A Little TLC(w): The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993)

Today, I’m staying home for all the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who are risking their health to hold us all together.

I’ve had this Tony Leung Chiu-wai movie on my radar for a while, chiefly for its cast – it contains basically the entire cast of Ashes of Time (evidently, Wong Kar-wai produced this film dudring a hiatus from shooting Ashes of Time as a way of bolstering the budget for Ashes,) and in the time it’s taken me to find it, I’ve become familiar with a few other actors in it as well.

A total wuxia parody, The Eagle Shooting Heroes kicks off with a pair of villainous cousins/lovers(?) trying to take over the kingdom, attempting to get their hands on some all-important McGuffin by secretly feeding everyone poisonous centipedes(?) and threatening to kill them all by using drum beats to control the centipedes in their stomachs (I’m totally serious here.)  Standing in their way is the Third Princess, who seeks the counsel of her martial arts master and then heads for the mountains, where there’s a different all-important McGuffin that can stop the cousins.  Along the way, we meet a man looking for true love as the key to immortality, a suicidal bandit looking for someone to kill him, and a number of people who may or may not be related and also may or may not be in love with each other (the words “brother,” “sister,” and “cousin” get thrown around a lot, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s meant to be literal – it kind of seems like it is, but I know that a lot of gangsters in Triad movies refer to one another as “older/younger brother,” and “auntie/uncle” is an honorific for older people in China, so it might be cultural.  It could also just be some subtitle wonkiness on the part of my copy.  If not, though, there’s a lot of incestual love in this movie.)

It’s just so bonkers, decidedly cheesy and not what you’d call a “good” movie by any means, but at the same time, it’s so audacious that it just about gets away with it.  I’m reminded a little of Chinese Odyssey 2002, in that it reminds me a lot of a Shakespeare comedy set in ancient China.  There are all sorts of love polygons, outrageous misunderstandings, ludicrous “drama,” and cross-dressing (although, in this case, it appears that the character isn’t a woman masquerading as a man but instead a man who happens to be portrayed by a woman.)  And, as I thought with Chinese Odyssey 2002, it’s kind of neat that certain types of humor bridges such different cultures and time periods.

I’ll admit that I haven’t enjoyed some of Leung’s shlocky comedies as much as I’ve enjoyed this one, and it largely goes back to the cast.  Everyone is obviously having a blast, and the contrast between all these actors appearing together in the beautifully-restrained Ashes of Time and then taking giant mouthfuls out of the scenery in this movie is just fun.  We have Brigitte Lin as the Third Princess, Jacky Cheung as the suicidal bandit, Carina Lau in the aforementioned cross-gender casting, Tony Leung Ka-fai as the guy trying to achieve immortality, Maggie Cheung as a prophetess, and Leslie Cheung as a guy who’s possibly in love with his sister.  We also get Veronica Yip, who was in Hero Beyond the Boundary of Time, and Joey Wang, who was in Butterfly Sword.

And of course, there’s Tony Leung Chiu-wai.  He plays Ou-yang Feng, one of the villainous cousins, and when I say villainous, I mean villainous.  If they had railroad tracks in ancient China, he would’ve been tying damsels up on them.  The character (along with Leung’s performance) is that level of mustache-twirly, revel-in-my-own-evilness villainy.  By the same token, though, he’s also super incompetent; he has the misfortune to run into Jacky Cheung’s characters and, in a series of increasingly-doomed attempts to kill him, manages to put himself through the ringer but good.

The performance Leung gives here is patently absurd, but that makes it kind of fun.  You know how, when acclaimed “serious” actors go on SNL, there are some instances where they do the really dumb/silly skits and it feels embarrassing, but there are others times when they commit so thoroughly to it that it weirdly works?  That’s kind of what’s going with Leung here, and with the majority of the cast.  It’s just so blame ridiculous, but nobody blinks – everyone is all in.  In Leung’s case, he’s particularly entertaining playing off of Veronica Yip (playing his equally-evil cousin) and Jacky Cheung.

Recommend?

In General – As you as you know the sort of thing you’re getting into, I would. It’s a movie that kind of has to be seen to be believed, almost too outrageous for reality.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Again, if you know what you’re in for, I think this might be too fun to pass up. Delightful, cheesy fun.

Warnings

Violence, sexual references, some gross-out humor, smoking/drinking, and some gay jokes that get a little uncomfortable.