The Monkey King 2 (西游记之孙悟空三打白骨精)

For F*** Magazine

THE MONKEY KING 2  (西游记之孙悟空三打白骨精)

Director : Soi Cheang Pou-soi
Cast : Aaron Kwok, Gong Li, Feng Shaofeng, Xiao Shenyang, Him Law, Kelly Chen, Kris Phillips
Genre : Action/Fantasy
Run Time : 119 mins
Opens : 5 February 2016
Rating : PG13 (Brief Nudity)

Sun Wukong broke Chinese New Year box office records two years ago in 2014’s The Monkey King, but in-universe, 500 years have elapsed since he wreaked havoc in the heavens. The deity Guan Yin (Chen) charges Wukong (Kwok) with protecting the monk Tang Sanzang (Feng) on his voyage to retrieve ancient scriptures from a faraway monastery. Wukong is initially reluctant, and finds that he is duty-bound to guard Sanzang, “shackled” by a tiara that grips his head. Along the way, Wukong and Sanzang are joined by Zhu Bajie (Xiaoshenyang), a pig-man with a weakness for beautiful women, and Sha Wujing (Law), a strong, blue-skinned warrior. Sanzang is being pursued by Baiguzing (Gong), a demon who believes that consuming Sanzang’s flesh will grant her immortality. Our band of travellers must defeat deception, supernatural threats and overcome their own in-fighting if they’re to reach their goal.

            Wu Cheng’en’s 16^th Century classic Journey to the West is comprised of 100 chapters. The first seven chapters were the basis for the 2014 film and the titular “journey” begins proper in this sequel. The Monkey King 2 is an improvement over its predecessor in that while it lacks coherence and trades in overblown bombast, it’s nowhere near as cringe-worthy as the 2014 movie. For one thing, the visual effects work has improved and the opening sequence in which Wukong blasts his way out of his mountain prison while fighting a white tiger kicks the film off on the right footing. Because more of the story takes place on an earthly plane than the “Havoc in the Heavens” of the first one, the environments are altogether less phony, with a portion of the film shot on location in New Zealand. Some of the computer-generated creatures and effects are passable if not great, but the horde of reanimated skeletons that Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing must fend off looks like they stepped out of a PlayStation 2 cutscene. It pales in comparison to the similar sequence in Jason and the Argonauts, released some 53 years ago.

            Kwok played the villainous Bull Demon King in the first film and takes over as Sun Wukong from Donnie Yen. It’s slightly odd, like if the new series of Sherlock suddenly starred Andrew Scott as Sherlock Holmes. Kwok does a fine job and even though he doesn’t have the same martial arts background as Yen, Wukong engages in a whole bunch more fighting in this one. Sammo Hung serves as the action director and for the most part, the wire-fu is neatly executed. Kwok’s take on the character is more bearable, mostly because Wukong does less wanton harassment at this point in the story.

            Gong has played many a femme fatale in her time and calls on those wiles as Baigujing. It’s not an inspired performance by any stretch of the imagination, but it works. This version gives Baigujing three sexy minions, a bat lady, a snake lady and a hyena lady. They all hang out in a lair which has the same interior designer as Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Similarly, the characterisations of Tang Sanzang, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing are pretty much how they’ve been portrayed in decades of film and TV shows. Sanzang is idealistic, well-meaning and naïve to the point of stupidity, Zhu Bajie is the comic relief and Sha Wujing is the dumb muscle. Sha Wujing is typically portrayed as just a burly dude, but is given more of an other-worldly appearance, with blue skin and bulging muscles.

            The Monkey King 2 has its entertaining moments and it doesn’t stray too far from the source material, but there’s a noticeable lull in the middle and several action sequences go on for too long without sufficiently advancing the plot. The visual effects are surprisingly competent in spots, but a significant lack of polish on the whole is still evident. An emotional sequence at the film’s conclusion is melodramatic and there’s the sense that this would-be tearful moment is not earned. It’s better than the 2014 movie, but then again, most things are.

