ACF 1540: DRAGON at NYAFF

Dragon / Wu Xia

Directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan

Hong Kong/China, 2011, 98 minutes

Starring Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tang Wei

When: Monday, July 9, 2012 at 7:45 pm

Donnie Yen will receive the Star Asia Award before the screening

Where: New York Asian Film Festival

The Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street, New York, NY

Map here

This screening is currently sold out. Visit the venue’s box office

on the day of the screening for any available tickets.

Prior to the start of this year's New York Asian Film Festival, I attended the press screening of Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s 2011 film Dragon (a.k.a. Wu Xia). The film stars Donnie Yen (Hero; Seven Swords; Kill Zone; both Ip Man films, etc.) He plays Liu Jinxi, a papermaker and seemingly run-of-the-mill fellow. He’s married to lovely Ayu (Tang Wei, Late Autumn; Crossing Hennessey; and Lust,Caution). They have two boys: the older is Ayu’s from her previous husband, who abandoned her and the child, the younger one is her’s and Jinxi’s. They live in a small, remote village in Yunnan in southwest China.

Their life of peaceful anonymity and marital bliss goes all to hell one day in 1917 when two thugs come into a village store and demand money. When the shopkeeper tries to resist, the pair go ballistic on him and everyone else in the store. Initially cowering behind a cabinet, Jinxi emerges and wraps his arms around the larger would-be-robber. Holding on for dear life, he is flung around the store and ultimately winds up in a river. But it’s the two robbers who somehow end up dead. When it turns out that one of them was a top wanted criminal, Jinxi becomes somewhat of a celebrity and is commended for his role in bringing the pair to justice, though he claims that he was just lucky.

Inspector Xu Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro, Chungking Express, House of Flying Daggers, the two-part Red Cliff movie) is unconvinced. With his glasses and straw hit, he displays Sherlock Holmes-like investigative abilities, including that of recreating exactly what happened by carefully examining the evidence and the testimony of those involved. Having made the mistake of going easy on a young criminal in the past, a mistake that cost innocent people their lives, Baijiu is fanatical about enforcing the letter of the law. He doggedly pursues Jinxi, not believing his account of what transpired with the two crooks and convinced that he is hiding something from his background. As a result Ayu comes to question everything she thought she knew about her husband, and the lives of Jinxi, his family, Baijiu and all the villagers are threatened by a group known as the 72 Demons, led by Jimmy Wang Yu, star of the legendary Shaw Brothers film The One-Armed Swordsman (1967).

Truth be told, there were times during the screening when I almost thought maybe I was watching a Quentin Tarantino film, because Dragon alludes to so many other movies. The revealing of the surprising past of a seemingly ordinary family man is reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. Baijiu, as I’ve already indicated, comes across much like an early 20th Century Chinese Sherlock Holmes. There are visual flourishes of the body’s inner workings similar to goings on in Andrzej Bartkowiak’s Romeo Must Die. And besides the presence of Jimmy Wang Yu, who is absolutely fantastic here, there is, suffice it to say, another nod to The One-Armed Swordsman.

This is in no way to cast any pallor on Chan’s film. I loved the allusions (at least those that I believe I caught), but it won’t diminish your enjoyment of Dragon if you have no familiarity with any of the other movies alluded to.

Director Chan (The Warlords) has crafted a fabulous tale that features terrific martial arts. (Yen, besides starring, was also the action director). Dragon also offers compelling family drama and intriguing criminal investigative techniques. Underlying it all is the question — and it’s a big one that’s given serious and due weight here — of whether or not one can achieve redemption, atone for past mistakes, sins and crimes. I give it 3.5 out of 4 stars; very highly recommended.

According to the wonderful folk of Subway Cinema (who, along with the Film Society of Lincoln Center) present New York Asian Film Festival: “This version of Dragon runs 98 minutes, 12 minutes shorter than the Hong Kong cut. Director Peter Chan tightened up the movie after its Asian release and that’s the only version he’s made available to North American distributors.”

As I indicated in the info at the top of this post, Mr. Yen will receive the Star Asia Award before the screening of Dragon on Monday, July 9 at 7:45 pm. Today, Sunday, July 8 at 5:15 pm, he will engage in an onstage chat about his career after the screening of Kill Zone (a.k.a. SPL), in which he also stars. Tickets for Kill Zone are also sold out. You can visit the venue’s box office on the day of the screening for any available tickets.

For information about Dragon and the other films and special events of this years New York Asian Film Festival, click here.

[This post originally appeared in somewhat different form at VCinema.

ACF 545: K-20 available today on DVD

K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces
(K-20: Kaijin niju menso den)
Written and Directed by Shimako Sato
Japan, 2008, 137 min.

