A Little TLC(w): Confession of Pain (2006)

I had this Tony Leung Chiu-wai movie on my list of films to see for quite a while, but I needed some time to get my hands on it. While it’s interesting, the jury’s still out on how good I think it actually is. That said, it’s a different sort of role for Leung, one that doesn’t mesh neatly with a lot of other characters he’s played in his career.

When his wealthy fiancee’s father and long-time servant are both brutally murdered, Detective Lau Ching Hei enlists his friend Yau Kin Bong, a former detective turned PI, to investigate the case. The alcoholic Bong’s personal life is a mess, but he’s still very good at what he does, and as he digs into the details of the murder, he starts to uncover a lot more than he bargained for.

This is part noir, part psychological thriller, part character study. There are points where it gets super dramatic and takes itself way too seriously, pulling me out of the story. But there are still good foundations here. Even though the film seems to tip its hand early on re: the mystery, things are more complicated than they seem, and there are some neat twists to be had. Some of the atmospheric stuff is also really well done, especially the unsettling paranoia Susan (Hei’s fiancée) experiences after the murder.

It also has a good cast working for it. I enjoy seeing Shu Qi (J.J. from Seoul Raiders) again as a woman that Bong has an on-again/off-again thing with, and Bong is ably played by Takeshi Kaneshiro. Even if stuff with his character can lean a little too heavily into melodrama, Kaneshiro keeps it from getting too overwrought, and he handles both Bong’s sloppy drunkenness and sharp investigative skills well.

Like I said, Hei is a character you don’t see Leung playing too often. He’s very controlled, which we’ve seen from Leung before (like Mr. Chow in In the Mood for Love or Zhou Yu in Red Cliff,) but for Hei, this precision and control plays out very differently. It’s a cold control, lacking the warmth that Leung usually brings in his quieter roles. It keeps you guessing, as you’re never altogether sure where you stand with Hei.

I’ve seen Leung and Kaneshiro in several films together – the aforementioned Red Cliff, See You Tomorrow, and Chungking Express, although their storylines in the latter are separate. This is another example of them playing well off each other. Although they play close friends here and in See You Tomorrow, and become close friends/allies in Red Cliff, the dynamic is different each time and never looks quite the same.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. Be forewarned that its opinion of itself is probably too high and it can get overly wrapped up in The Drama!!, but it still has a number of good points.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – I think so. It shows a side of Leung’s acting that we don’t see too often, and he does well with it.

Warnings

Scenes of graphic violence, disturbing images, drinking/smoking, bodily-function stuff, sexual content, and strong thematic elements.

A Little TLC(w): Hard Boiled (1992, R)

Today, I’m staying home for everyone doing custodial work.

I rewatched this movie for the first time in years and was remined 1) how stone-cold cool it is and 2) how amazing Tony Leung Chiu-wai is in it. Let’s just say, it’s a classic for a reason.

Tequila is a maverick cop. I’d be tempted to say “standard-issue maverick cop” – he has incredible skill with a gun, he’s not fond of taking orders from his superintendent, and he lets his personal issues drive a lot of his actions – but despite the familiarity of the character, it feels more distinct than that. Anyway, Tequila recently lost a friend to the triad leader Johnny Wong and is hellbent on taking Johnny down. Along the way, he crosses paths with Alan, a brother for a rival gang who’s being courted by Johnny.

That feels like a crappy synopsis to me, but in a way, the plot isn’t really the point. When it comes to the storyline, you’ve probably seen this movie before, and you can probably guess some of the twists and turns it takes. While there are inventive flourishes here and there that make Hard Boiled’s plot stand out a little, that’s not where the magic is happening in this movie.

Nope, this movie is about two things:  action and acting. This is vintage John Woo, and the action is absolutely killer, no pun intended. Tequila has the big, bombastic two-gun blaze-‘em-all scenes where he is the man, and Alan’s quiet efficiency is effortlessly cool. The entire second half of the film is devoted to an epic showdown between the cops and the triads, with Tequila and Alan both at the front of the pack, and it’s incredible to watch. The fight choreography is expert and Woo’s direction is masterful, knowing just when to go balls-to-the-wall action and when to pull back to rebuild the tension. As for acting, Chow Yun-fat gives a terrific performance as Tequila, a cop who’s simultaneously intense and earnest but also just a little bit of an asshole. In Chow’s hands, Tequila is always more than archetype might suggest.

And then, we have Leung as Alan. My god. After seeing the film again, I was poking around online and stumbled across an observation that the real beauty of this performance is Leung playing a supporting role as though it’s a lead, and I couldn’t agree with that more. While, at this time, Leung had already been working for about a decade, he definitely had less dramatic experience and he wasn’t the star that Chow was in the early ‘90s, but he goes toe-to-toe with Chow for the entire movie, making Alan just crackle on the screen.

A Little TLC(w) has taught me just how many charming scoundrels Leung has played throughout his career, but this role fits in better with more of my early impressions of Leung as, above all, a soulful actor. Even though, like Tequila, Alan is the type of role you’ve most likely seen plenty of times before, Leung makes it personal. His face tells a story in every scene, and even though we’re introduced to Alan through a scene of calm, unflappable violence, we quickly see that there’s a lot going on under the surface of this character, who can speak volumes without saying a word. I’m so glad I watched this again, because it shows, relatively early in Leung’s career, just how much talent he has.

Recommend?

In General – Yeah. Great action flick with great acting and awesome fight scenes – you know it’s good when two guys can shoot guns for a solid hour and you never stop to wonder why they’re not running out of bullets.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Absolutely. What an excellent performance; Leung is incredible here.

Warnings

Copious violence (including some serious spurting blood,) language, drinking/smoking, and thematic elements.

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.