Summary: The Monkey King 2 is an improvement on its predecessor and packs in a healthy amount of action, but the quality of the visual effects work is a very mixed bag and it’s still quite the mess overall.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

SPL 2: A Time For Consequences (杀破狼II)

For F*** Magazine

SPL 2: A TIME FOR CONSEQUENCES (杀破狼II)

Director : Soi Cheang

Cast : Tony Jaa, Louis Koo, Wu Jing, Simon Yam, Zhang Jin, Philip Keung, Ken Lo

Genre : Action/Thriller

Run Time : 120 mins

Opens : 2 July 2015

Rating : NC-16 (Violence and Drug Use)

Tony Jaa has no more time for elephants, only a time for consequences in this Hong Kong-Thai action thriller. Jaa plays Chai, a prison guard whose young daughter Sa is battling leukaemia. An unlikely new prisoner lands in the jail where Chai works: Hong Kong undercover cop Kit (Wu), who has had his cover blown while on the trail of organ trafficking ring kingpin Mr. Hung (Koo). Mr. Hung, himself terminally ill, is in Thailand for a heart transplant to save his life, forcing his younger brother (Jun Kung) to be the donor. Kit’s supervisor and uncle Wah (Yam) tracks his nephew down and travels to Thailand to retrieve him. It turns out that Kit is the only bone marrow match for Sa, so Kit and Chai must become unlikely partners to save their own lives and the life of little Sa as fists and bullets fly.

            SPL 2 is rather confusingly named – it is almost completely unrelated to the 2005 film SPL, starring Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung, even though both Simon Yam and Wu Jing were in the earlier movie too. This is a “spiritual sequel”, i.e. some other script with the “SPL” name slapped onto it. The film’s grammatically-impaired English tagline is “Real action. Real fight.” There are fights aplenty and action director Li Chung Chi choreographs some intense battles, including a shootout at a ferry terminal and a stylish climactic showdown in a pristine high-end medical facility. It is also a boon that Tony Jaa, Wu Jing and Zhang Jin are all highly skilled martial artists in their own right and are able to perform their own fights. Those looking purely for “real fight”, however, will probably come away slightly disappointed at the usage of stylised wirework for several of the sequences.

            While it contains enough fisticuffs to satiate action junkies, SPL 2 is burdened with an unexpectedly convoluted, labyrinth story. A key plot device is that of a terminally ill little girl and the search for a bone marrow donor – this seems more at home in a soap opera than in a martial arts flick. The plot has to straddle both Hong Kong and Thailand and this is often done quite clumsily. It seems as if screenwriter Jill Leung Lai-yin was tasked with finding a way to work Jaa into the story and ended up spinning a far knottier yarn that was needed. This is a film in which the two protagonists do not speak the same language, and have to communicate via smart phone translator app. If that doesn’t drive a wedge in the buddy chemistry, we have no idea what will.

            Tony Jaa is very likeable as an action hero and is experiencing something of a career resurgence after completing his stint as a Buddhist monk, making inroads into Hollywood with Fast and Furious 7 and the Dolph Lundgren-starrer Skin Trade. He has the earnestness and intensity down pat but of course, it’s his impressive Muay Thai-trained athleticism that makes more of an impact than anything else. Wu Jing comes from a different martial arts training background and they do complement each other, even though their partnership never feels complete because of the invisible cultural/language barrier that’s always there. Rocking a waistcoat, Zhang Jin is slick and dangerous as the prison warden and main henchman to Mr. Hung. Louis Koo puts aside his usual handsome, healthy appearance as the sickly master criminal; his portrayal sinister but never wholly threatening.

            Instead of having a little fun and being truly inventive with the action sequences, SPL 2 takes itself far too seriously – the faux-portentous subtitle “A Time for Consequences” should have been indication enough. Instead of being gritty and hard-hitting, the film is often frustratingly maudlin, melodramatic and hard to follow. The cliché use of very recognisable pieces of classical music in an attempt to elicit pathos, including Mozart’s Requiem and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Summer), further mires the film in unintentional hilarity. The filmmakers clearly had access to the resources and talent to make a truly entertaining, breath-taking martial arts extravaganza, but have instead tangled themselves up in too much plot.

Summary: Even though it contains a fair amount of neatly-choreographed action, SPL 2 is slow, difficult to follow and fails to deliver a cohesive team-up between Thai action star Tony Jaa and Hong Kong action star Wu Jing.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong