Movie Reviews: Date Archives
March 2006
Sha Po Lang
by Wilson Yip
Yes, yes, yes… a lot of people have been talking about the decline of Hong Kong cinema over the years, and certainly, when compared to the glory days in the late 80s/early 90s, the country certainly has fallen. I’m sure than when people see that what was once one of the greatest filmmaking countries in the world is releasing movies such as Where Is Mama’s Boy? (featuring American Idol favorite William Hung), they’re tempted to throw up their hands, stop importing HK DVDs, and maybe even pray that the Apocalypse comes even faster.
But there are still bright spots, movies that take what have always been HK cinema’s great strengths (memorable performances, emotion-filled drama, not-cheesy sentimentality, and kick-ass action scenes) and repackage them for the 21st century. Films such as Just One Look (which might be one of the best teen romance/cinematic nostalgia movies I’ve seen since Cinema Paradiso), One Nite In Mongkok, Lost In Time, and of course, Infernal Affairs. And I think it’s safe to say that one can add Sha Po Lang to that list.
Unrepentantly dark, bleak, and wrought with the sort of manly existential melodrama that made us fall in love with John Woo back in the day, Sha Po Lang is also incredibly glossy, stylish, and prone to sometimes get bogged down by its own excess. Oh yeah, and it also features several action scenes that are just stunning for their sheer knock down, drag out intensity and brutality - just the way we like it.
The film’s title refers to three stars in the Chinese astrology, stars that have the power to destroy or create a beautiful life for someone. It also refers to the names of the film’s three main characters, Chan (Simon Yam), Po (Sammo Hung), and Ma (Donnie Yen), three men who seem absolutely determined to destroy eachothers’ lives, as well as their own, by their violence, corruption, and vengeance.
Vital
by Shinya Tsukamoto
Vital might be the first Shinya Tsukamoto film that I’ve seen in its entirety, but I have seen and read enough about some of his other films to know that a few terms can accurately be applied to Tsukamoto’s films. Terms ranging from “transgressive” to “taboo shattering”, “disturbing” to “harrowing”.
This is, after all, a guy whose first major film, Tetsuo: The Ironman, featured a mild-mannered office worker slowly turning into a monstrosity of metal and wires complete with a drill-like penis, and whose previous film, A Snake Of June, centered around a woman blackmailed into performing various sexual acts, including masturbating in public.
So I suppose, from the perspective, that it sort of makes sense that Vital is, at least on the surface, about an amnesiac who begins regaining his memories while dissecting his girlfriend’s cadaver. However, to just leave it at that is far too simplistic, and far to dismissive of this film, which, while quite disturbing, is also quite haunting and surprisingly tender and beautiful at times.
The always-stellar Tadanobu Asano (Last Life In The Universe) is Hiroshi, a young man who has just survived a terrible car accident. However, when he wakes up from a coma, he has no memory of the wreck, his life, anything.
Only after discovering some medical textbooks does he begin to sense some purpose to his life, some sort of calling. He enrolls in medical school, much to the delight of his parents, and quickly becomes a star pupil. But he still remains a lonely cipher, brilliant in his studies but essentially empty, unable to recall anything else in his life and constantly living in dread of the alien world around him.