skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Film: The Banquet
Release date: 2nd August 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 126 mins
Director: Xiaogang Feng
Starring: Ziyi Zhang, Daniel Wu, Sun Zhou, You Ge, Jingwu Ma
Genre: Action/Drama/History/War
Studio: Metrodome
Format: Blu-ray
Country: China
Loosely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet The Banquet, directed by Feng Xiaogang, is a lavishly produced tale of incest, corruption and revenge during the fall of the Tang Dynasty, a period known as the 'Five Dynasties of Ten Kingdoms'. A web of intrigue has been woven within the walls of the Imperial Palace that ultimately leads to tragedy and bloodshed.
China 907 BC: Prince Wuluan (Daniel Wu) has decided to study the performing arts in remote woodlands away from the Imperial Palace after his sweetheart, Little Wan, (Ziyi Zhang), marries his father the Emperor, and thus becoming Empress.
She sends word to Wuluan that his father has been killed, presumably by a black scorpion, and his Uncle Li (You Gi) has now taken the throne, taking her as his own Empress.
Unbeknown to Wan, Li orders a secret onslaught on Wuluan, but despite the slaughter of all Wuluan’s fellow performers, whose faces are hidden behind white impassive masks - making it difficult to know which one is the Prince - Wuluan makes a narrow escape. Convinced they have killed Wuluan, the steel-welding Imperial Guards return to notify the Emperor of their “success”.
Believing Wan to be responsible for his father’s death, Wuluan returns to the palace to confront her, but Wan reassures Wuluan that it was Emperor Li who killed his father.
Once the Emperor learns that Wuluan is still alive, another attempt on the young Prince’s life is made, only to be saved yet again by the Empress’ intervention.
The Emperor decides to hold a lavish banquet and orders all those that don’t attend to be put to death. The Empress sees the event of grandeur as the perfect opportunity to rid the world of the Emperor. But as with all Shakespearean tragedies, all does not end well…
The Banquet is a visually spectacular costume drama, which incorporates balletic fight scenes with lashings of blood and grandiose set pieces, as well as impressive crane shots used to good effect during scenes within the walls of the Imperial Palace.
The central figure in the story is the multi-faceted Empress Wan, played to great effect by the talented international superstar Ziyi Zhang. The Empress is a complex character with a multiple persona, which is subtly revealed by the adornment of her vibrant extravagant costumes that she wears at specific moments. Colours divulge her characteristics: gowns of reddish-purple are worn as she demonstrates her powerful malicious side; whilst yellow, her chosen colour of attire during intimate moments with the Prince, is worn at times when she can be gentle and most true to herself. The role of the Empress was originally intended for a more developed actress, someone of Gong Li’s calibre, for example. But once Zhang agreed to come on board, Xiaogang was enthusiastic towards her suggestions on how she should approach the role, which led to major changes in the script to suit her specifications.
Because of this alteration with the leading actress, the film has come under fire from some critics who deem the role of the Empress too demanding for someone, at that time, not yet fully developed. If Gong Li or even Maggie Cheung did fill the Empress’ shoes, this would indeed command an amendment with the other major players. Although this could have given the film more substance, Zhang’s portrayal of the Empress, as well as the visuals, is the film’s saving grace; being that the decision to make the Empress only four years younger than the Prince actually works, it’s just a shame that Wu couldn’t have played the Prince with a little more ardour.
High praise must also go to actress/singer Xun Zhou for her portrayal of the virtuous Qing, who is deeply in love with Wuluan, and is the only character we can warm to. She is the innocent one within this tragic entanglement of love and rivalry, and receives our full sympathy – a well-deserved winner of the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role. She also sang the closing theme tune, which was nominated for a Golden Horse Award for Best Original Film Song.
The overall intellect and style of The Banquet is very theatrical, and is relatively in keeping with Shakespeare’s original vision. On the downside, the western-influenced soundtrack falls short of being appealing, and is quite unforgettable, only managing to be commanding on occasion.
