Jackie Chan - Standard Bearer: Little Big Soldier

best Mr. T impression:

"I pity the fool who want to limit Jackie Chan to being just some kung-fu clown!!"

Transposing action heroes aside, its no small compliment to say that Chan has definitely dispelled all such perceptions with this effort, for which he takes double credit as screenwriter and, one can be sure, a major influence on the final product.

Its just before the formative years of the Chinese empire, in a period where feudal lords are battling for supremacy and the idea of one nation is just that, an idea. In reality, harsh conflicts are taking place as the wait for that one overarching personality to unite/crush all parties emerges.

in the thick of that is the battle between Wei and Liang, a turning point of which is a bloody battle by a deserted, aggressively barren mountain pass that leaves everyone on both sides dead - well, almost. The survivor, a Wei general, is taken into captivity by an old, seemingly decrepit and useless Liang deserter (Chan) who aims to take the general back to the Liang side and claim a hefty reward.

Of ocurse, it doesn't quite work out that way, and the pair - through obstacles natural and man-made - become a kind of ancient Chinese version of Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in 48HRS.  Brought to the screen by Deng Shin (Police Story, Knight Underdog), the film had its own torturous journey, withstanding 20 years of development hell.


But now, its here, and its all worth it, at least to these eyes. Of course, there's a lot of intense combat, both armed and unarmed and there is more than enough of the kind of now classic "buffoon kung fu" that Chan - among others -  made famous. But Little Big Soldier has a lot on its mind, and pretty much all of it is worth sharing. In its genre-crossing path it raises some of the same issues raised  by the Jet Li character in Zhang Yimou's "Hero": courage, patriotism, loyalty to individual, nation and ideal, and the corrupting influence of power, but from a very different perspective.

Also intriguing are the many visual cues inserted - a tortoise lumbers across the screen the instant before soldier and general hobble along their way, and even more telling, the flag of one faction is held up in a most unusual and bloody way in the opening scene.

the flag motif becomes even more significant at the end, when the whole story unravels in a way that is initially unsatisfying but, on further reflection, quite natural.

Good though, to see Chan flying his own flag high as a visual storyteller

Testosterone Theatre: Lucky Number Slevin

A big bet gone wrong; A man brutally killed; a boy secretly spared; an average guy and a an average girl thrown together in New York City apartment.

What could commonly link these together? That's a big part of the fun that writer Jason Smilovic and director Paul McGuigan have in this unrepentantly bloody yet strangely high-spirited and even compassionate thriller that combines the usual cliches of revenge, murder, love and family in some very un-cliched ways.

Wrapped in a towel, Slevin (the wonderfully enigmatic Josh Hartnett, who has since faded into obscurity) encounters Lindsey (Lucy Liu), a chatty coroner whose eager to hear his story, as twisted as it is and later becomes. Slevin, it appears, is caught up in a bitter rivalry between two local crime bosses - the irascible Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and the worldly yet unforgiving - and laconically named - Boss. Throw in a disproportionately interested cop (the always excellent Stanley Tucci) and the shadowy yet sarcastic assassin hired by each boss to take out the other, and all is set for som hard-charging fun as the disparate threads are unravelled and re-tied.

Slevin is essentially a straight forward, neat black comedy of errors(mistaken identity for one). The dialogue is at times razor sharp and the action is well shot. The body count climbs steadily as the movie progresses at a cracking pace that never becomes dull. Slevin is thematically similar to a few other choice stories, but like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Slevin should be enjoyed more for the ride and the audience should try not to guess ahead of the plot and let it unfold naturally.