Seen: June 10th, 2007
Format: DVD
Rating: 7
Somewhere festering in me is a rant that I keep meaning to write. Basically, it's about how I'm sick and tired of Hollywood taking good foreign films and remaking them for the American Mass Audience. Maybe I'm just a film snob.
But this isn't that rant. Yet.
Martin Scorsese finally won his Oscar for The Departed, which I really enjoyed. It's a remake of this film. When I found out, I had to see it. Unfortunately, this review will be heavily colored by that.
I was more than a little surprised. Unlike some other remakes, there was some serious modifications from this film to the American version. In retrospect, this is a good thing. Though the films share the same plot and the fundamental differences, they're very different in many aspects.
If you don't like Hong Kong action films, simply move along. This is very much part of that tradition. And within that tradition it's a good film, even a very good film. Perhaps I was jaded by my continual comparisons, but it's not one of the best I've seen.
This film tradition is deeply rooting in the Peking Opera. Characters are simple and fairly broad. They tend to represent types and not individual people. Their battles are the battles have been found a million times and are fundamental to the culture.
There is tragedy here. There is heroism. There is evil. There is even some redemption. There is some comedy and some ironic coincidence. All of this is played out a fairly simple stage.
While the plot is a bit convoluted, it's all laid bare for us in the first few minutes of the film. The exposition is clear and swift. The characters are introduced, explained and codified, drawing clear the lines which divide them.
Once the stage has been set, the story plays out. While it has it's own flavor and character, it's one that we're seen many times before. It's a good story, a solid one, but nothing particularly new in the grand scheme.
One thing that does set it a bit apart is the volume of violence. It's not as prevalent in some films. This seems to be an attempt to create tension. By moving slowly toward the conflicts and resolving some of them without bloodshed, it seems that film makers are trying to amp us up for the conflict that we know must eventually come.
Unfortunately here is where tradition fails a bit. By exposing all (OK, most) of the characters and their motivations so early in the film, there's little to really reveal as the film progresses. We really don't learn much as things progress. Things happen, but the story itself doesn't seem to progress.
Perhaps this too is part of the tradition and one I have yet to learn to appreciate.
Overall I like this film. See it if you're a fan of this genre or if you liked Scorsese's film.
The Good: Dedication
The Bad: Learning where you really stand.
The Ugly: Living someone else's life
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