K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces comes out today in a single disc DVD edition from VIZ Pictures. It has an MSRP of $24.92 U.S. / $35.99 CAN. Based on the novel Kaijin Niju menso den by Soh Kitamura and set in 1949, the story employs an alternate history motif in which the Japan never attacked Pearl Harbor and engaged in war with the United States. The island nation has an extremely rigid, hereditary class system with almost all the wealth held by a small aristocracy.

In the imperial capital of Teito, a phantom thief known as "K-20," or the "Fiend (Kaijin) with 20 Faces," steals priceless objects from the rich. However, unlike Robin Hood, he does not give to the poor, but keeps his trove to himself.

Takeshi Kaneshiro stars not as K-20, but as Heikichi, a circus acrobat and illusionist. The title character actually appears very little in the film. He does set up Endo to be mistakenly identified and arrested as K-20, and the movie is thus about Endo's efforts to prove that he's not the master thief.

Endo's nemesis is detective Kogoro Akechi (Toru Nakumura), who is also a baron and thus a member of the nobility. Romantic interest for the two male leads is supplied by lovely Takako Matsu as Duchess Yolko Hashiba, the heir to Hashiba Industries.

The film has a beautiful Steampunk look that could have gone murky in the transfer to DVD. Thankfully it hasn't, as VIZ Pictures has done an outstanding job in maintaining detail in the many shadowy scenes. Writer/director Sato has done a masterful job moving things along and providing great action sequences. This is the first film I can recall seeing in which Kaneshiro (Chungking Express, House of Flying Daggers, and most recently John Woo's Red Cliff) carries the film as the dominant male lead, and he's more than equal to the task.

The DVD doesn't have much in the way of extras, just the original and the English trailers and some trailers from other VIZ films. But don't let that dissuade you from buying this release.

K-20 is terrific entrainment, and gets an ACF rating of 3.5 out of 4 stars, very highly recommended.

ACF 534: K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces coming on DVD on April 20th

VIZ PICTURES BRINGS THE HIGH FLYING ACTION OF

K-20: THE FIEND WITH TWENTY FACES TO DVD

Suspense And Intrigue Combine With Stunning Visual Effects And Gravity-Defying Stunts For A Riveting Adventure About A Phantom Thief

VIZ Pictures will release the action film K-20: The Fiend with Twenty Faces on DVD on April 20th. The film will carry an MSRP of $24.92 U.S. / $35.99 CAN, and will be distributed exclusively across North America by VIZ Media. The move played at last summer's New York Asian Film Festival and was very popular.

Director Shimako Sato assembled a strong cast and used cutting edge special effects to bring K-20 to life. The movie is set in the fictional city of Teito in the late 1940s, in a world where World War II never happened and the nobility system established during the Meiji Era still exists. An extreme divide exists between the upper and lower classes, with 90 percent of the country’s wealth being held by the upper class. The capital of Teito is in crisis with the emergence of a menacing phantom thief known as "The Fiend (Kaijin) With Twenty Faces" or simply "K-20." The film is based on The Story of Nijyumenso, a novel written by Soh Kitamura, and also features the mesmerizing theme song, Shock of the Lightning, by the British band OASIS.

Heikichi Endo (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro) is a circus acrobat who is deceived by K-20 and framed to take the fall for the phantom thief. Using his incredible physical dexterity, Heikichi wages war against K-20 in order to clear his name and fights alongside K-20's next wealthy target, Duchess Yoko Hashiba (Takako Matsu) and her fiancée, the brilliant detective Kogoro Akechi (Toru Nakamura). But what is the ultimate decision Heikichi has to make?

Actor Takeshi Kaneshiro is internationally renowned and made his screen debut in the film Executioners (1993) followed by the critically acclaimed Wong Kar-Wai film Chungking Express (1994). More recently he has starred in films including Wong's House of Flying Daggers (2004) and John Woo's The Battle of Red Cliff (2008).

To celebrate this new release, VIZ Pictures has also announced a special theatrical screening of K-20 at VIZ Cinema in San Francisco on April 20th at 7:00pm. Tickets are $25.00 and also will include a copy of the DVD, a K-20 poster and more! VIZ Cinema is located at: 1746 Post St., San Francisco, CA 94115. Tickets are available at the box office and online at www.vizcinema.com.

“The character of K-20 was originally born in the best-selling 26-volume Boy Detectives series, written by Japanese literary master Rampo Edogawa, and over the years the stories have been enjoyed by more than 100 million people,” says Seiji Horibuchi, President and CEO of VIZ Pictures. “The inspired film uses a potent mix of eye-catching visual effects and gravity-defying high wire stunts to bring the unique story to the screen with incredible results. We look forward to fans discovering this thrilling new action feature from VIZ Pictures.”

For more information on K-20: The Fiend with Twenty Faces or other VIZ Pictures titles, please visit http://www.viz-pictures.com/.