Red Cliff (2008)

We celebrated October with scary movies each Tuesday, but I’d forgotten to cue up the DVD, so one night began with previews. All the chatter subsided, and everyone stared at a war between ancient Chinese factions. Units of footmen formed tortoise-shell defenses, luring the cavalry into a trap. Heroes threw back six foes at a time while their brooding masters pored over maps, wrote poetry, and studied cloud formations.

When the preview ended, everyone turned to me. “You want to see that one instead?” I asked, knowing I had it in the vault.

Did they ever.

After a decade spent making movies in Hollywood, John Woo returned to his native land. There he undertook a film version of one of the famous battles of China's Three Kingdoms period.

On this blog, I’ve used the term “kung fu” pretty loosely, but this time I need to point out that this film is a war epic. While there are some impressive wirework stunts in Red Cliff, the film is far more concerned with the leaders of the opposing camps, the flaws and virtues of their characters, and the particular strategies they use to take advantage of their foes’ mistakes. That said, once the action begins, it will kick your ass all the way up to the fiery finale.

The movie opens by establishing the influence Chancellor Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) has over the young emperor. Seizing power over the military, he turns his forces against the lords who have resisted his control. Soon after, the heroes Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhao Yun display superhuman fighting prowess in a retreat against the imperial army. Any one of those heroes could be the star of a film, but here they are the supporting cast.

The learned and brilliant strategist Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) proposes an alliance between his master, Liu Bei, and the reluctant warlord Sun Quan (Chang Chen), who comes around after a lesson learned during a tiger hunt. Quan places Zhang Yun (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) in charge of the combined forces, and the unified rebels prepare to meet Cao Cao’s vastly larger force, including an enormous navy.

The battles that follow reflect the personalities of the faction leaders, each clash somehow topping the previous for audacious tactics. The drama among the allies is equally gripping.. In a desperate hour, Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liange wager each can achieve a seemingly impossible task—assassinating the opposing admirals, and acquiring 100,000 arrows—and the stakes are their lives.

Men are not the only combatants in Red Cliff. Both Zhou’s wife, Xiao Qiao (Lin Chi-ling) and Sun’s sister, Sun Shangxiang (Zhao Wei) play pivotal roles in the conflict. The beauteous Xiao surrenders herself to the enemy in a ploy to delay the lustful Cao Cao, while tomboyish Sun Shangxiang serves as a spy in the enemy camp, where she bonds with a dim but sweet-hearted enemy soldier.

Such a brief description can’t do justice to a 280-minute film. The 148-minute North American cut is said to be quite good, but I wouldn’t want to miss any of the subplots or deliberately paced character development leading up to the spectacular fights.

Dark Fantasy in Kung Fu Movies

The fine folks at Flames Rising have posted a survey of five of my favorite Chinese fantasy films. I hope this will make up in part for my last few weeks of conventions and catching up on writing.

Look for more kung fu movie recommendations here soon.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

What I’ve been calling “kung fu” movies consist of a wide variety of films from high fantasy to historical action dramas. Even within the narrower realm of what we think of as martial arts movies, individual pictures range from relatively realistic depictions of hand-to-hand combat to wuxia romances in which the heroes fly like superheroes.

Many fans love some of these films but not others. Martial-arts purists draw the line at wire work, in which heroes can leap over the heads of their opponents or run along a wall—effects many North American fans encountered for the first time in films like The Matrix. Others find the gravity-bound choreography less exciting and prefer CGI-laden fables like the art-house wuxia of Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower). For many the sweet spot is in the middle, with films like Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or many of the classic Shaw Brothers Studios pictures of the 70s and 80s.

Me, I love it all, as long as the movie is fun. I’m as keen on a great superhero movie as I am on a moving historical romance, so Chinese films have a lot to offer me. Of course, the first few times I saw some films that mixed wire-work with wacky comedy and revenge drama, it blew my mind. But once I saw how this mixing of genres and tones works, a whole new world of entertainment opened up for me.

Recently I’ve recommended films that folks depending on Netflix or other rental outfits have had trouble finding. For the next few weeks, I’ll focus on movies that are easier to find. If you check them out, please comment here, encouraging me to do more of these in the weeks and months following the release of Master of Devils.

