is a high class Jackie Chan production. It's interesting how I forgot all of these good things since the first (and until now the only) time I saw it. I remember it to be pretty dull, low on action and with failed visual gags. 

I must have been on drugs at the time.

Both this and the first movie is out on blu in the US, in their international versions. But I'm lazy and greedy and bought the UK DVD of Operation Condor, which has an OK transfer - correct ratio on non-anamorphic DVD. I guess I will upgrade it sooner or later but for now this seemed perfect for my meager budget. 

I'll try to review the first film soon - and also the third one, Chinese Zodiac, when I can lay my hands on it. I'm looking forward to see what Jackie has up his sleeve in his final, big action film. They he'll retired from action cinema to do less physically demanding roles. 

Anyway. Fun film. Underrated. It deserves a revisit from everyone who appreciates a good old adventure romp from a time when Jackie was at the top of his game!