Hong Kong Films Are Big On Action
The Age
Friday March 4, 1994
July 1997 looms big in the Hong Kong calendar; it is also likely to mark the end of the colony's frenetic film industry. MICHAEL HELMS views the best of Hong Kong showing at the Valhalla.
WHILE one of the world's most anticipated soap operas spirals towards a rapid conclusion (when Britain hands Hong Kong back to China on 1 July 1997) its cancellation date, as the pundits would have it, will more than likely mean the dismantling of the most exciting film industry on the planet.
As any post-modern celluloid thrill seeker will tell you, the only action cinema that's completely hype-resistant hails from China. But don't be misled, we're not talking mainland arthouse products here; we're only concerned with the stuff that's spat out of Hong Kong faster than its lead actors can feed full bullet clips through their automatic fire arms. We're talking frenetic, frantic, frightening and funny flicks that can delight as much as surprise.
If you've never been hit with the realisation that there was life in the Hong Kong film industry before and after Bruce Lee, nor gathered the momentum to pass through the portals of your nearest Chinese venue (we've got the largest Chinese-language cinema in the southern hemisphere on Bourke Street, in a building formerly occupied by Hoyts) then the Valhalla Cinema in Northcote has something special for you - a please-fest of films culled from the best Hong Kong cinema of the past decade.
Heading the menu from this session, labelled ``Hong Kong Hellraising", are two `A Chinese Ghost Story' flicks marked 2 and 3. Complete visual extravaganzas, both movies effortlessly weld special effects to the highly stylised conventions of Chinese opera.
Set in the ancient past, both flicks hang off plots involving ``men in love with ghosts", and feature tree demons, freeze spells, tongue-fu and more airborne humans than in a trampoline test factory. Although the 1987 original is perhaps the film that drew Western eyes towards modern Hong Kong films, both sequels stand on their own.
Even the Queen has heard of Jackie Chan, to whom she presented an MBE, but the screening of `Police Story 3: Supercop' marks the chance to actually see Chan on the big screen for the first time in an English-language cinema since `Armor Of God' surreptitiously unspooled at hardtops and drive-ins in the late '80s.
While it is not Jackie's greatest moment, this second sequel to the first two Chan-directed stunt fests were helmed by one Stanley Tong, who puts the film into travelogue mode as it skips across Asian borders in an amiable if lightweight effort that emphasises the comedy.
Chan's breathtaking stunt work, which is often literally death- defying and mostly makes similar Western work look anorexic, is allowed to shine at various stages.
Ever since the extremely successful Hong Kong release of `A Better Tomorrow' in 1986, John Woo has held the title of king creator of captivating urban crime dramas, and set the standards that others (in Hong Kong and elsewhere) are still trying to emulate.
`ABT' spins the tragic tale of an upper-echelon gangster who is undermined by his competition and is destined for total failure, but not before he can answer his aggressors in a scene involving pot plants and handguns that will positively burn its way into your long- term memory.
`ABT', which was produced by Tsui Hark, stars the supremely charismatic Chow Yun-Fat, who has since re-teamed with Woo for four more flicks, two of which (`The Killer' and `Hard-Boiled') are also on display here.
What sets Woo's crime films apart, besides their highly detailed and meticulously executed action sequences, is their mythical spaghetti western qualities and the depth of characterisation afforded his protagonists. Unlike your average Hollywood-spawned crime character, to whom violence is a way of life, in John Woo's films it's inexorably driven home that for most of his characters, violence is life. This is nowhere more apparent than in his masterpiece, `Bullet In The Head', which deals with greed, friendship and the Vietnam war in a way that Oliver Stone can only dream about.
+ Hong Kong Hellraising starts today at the Valhalla Cinema, Northcote, and runs until 24 March.
© 1994 The Age