A Little TLC(w): Hidden Blade (2023)

So glad to have a new Tony Leung Chiu-wai movie to review! I’ve been genuinely enjoying the ‘80s TV stuff, but watching a new performance backed by Leung’s decades of experience is on a whole other level. From about the 2010s on, his film output has slowed down quite a bit, but between stuff like Shang-Chi and now Hidden Blade, I love watching him prove in no uncertain terms that he’s still got it!

During WWII, Shanghai’s Political Security Department collaborates with the occupying Japanese to investigate revolutionary activity. Led by Mr. He and Japanese liaison Officer Watanabe, the department works to root out Communist spies. Interrogation, torture, execution—nothing is off the table. But as is the case in so many stories involving spies, not everything is as it seems.

First off, I do need to mention the propaganda aspect of the film. While I won’t begrudge a Chinese movie for depicting the horrors of the Japanese occupation and the brutality of Chinese collaborators during the war, the nationalist streak goes pretty hard. As with a lot of mainland movies, you need to take the film’s good qualities with a heaping political grain of salt.

The story is told very nonlinearly, skipping around in time regularly and at times revisiting earlier scenes with a newly revised context. Spy thrillers can feel like a shell game under ordinary circumstances, and this film’s narrative structure ratchets up that feeling of eternally being on shifting sands. As the story goes on, I was able to get my footing and follow its twists forward and backwards through time, but it took me a while to get into the rhythm of it.

This is a film that doesn’t shy away from shocking depictions of brutality and violence, but it also knows when to pull back and rely on the stripped-down tension of a one-on-one conversation between two people of opposing loyalties. The music is dramatic, at times almost oppressive as it seeps into the cracks of a scene, filling the whole atmosphere with dread. It’s a story about people with a lot of passion—for country, for freedom, for love—but few opportunities to openly express that. Everyone needs to be so careful when they speak, so it’s often in the violence that characters are the most demonstrative.

Not too many familiar faces in the cast for me. I recognized Zhou Xun, who plays Mrs. Chen, a revolutionary who’s detained by the department—she appeared with Leung in both The Silent War and The Great Magician. Her performance is subtle but affecting. Yibo Wang brings an intensity and coldness to his role as Mr. Ye, one of the younger agents at the department, and Hiroyuki Mori does well as Officer Watanabe.

But naturally, we’re here to talk about Leung as Mr. He. Leung is just so good here. Although Mr. He is the director of the department and frequently confronted by the literal bloodstains of their work, Leung brings such an unexpected air to the character. In his hands, Mr. He is precise, polite, and often legitimately pleasant. In one of his early scenes, he’s questioning a Communist defector, filling the room with conversational nonchalance as he patiently fills out the necessary forms before turning to the intel the defector is handing over. There are moments, bare rustling hints of menace, but they’re gone almost before you can register them, flickering like a mirage and then disappearing behind Mr. He’s smile.

Leung’s performance helps center the film through its nonlinear winding. Mr. He projects an open air even as he simultaneously keeps his cards close to the vest, but despite his secrets, I feel like the structure of the story is easier to follow as long as he’s onscreen; he’s like a lynchpin to ground you.

I have to say, Leung is also very effective in the film’s intense, knock-down action climax. A third-act confrontation reveals that Mr. He’s still waters conceal the power he’s hiding beneath the surface, and the action is equal parts messy, visceral, and brutal. Yikes!

Recommend?

In General – I think so, but be prepared for the nationalist propaganda and some strong violence. And know that, if your attention is divided, you might not be able to track the movements along the timeline, so make sure you’re in the right frame of mind to see it.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Yes. Leung gives a fantastic performance here that keeps you guessing, and that quiet charisma dares you to take your eyes off him.

Warnings

Strong violence, language, drinking/smoking, and strong thematic elements (including war crimes.)

Other Doctor Lives: Dr. No: The Radio Play (2008)

Real talk? This is first James Bond story I’ve actually experienced. I’ve seen clips of various movies over the years, and I’ve seen plenty of satires, but I’ve never watched one of the films from beginning to end. This, a radio play adaptation of the Ian Fleming novel which became the first Bond film in 1962, probably isn’t the ideal way to start. If it weren’t for Peter Capaldi playing a small role, I wouldn’t have listened to it, and having now finished it, I can definitely say it hasn’t awakened any desire to seek out any “classic” Bond films.

James Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of an MI-6 agent. With the aid of Quarrel, a local and an old friend of Bond’s, he digs into the case and dodges assassination attempts as he gets too close. The mission leads Bond and Quarrel to an island rumored to be guarded by a “dragon,” where the mysterious Dr. No conducts his nefarious machinations.

