Well Go USA
presents
Eastern Bandits / Pi fu
Directed by Shu-peng Yang
China, 2012, 107 minutes
Eastern Bandits is an action/drama set in China in the 1930s, It debuts on Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital today, Tuesday, May 27th, from Well Go USA Entertainment.
Gao (Zhang Yi) is a resistance fighter against the Japanese occupiers of China. After a failed mission in Taiping, in which he was the only survivor, he is captured by a gang of bandits led by Fang Youwang ((Huang Xiaoming), who operate out of a vast underground labyrinth. Fortunately, Fang's sister Jen (Zhang Xinyi) falls for Gao, thereby saving his life and ultimately enabling him to enlist the gang in a a mission to capture or assassinate a Japanese prince who is coming to visit the nearby base of the Japanese expeditionary army.
The film uses a bookend structure. It begins with the mission against the Japanese prince in progress, then the bulk of it is devoted to telling the story of how things came to that point. The film then returns to its beginning and plays things out to their conclusion.
The film may have played well to Mainland Chinese audiences, where strong anti-Japanese feelings from the occupation during the 1930s and '40s linger and are fanned by the Communist leadership. One can well imagine the positive feelings engendered when one of the bandits, facing imminent death, screams out "To Hell with Japs!"
Unfortunately, the film suffers from some significant weaknesses:
-- There's such preposterous nonsense as a character chewing off three of his fingers to obtain the release of three captives.
-- A prisoner is freed from his cell on the second floor of the jail where he's held by his compatriots pulling out the window bars. The next thing, he's just riding away. The scene calls for showing how he gets down from this height, but that would have involved some thinking that the filmmakers weren't prepared to engage in, or maybe they just didn't have the time, money or talent for a decent stunt.
-- Similarly, the bandits dig a tunnel from their hideout to the Japanese military base, but there's nothing to indicate that they were anywhere near close enough to accomplish such a feat. It's just what's done because that's what the story needs at that point.
-- And there's the inconsistency of the bandits acknowledging at a certain point that they can't enter the base a certain way, then they somehow and someway enter it exactly that way, totally abandoning their stated plan with no explanation.
As far as the "action" of the film goes, I have to say that I found it rather limited and only so-so in execution.
On the other hand, I will admit that some of the comic elements do come across, which is typically no mean feat when it comes to Chinese humor. The comedy may not be hysterical, but what's intended to be funny pretty much does come across as such.
The only soundtrack on the disc is the original Mandarin; easy-to-read English subtitles are available.
"Extra" features are limited to the trailer for the film and for some other Well Go USA offerings.
AsianCineFest Rating: 2 out of 4 stars, mediocre. Eastern Bandits is not bad or terrible, but it really doesn't have much good going for it either. Call it fair-to-middling.
