The Tuxedo (2002)

 "The name's Tong, James Tong."

So I know I'm not blogging much this past fortnight while I'm in full on dad mode and focussing fully on Little Miss Llamastrangler- back to normal sort of schedule from Monday or thereabouts. But last night I happened to see this Jackie Chan film, pleasingly undemanding to my mind which this week is perhaps less prone to being a pretentious git than usual.

This is basically a comedy-cum-action thing where Jackie Chan does his comedy thing of playing an ostensibly hapless protagonist but having a pretext- in this case, basically a magic tuxedo that confers awrsome martial arts abilities on its subject by means of fancy CGI nanobots- and there's basically an action story riffing loosely off James Bond tropes, with a bit of sparks with Jennifer Love Hewitt's Del Blaine which inevitably ends in them getting together.

In short, this is a by-the-book action film of its time, entertaining enough with its CGI insects and James Brown cameo. I enjoyed it... but, well, as action films of the period go, it's fairly anonymous. Interestring, though, to see Chan for the first time in his later, Hollywood iteration.

But what's more interesting, perhaps, is that this film was made just two decades ago... and these sorts of generic, original action films marketed via a star rather than being a sequel or using existing IP are sort of, well, dead.

Drunken Master (1978)

 "Fart for the stick king..."th century

Today's film is brought to you, appropriately, with four pints of Bishop's Finger. Perhaps it should have been Chinese wine. 

By this point I've seen a few kung fu films, and this is my second Jackie Chan film after Snake in Eagle's Shadow last week. This film is, on reflection, my favourite. Better than any Bruce Lee film I've seen (follow the tags), or indeed The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

I've praised Jackie Chan before, and  shall praise him again, His martial arts skills are awe-inspiring even to a layman such as myself, yet his physical comedy skills ae extraordinary, beyond anyone else in the sound era and comparable to Buster Keaton.

Chan plays Wong Fei-Hung, a folk hero and historical figure, a mischievous kind of late 19th century Robin Hood archetype, while the wonderful Siu-Rin Yuen plays Beggar So, who apparently appears as a Yoda figure in a number of mainly '70s and '80s kung fu films. The film is, despite being a comedy (and rather a good one), a serious kung fu fulm as far as the various styles are concerned, although it perpetuates the myth that the drunken style lierally involves the consumption of significant quantities of booze. This is false; only blogging it does.

i enjoyed this film hugely, both as a comedy and a kung fu film. I'm also beginning to recognise individual actors, and Siu-Rin Yuen is magnificent. This is an unmissable masterpiece of the genre.

Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (1978)

 "I'll need new socks!"

Last week I watched and blogged The Mystery of Chess Boxing, a '70s Hong Kong kung fu film. It was, in a word, pants- just not very well made at all. This film, happily, is an example of the genre done well.

The plot is, broadly, similar, yet the direction is from another planet- stylish, crisp and, importantly, manages to clearly tell the story visually in a way the other film utterly fails to do.

Like The Mystery of Chess Boxing, this is a kung fu film full of lots of action but also a great deal of physical comedy, with the hero a bullied underdog- and, yes, both films have a touch of the old "bullying is character-building" nonsense- but the difference in quality is enormous. The kung fu, it's been pointed out to me, genuinely is in the various different styles this time. And here we have plenty of extended scenes of comical kung fu-themed slapstick, but this time done not ony with impressive skills but also real comic timing. Certain sequences in this film remind me of Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd. The physical comedy is that good.

It helps, of course, that the film stars Jackie Chan, whom I've somehow contrived to avoid encountering before after blogging more than 700 films over the last ten years. He's awesome not only in terms of the acting and kung fu but also in terms of comic timing- you can see how this film launched him in a successful niche of kung fu films with a fair dollop of comedy. Yet the comic acting is strong throughout the whole cast, as is the kung fu.

I enjoyed this a lot. All as part of a balanced diet, of course, but I see more Jackie Chan and more Hong Kong kung fu in my none-too-distant future.