The spy stuff is entertaining, although it’s a bit hamstrung here by the constraints of the radio medium, which forces people to narrate the dramatic things they’re experiencing out loud. Along the lines of, “Wait, he’s collapsed! He’s foaming at the mouth! He’s-- no, no, no, he’s taken a cyanide capsule!” It gets the job done, and I’ve listened to enough Doctor Who audio dramas to roll with it, but it’s definitely less flashy than cinema.

Besides the fun investigating and derring-do, however, the story doesn’t have a whole lot to recommend it. It’s weighed down by all sorts of mid-century racism, featuring some lazy portrayals of minor Jamaican characters and way too much “inscrutable Chinese” fearmongering. And if the character of Dr. No himself wasn’t written offensively enough, we also have him played by David Suchet (oh, Poirot, what were you thinking?) It’s not even the everyday type of aggravating problematic casting of white actors to voice characters of color, a la Kubo and the Two Strings, wherein the actors at least voice the characters as characters, not as walking stereotypes. This hoary performance is much more overt verbal yellowface, and it’s more than enough to ruin any enjoyment I might have otherwise had from the piece.

Bond is played by Toby Stephens, who played Rochester in a miniseries of Jane Eyre a handful of years ago. Clarke Peters (Freamon from The Wire) appears as Quarrel, and the radio play also features Samuel West, who I’ll always remember as the grown-up Caspian in the ancient Masterpiece version of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Everyone in the cast besides Suchet acquits themselves well enough, but again, that can’t overcome the gross stuff going on with Dr. No.

This project is also awfully scant on the Other Doctor Lives front, as Peter Capaldi only appears in one scene near the start of the radio play. On the plus side, this does mean he’s in and out before the racist junk gets underway. Capaldi plays the MI-6 armorer who kits out Bond before his mission. He’s not in the story for more than a couple minutes and his appearance is almost entirely practical, but I appreciate that there’s still a bit of characterization going on here. The armorer is brusque and bluntly deadpan. He seems to speak the language of firearms and has little interest in anything else. Hi, armorer! So long, armorer!

Accent Watch

Scottish.

Recommend?

In General – I can’t, too gross for me. As someone who isn’t a Bond fan, I can’t speak to how well this compares to the films. I just know I wouldn’t encourage anyone to listen to it.

Peter Capaldi – Naw. His part is so small, and per the above, this is definitely a project you can do without.

Warnings

Racist depictions, violence, sexual content, thematic elements, and a white actor playing an Asian character.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015, R)

This film captured my interest from its first trailer; I liked the look of the action and the amusing dynamic between super-spy Colin Firth and his chav protégé as Firth showed him all sorts of awesomely fun spy gadgets.  The second major trailer I saw, in which super-spy Colin Firth lays waste to a bunch of lowlifes in a pub using nothing but a high-tech umbrella, clinched it.  I had to see this movie.

In Kingsman, tenacious hoodlum Eggsy is given the chance to vie for a place in an elite intelligence organization, old-school James Bond style with cool gizmos, slick fighting skills, and gentlemen’s manners.  He’s brought in by Firth’s Harry (code-named Galahad) as a potential replacement for a fallen agent.  All the current agents, as well as the other candidates for the open slot, are well-bred old-money types, so Eggsy sticks out like a Cockney sore thumb as he tries to prove himself just as worthy as his fellow competitors.  It’s a little bit underdog, a little bit Bond, a little bit stick-it-to-the-man class warring, and a whole lotta fun.

This is such a great, ridiculous movie.  Everything is cranked up to eleven – the insane spy-in-training assignments, the outrageous innuendos, the balls-out insane fight sequences, and the unflappable savoir-faire.  We’re talking weaponized signet rings, extinction-level diabolical master plans, and lethal prosthetics.  It also dusts the entire proceedings with a thick layer of tongue-in-cheek wryness.  This is the sort of film where the criminal mastermind serves the undercover super-spy McDonald’s on a (literal) silver platter and part of Eggsy’s spy training includes raising a pug.  Someone more well-verse in the genre could, I’m sure, point to numerous stylistic homages to its predecessors.  While I’m nowhere near the spy buff to catch the references, I can tell they’re there – some serious genre play going on here.

If I’d known going in that Kingsman’s source material, a comic book, is by the same guy who wrote Wanted, I wouldn’t have been so surprised by the violence.  With Matthew Vaughn (of X-Men:  First Class) at the helm instead of Timur Bekmambetov, the overall film is sleeker and less gritty, but both films have copious amounts of highly-stylized fighting, and when I said insane earlier, I meant it.  The choreography and direction of the fight scenes are jaw-dropping, for both their brilliant execution and their ludicrous audaciousness.  If they weren’t so comic-book over-the-top, I don’t know if I’d have been able to handle it, and even so, it just gets nuts.