There is also an over use of slow motion filming. This technique works well with certain scenes, such as those of galloping horses and the wirework fight sequences, but is over-applied at other times, especially during the torture and slaughter scene of General Yin Sun (Xiaoming Huang). What should have been a brutal and unsettling sight for us to witness, consequently became an exaggeratedly dramatic stage show, which diminished the overall effect.
The Banquet is by no means a masterpiece, but it is a gloriously spectacular work of visual art with some fine performances, mainly from two of China’s brightest stars - Zhang Ziyi and Xun Zhou. Sadly, it’s hard to feel any compassion for the three main characters, as they are often cold and callous, putting a distance between them and the viewer. SLP
Film: The Shinjuku Incident
Release date: 22nd February 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 114 mins
Director: Tung-shing Yee
Starring: Jackie Chan, Daniel Wu, Naoto Takenaka, Masaya Kato, Xu Jinglei
Genre: Crime/Drama
Studio: Cine Asia
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Hong Kong
Jackie Chan takes his biggest step outside his comfort zone in this bleak crime fable with an arresting socio-political subtext. How does the undisputed king of action-comedy fare in this stripped down, character-driven drama?
To escape the poverty of rural China in the early 1990s, tractor mechanic ‘Steelhead’ (Chan) makes for Japan, which he enters illegally by sea with scores of other desperate Chinese.
Narrowly escaping the police, Steelhead arrives in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, where he is accepted into the Chinese ex-pat community, and forges a friendship with Jie (Wu) - a well-intentioned younger man with a habit of making destructively bad decisions.
Steelhead wants nothing more than to earn a living and be reunited with his fiancée, Xiu Xiu (Jinglei), but the dual discovery that opportunities are scarce and that Xiu Xiu is now the wife of Yakuza boss Eguchi (Kato) nudge the weary and desperate immigrant towards a life of crime.
Before long, Steelhead finds himself mired in a web of violence and betrayal, caught in not only the crossfire of a Yakuza power struggle, but also of his own internal war - how to remain an honourable man in the face of such ruthless and deadly enemies? And can crime be excused if one seeks only to look after one’s community?
About twenty minutes into The Shinjuku Incident, the film sets up a scenario we’ve seen before - dozens of times. Jackie Chan - playing an ‘everyman hero’ - happens to be in the right place at the right time as an innocent is set upon by baddies or thugs. Never one to stand by, Jackie runs to the rescue, using an inanimate object that happens to be to hand (in this case a conveniently placed stick). But where Jackie’s everyman hero should twirl and whirl said stick with ruthless, athletic grace, he simply swings it chaotically, never making contact. In place of the actor’s lifetime of training is the crude, desperate action of an unskilled ordinary man who masks his own fear with frenzied aggression, hoping to scare off his opponent before he has to inflict or receive any physical damage. He even calls out for help. If audiences had not cottoned on before this scene, it now becomes very clear: this is not a ‘typical’ Jackie Chan film.
Jackie Chan’s is one of the most carefully managed and scrupulously maintained cinematic personas of this, or any other, era. We take as given that Jackie’s character - who will often be called ‘Jackie’ or, in his earlier Hong Kong days, ‘Ah Lung’ (playing on his Cantonese stage name ‘Sing Lung’, ‘Lung’ meaning ‘Dragon’) - is an honourable man, who does not back down from a challenge; we know that ‘Jackie’ will use - often stylised, spectacular - violence to right a wrong, but we know that minimal blood will be spilled, and that any gunshots fired will almost certainly miss before the guns are flung aside in favour of fists and feet. In perhaps no career in any country’s cinema has one man shown such a keen awareness of his audience (the paucity of love - or even kissing - scenes in Chan’s filmography was almost necessitated by the extreme reactions of his female fans, with one Japanese woman committing suicide upon learning of his real-life marriage to a Taiwanese actress), and such reluctance to unsettle them (the list of ‘risky’ projects turned down by Chan include the gay love interest of Leslie Cheung in Farwell, My Concubine, and the historically controversial figure of China’s First Emperor in Zhang Yimou’s Hero). Any revision of this persona has instant cinematic impact, from the older brother of a mentally ill man struggling with his responsibilities in 1985’s Heart Of The Dragon, through to the alcoholic detective in 2004’s New Police Story. But even those characters contained the key, comforting ‘Jackie-isms’ - the fighting ability, and the indomitable spirit, dormant but retrievable upon the plot’s demand. The Shinjuku Incident’s Steelhead shares only a desire to be good with the basic Jackie Chan template. In every other respect, this is brand new territory for the leading man.