You’ve probably heard the title of The 36^th Chamber of Shaolin even if you’ve never seen the movie. Or perhaps you’ve seen the English-dubbed version entitled The Master Killer, a grindhouse sensation in the late 70s. Whether you prefer the subtitled original (as I do) or the dubbed version doesn’t matter. This is the film that made a star of Gordon Liu (aka Lau Kar-fai) and etched the kung fu training sequence into the psyche of North American audiences.

The story is simple and familiar: The young scholar San Te (Liu) witnesses the death of his family at the hands of the Manchu. He flees to Shaolin temple, where the monks initially refuse to train him because they know he has revenge in his heart. Gradually he learns the lessons of the monastery in a series of often-funny lessons described as the 35 Chambers. (There’s some comic relief in San Te’s training, but not so much as to make the movie a comedy. For that you will want to watch Return to the 36^th Chamber, also starring Liu, this time as a different character.) In the end, San Te returns to the world outside the temple and gains his revenge, afterward establishing the 36^th Chamber: bringing martial arts to the people.

While San Te is based loosely on an historical character, this story is almost 100% fiction. Even so, it deals with the real friction between the Chinese people and the corrupt Manchu government, so its message of righteous revenge resonates with virtually any audience. The iconic fight scenes come courtesy of Lau Kar-leung, the star’s adopted brother and one of the foremost directors and choreographers of kung fu movies.

The 36^th Chamber of Shaolin was the principal inspiration for Dragon Temple and its training regimen, although perhaps the film’s most obvious influence on Master of Devils is the oxymoron of a peaceful monastery training students in martial arts. The film offers plenty of rich material for GMs looking to put their players through a demanding—and sometimes humiliating—training sequence. Also, no player should be allowed to give his character a three-section staff until after seeing this film.

Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain (1983)

The previous few movies I recommended are relatively new and thus hard to find in North America. Thus, this week we turn to Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, which you can find on DVD practically anywhere. This is the film that not only established Tsui Hark’s reputation but also influenced American filmmakers like John Carpenter (Big Trouble in Little China) and Sam Raimi (Evil Dead).

Not to be mistaken for the CGI-muddled 2001 remake, this action-comedy-horror-romance-satire introduced wuxia fantasy to many of us western fans. If you aren’t braced for its breakneck speed and everything-including-the-kitchen-sink approach, it can seem overwhelming with its quick shifts in tone and genre. But if you’re in the right mood, preferably late at night with a group of friends and a case of cold beer, Zu is hard to beat for sheer fun.

In response to American blockbusters like Star Wars, Hark fills the screen with special effects. Only instead of laser beams, his characters shoot bolts of magic energy or entangle their foes with long, prehensile eyebrows. The effects include a rough approximation of lightsabers and Sith lightning, for what it’s worth, but it’s when Zu doesn’t resemble its American influence that it’s the most fun.

You needn’t know anything about Chinese history to understand the satire of war in the brief first act. Acrobatic Blue Army scout Ti (Yuen Biao) flees a death sentence for agreeing with both of his generals because they disagree with each other. He blunders into a Red Army soldier (Sammo Hung), but they soon find themselves allied against forces of four more armies: Orange, Green, Yellow, and Teal. Ti cries, “What a colorful war!”

Escaping the fray, Ti falls down a cliff that turns out to be the proverbial rabbit hole. He enters the world of the Magic Mountain. There he encounters a swordsman who wields black and white magic swords, whom he begs to accept him as an apprentice to fight the evil in the world. They soon meet a mystical monk and his young apprentice. The proud and jaded veterans squabble, leaving the altruistic young men to form the friendship that allows them to cooperate against a powerful Blood Demon. Only the moon mirror of a venerable warrior known as Longbrows (also Sammo Hung) can hold the monster at bay, and that only for 49 days. Before that time is up, the heroes must find another pair of magic swords (green and purple this time), the only weapons that can slay the Blood Demon.

