Normally, I do A Little TLC(w) once a month, but since my current Tony Leung Chiu-wai project is a miniseries, I figured I’d speed it up and post reviews of his episodes each week. I’m still making up my mind about this miniseries, but even so, I continue to have a good time. While the second episode feels a little less substantial than the first, it also features much more of Leung’s Seventh Son, which is a delight.
The new Emperor Sung’s rule is threatened by revolt from the Pang and Liao families. When indecision breaks out over who will lead his men in the coming fight, a martial arts tournament is proposed to choose a vanguard. However, the Yang sons are all held back, with their father saying their superior skill gives them an unfair advantage. This leaves the eager Seventh Son with nowhere to prove himself, and when he discovers that some bandits have set upon members of their household, he begs to be allowed to join one of his older brothers in tracking down the bandits to restore the family honor.
After being set up to consider Sixth Son and Princess Chai the protagonists in episode 1, they barely feature in this story at all. I’m not sure if this is just a temporary thing, or if the miniseries will jump around quite a bit in its focus. I’ll admit that I’m not sure how prominent Andy Lau and Carina Lau were in Hong Kong in the mid ‘80s (both on their own and relative to Tony Leung Chiu-wai,) but they may wind up being part of a larger ensemble rather than the leads. We’ll see how things develop.
I also have yet to see quite how the gods factor in. I’ll admit that part of that is down to my not remembering who all became who when the gods took their various sides in the human feud and went down to Earth, with the actors becoming the human characters; it happened right off the bat, and there are a lot of characters to keep track of. The miniseries’s Wikipedia page includes a list of the human characters separated by clan, with denotations about who is the reincarnation of what deity, so that helps. I’ve confirmed my suspicion, for instance, that a character that Seventh Son has an instant connection with is played by the same actress who also plays the Goddess of Yellow Heaven, the deity that Leung’s Thunder Boy is in love with. So there are influences between the earthly and heavenly realms – I may need to revisit the opening sequence with the gods from the first episode, so I can get everyone straight again.
After a kind-of-hilariously-long back-and-forth between the Yang patriarch and the elder statesman (who, if I recall correctly, is the father of Princess Chai’s suitor, Sixth Son’s rival) over who should lead the army, resulting in setting up the aforementioned tournament, Seventh Son steps in as our main focus for this episode. No longer Sixth Son’s sidekick – it’s the more reserved Fifth Son who runs point on hunting the bandits – we get a lot more on who Seventh Son is. The youngest Yang son, he’s something of a run-before-learning-to-walk type, hungry to get into the fight. For glory, for honor, for heroism – all that stuff. No one messes with the Yangs when he’s around, or at least that’s how it goes in theory. While he’s skilled in a fight, he’s also impulsive and can be hot-headed. He gets ahead of himself, which can get him into trouble.
The added focus, naturally, gives Leung more to do, and I like his performance here. Is Seventh Son less demanding than other roles I’ve seen of his? Sure. Have Leung’s abilities grown and developed a lot since then? Of course. But he’s still fun and engaging to watch, and now that I have more of a sense of who Seventh Son is, I’ll have to look to see threads of that in continuing episodes if he goes back to being more of a supporting character.
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