Colin Firth is just the man in this movie.  He’s so amazing that they put the entire pub fight in the trailer and it’s just a glimpse of his coolness here.  He’s funny, dapper, sly, capable as all-get-out, and downright deadly.  I’m not familiar with Taron Egerton, who plays Eggsy, but he delivers a strong, likable lead performance, and the supporting cast is ably stocked with Michael Caine, Mark Strong (Mr. Knightley sighting!,) and Samuel L. Jackson, with a brief Jack Davenport appearance as a bonus.

Warnings

Heaps of the old ultraviolence, sexual content, language, general lawlessness, drinking/smoking, and megalomaniac morality.

The Secret Agent: Episode 3 (1992)

 

One last episode, one last appearance of Mr. Vladimir.  If yesterday’s installment led up to the act, today’s shows what follows.  I’ll go so far as to say Verloc makes an attempt, although in the interest of spoiler prevention I won’t tell you if he’s successful.  Regardless, the episode highlights the ramifications for the public, the police, the embassy, the anarchist community, Verloc’s family, and of course Verloc himself. 

 

I’ve seen other stories dealing with this subject, but I don’t usually see it viewed through a Victorian lens.  Most of the undercover-agent stuff I know is either modern or Cold-War-era, and most terrorism plots I’ve encountered are modern.  It’s interesting to get a Victorian perspective on the issue, especially since the original novel was written shortly after that period and Joseph Conrad would have lived through it.

 

I have to say, this is a pretty good episode for Mr. Vladimir.  In the fallout of Verloc’s attempt, Mr. Vladimir central aim is to deflect any and all suspicion of his involvement in it (you’ve gotta respect a man who owns his actions.)  There’s a really good scene where he’s made to defend his beliefs, and he explains why he’s so ends-justify-the-means with regard to anarchism.  While it certainly doesn’t excuse what he does, it helps you understand why he thinks his actions are called for.  The ardor of his feelings definitely comes through; the normally-subdued man is practically shaking with pent-up rage.  PC is excellent here.

 

With that, another PC project comes to an end…

 

Accent Watch

 

RP, though I’m not entirely sure why.  Mr. Vladimir is clearly meant to be a foreign national.  I suppose it’s possible that he came to England at a very young age, but from the way he describes his experiences, it doesn’t seem like it.  Beats me.

 

Recommend?

 

In General – Possibly.  Some might find it overly Masterpiece-Theatre-y, but it’s a decent yarn.  Plus, like I said, it’s neat to see the subject of terrorism addressed in a work so far removed from today’s cultural climate.

 

PC-wise – I think so.  PC does a nice job conveying Mr. Vladimir’s quiet menace, and he has a few meaty scenes.  If nothing else, I’d recommend episode 3 for the scene I described above.

 

Warnings

 

Some dark subject matter and grisly images (by early-90s Masterpiece standards – it’s not like we’re talking Saw or anything.)

The Secret Agent: Episode 2 (1992)

 

Today’s (late) update is brought to you by Word 2013, which decided to crash after I finished writing this review.  To make things even more delightful, it then decided to point and laugh at me while chortling, “AutoRecovery?  What AutoRecovery?!”  I don’t know about you, but for me, nothing inspires quite as much petulance as uncooperative technology, so I had to sit and grumble for a while before rewriting this entry.  (In other words, if there seems to be an undercurrent of seething bitterness threaded through this post, you know why.)

 

At any rate, here we are again!  Mr. Vladimir makes another appearance in episode 2, although this one is very brief.  He’s only in a couple of scenes, and he’s not used liberally in either.  I will say, though, that PC’s nonverbal acting skills were well on their way back when he made this.  He has some nice reactions here.

 

Plot-wise, this episode focuses on the build-up to the act Verloc has been tasked with performing.  He’s receiving a lot of conflicting pressures from different directions.  In addition, to masquerading as an anarchist and operating on behalf of the embassy, he’s also a police informant.  And as if that wasn’t enough, his wife knows virtually nothing about any of these roles.  He has several divergent identities layered one on top of the other, and he’s at a loss for how to get out of his situation intact.

 

I failed to mention it earlier, but in the film version of The Secret Agent, the one I talked about yesterday, Mr. Vladimir is played by none other than Eddie Izzard (I’m so glad he’s joined the Bryan Fuller fold of late; he was great on Hannibal last season.)