Along with the haunted jars containing black-flag ghosts, evil cultists, cymbal-wielding monks, and animated skulls, our heroes face slow-acting poison, shape-changing adversaries, flying statues, and deadly blood crows. What follows is just about the closest thing to a fantasy roleplaying campaign you’ll ever see on screen, but be prepared for me to say similar things about other movies I'll recommend soon. Much of the story takes place in what can only be described as a vast dungeon complex, leaving only when the group must seek magical healing from the beauteous Countess (Brigitte Lin) in her temple among the clouds. Naturally, one of the Countess’s beautiful acolytes joins the smitten young men for the third act, which culminates in a day-glow spectacle of matte effects worthy of a 1970s Saturday-morning children’s TV program.

Despite the sometimes silly visuals and the confused deus ex machina of the finale, the fun up to that point is more than worth the journey as long as you can withstand the whiplash of a wild ride.

While I can't think of a specific scene that informed a chapter of Master of Devils, Zu's "everything all the time" approach absolutely influenced my choice of showing different tones of adventure through the eyes of three different point-of-view characters, including moments of horror, romance, humor, and in virtually every chapter a heaping dose of action. Even so, after screening Zu again, how I wish I'd made room for Longbrows!

Reign of Assassins

Initially reluctant to star in a demanding physical role so long after what seemed to be the height of her career in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Michelle Yeoh eventually gave in to a script with characters as rich as its fight scenes. In Reign of Assassins, Yeoh proves she still has what it takes both as a dramatic actress and as an action star.

The Chinese title of Reign of Assassins is Jianyu, Jianghu, translating literally as "Swords and Rain, Rivers and Lakes." "Jianghu" is the poetic term for the martial arts underworld, roughly analogous to the world of superheroes in western fiction. It's the realm of wushu masters, shapechangers, and magicians. It's where the player characters in Pathfinder's Tian Xia setting live, and if I'd found the film a few months earlier, it would have been a tremendous inspiration for Master of Devils.

Reign of Assassins begins with a fight for control of a prophet's mortal remains, said to grant its possessor ultimate mastery. When the Dark Stone gang murder the prime minister for the mummy, their top assassin, Drizzle, steals away with half of the corpse. After encountering a monk who shows her the fatal flaw in her swordsmanship, Drizzle has a change of heart and leaves the martial arts world to begin her life again, complete with a new name and face, the latter courtesy of a master surgeon whose tools include bone-devouring insects.

Free of her former colleagues, Zeng hides her ill-gotten wealth and lives as a simple cloth merchant. Despite the tireless efforts of her match-making market neighbor, Zeng falls in love with a poor messenger, Ah-sheng. They live happily together until caught up in a bank robbery. To save her husband's life, Zeng reveals her skill, drawing the attention of the Dark Stone assassins.

The Wheel King is the gang's whispering leader, possessed of extraordinary knowledge and deadly sword skill. He has replaced the treacherous Drizzle with Turquoise, a courtesan whose charms are as deadly as her blade. The other top assassins include a noodle-loving master of darts and a magician capable of disappearing up a rope to the clouds and setting his swords aflame.

The final act is full of so many revelations and betrayals that I don't dare describe it further. The action is top-notch, in part because of the consultations of the legendary John Woo, credited as co-director. Korean writer/director Su Chau-bin deserves credit both for a thrilling story and for wrangling a multi-national cast, not all of whom spoke Mandarin.

That cast includes the sensational Jung Woo-sung (The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, Musa, and The Restless, the latter two of which I'll describe in later posts) as Zeng's husband, the excellent Kelly Lin (Sparrow, Mad Detective) as pre-reconstruction Drizzle, and the sublime Wang Xueqi (Bodyguards & Assassins, Warriors of Heaven and Earth) as the Wheel King.


Like Detective Dee, Reign of Assassins is not a reinvention of the genre but a loving revival of the best sort of wuxia films from the late 80s and 90s. The action choreography puts to shame the CGI of recent films, and the script and direction strike a perfect balance between outrageous action and human melodrama, with some sweet character-based humor at all the right moments. One of the film's best qualities is the depth of its antagonists, each of whom enjoys some measure of sympathy and even tragedy.

In his director's commentary for his famous film, Ang Lee apologizes to Chinese audiences for the relatively slow start to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in which he grounds western audiences in the conventions of jianghu before unleashing the wire work. Had he made his movie without regard for culture clash, we might have seen something closer to Reign of Assassins, which is every bit as admirable but even more thrilling for fans of action and fantasy.