And he does rather a fine job in it, too. Having made his name in popular Hong Kong cinema - which, by definition, required a very expressive style of acting - Chan perhaps does not have the career’s worth of experience to draw on in order to convey his character’s inner turmoil and existential malaise with particular subtlety. So he does what he has always done - rely on his connection with an audience. Chan’s face - handsome, off-set by a pug nose that was the butt of so many easy script jokes in his early career, and almost as flexible as the rest of him - has always been the most effective weapon in his acting arsenal; but where he once mugged incessantly in aid of conveying physical pain or comedic angst, he now casts off once and for all his typical boyishness, and lets all the weariness of late middle age show. It is almost as though Chan is no longer pretending that nearly forty years of action scenes, blown stunts and broken bones haven’t taken their toll. Director Derek Yee underlines, perhaps for the first time, just how fascinating Chan’s looks have become with age, and the actor seems to relish the more subdued, restrained style of acting. Gone is the showy wailing of New Police Story, and in its place is a quiet (in)dignity which, though perhaps not as subtle as a Tony Leung may have managed, is all the more impressive for being so unexpected.
Of course, there is more going on in The Shinjuku Incident than Jackie Chan stepping outside his comfort zone. Much more, in fact. So what of the rest of the film? Almost frustratingly, the script contains little to match the surprise of its central performance, steaming through gangland movie clichés at a rate of knots. What starts as an intriguingly slow-burn insight into the illegal immigrant communities in Japan soon overburdens itself with the web of deceit and power plays within the Tokyo underworld that is at first only tangentially connected to the emotional story at its heart. The central characters all have compelling relationships with each other (Steelhead is employed by, and eventually grows to like and respect the Yakuza boss now married to the girl he came to find), and arcs ripe with dramatic potential (Jie’s reaction to humiliation and mutilation in a gangland incident is to take up with drug-dealing, nihilistic cyberpunks), but the filmmakers too often pull their punches when it really matters. Despite several scenarios that feel fresh and new, the characters ultimately make the same old choices when it really matters.
Yee’s film simply spreads itself too thinly - its socio-political character study at war with its commercially desirable gangland thriller plot. The script’s wealth of character arcs and subplots - Steelhead’s lost love, his friendship with a weary-yet-idealistic cop (Takenaka), Jie’s struggle to assert himself in a world run by ruthless men - suggests a sprawling epic story crammed into a running time of just under two hours. Indeed, as characters make story-turning decisions that occasionally have insufficient build-up, the film sometimes plays like a three hour epic that’s been hastily edited. Ultimately, the characters are shepherded to a chaotic finale that feels like a quick-fix to a script that got out of control - its conclusion unsettlingly abrupt. It’s a measure of how the film eventually disengages its audience that the fact the plot’s resolution centres on a glaringly anachronistic detail becomes impossible to overlook, regardless of our emotional connection to the characters.
A nice change of pace for its star, and a well-made crime drama in its own right. Even if it does not ascend to the level to which it aspires, The Shinjuku Incident is still a mostly compelling piece of Asian cinema that touches on an issue perhaps unfamiliar to overseas audiences. JN
