The Iceman Cometh
(Ji dong ji xia, 1989)

Clarence Fok

Hong Kong

114 min, color, Cantonese (English subtitles)

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

This is one of those typical Hong Kong films that would have benefited from having a script continuity girl on the set. As it is, about a third of the actors appear in about a third of the film with nary an inkling of how their scenes relate to the overall plot. They come and go adding almost nothing to the story but severely obstructing the comprehension of this reviewer. This is not meant to be a blanket criticism (since I can see some point in the scene with the Communist scientists even if what it says has nothing to do with the film itself) but to just wish the film-makers spent more than a passing thought on the storyline.

Underwater rape much harder than it looks	I got this on sale at Buddha-Mart!

The film itself cannot decide what it wants to be. It is clearly a comedy. But then again it also has the trappings of a romantic comedy/drama. Then there's some class commentary with some political points to be scored. But it is also clearly a martial arts film that is not going to take itself too seriously. Which is weird, of course, because despite the romantic comedy angle, the film is too brutal to be fit for light-hearted entertainment. On one hand, there's the delightful scene in which Maggie Cheung (who plays the prostitute Polla) pretends to be sadistically raped by a fat client. Even though she was "forced" to do this particular job by her acid-wielding pimp (Tai Po), she is obviously in no danger and no pain. In fact, she is positively bored and quite funny to watch as she rolls her eyes and fakes screams as the sweating client pummels the back seat of the car next to her.

Yuen Biao is Royal Guard	The cool snow fight scene

The scene is great and works just as intended, making Yuen Biao's knightly rescue of a damsel in supposed distress all the more funny. But contrast this with the brutal rape sequence in which the evil Fung San (played by the perennially menacing Yuen Wah) tortures his boss's wife (Lam Siu-Lau), breaks her arm, kills her, and then rapes her, shooting her husband in the process. At the end of the scene, the camera is on the floor next to the car behind an open door and we can just see the area between the floor and the lower edge of the door. When the dead woman is thrown out of the car, she falls right in front of the camera, flapping like a broken rag doll, her head jerks toward the lens and she stares at the viewer with unseeing eyes. This is one of the most disturbing scenes I have seen, and its mood is at odds with the rest of the film.

Clarence Ford knows his weird angles	Marxist scientists with Maoist tendencies

Now, it may be said that there is a point to it: show just how despicable Fung San is. But this is overkill, and we already know that full well. The film opens with a scene set at the end of the Ming Dynasty when he tortures, kills (by drowning), and rapes the Princess (Lai Yin Saan). In fact, it is precisely this event that sets up the entire plot because Yuen Biao is dispatched by the Emperor (Anthony Wong) to hunt down Fung San and destroy him. Yuen Biao plays Fong Sau-Ching, an imperial guard who also happens to have studied under the same sifu as Fung San, so they are something like brothers. Sau-Ching must not only fulfill his obligations as a royal guardsman, but also redeem his personal honor that is inextricably bound with his sifu's teachings (the sifu, played by Walter Tso Tat-Wah, is himself betrayed and kill by his wayward pupil). So we know Fung San is one bad apple. If he had any doubts, he tells us so himself: "I love killing and raping women!" (in that sequence, apparently) he proclaims.

Sadistic rape fantasy fun	'Desperate Housewives' is on, huangmei opera style

So there's nothing that the rape scene will add to our understanding of the character. But this is Hong Kong, and a romantic comedy can, and often does, go hand in hand with unsettling action. Witness, for example, the beating and rape of Joey Wang in A Hearty Response or the abuse of Wu Chien-Lien in Treasure Hunt, to name just two. These are things that will never ever see anything but the floor of the cutting room in Hollywood, and methinks there's a good reason for that. As they are, these scenes make the film a lot uglier than its subject matter can justify.

My feelings exactly	Extreme sight-seeing

And the subject matter is simple: Yuen Biao travels into the future in pursuit of his nemesis, and they both arrive in modern China (after an uber-cool duel in the snow). Both are frozen solid when they are discovered by communist scientists who take their death embrace to be proof that homosexuality existed even centuries back. (As if looking at Greek vases would not have clued them in.) Then we are treated to an extended scene in which the scientists plot to defect to the West by engaging in a double entendre: they will tell the Party that they need Western technology to defrost the find but that in fact this would be a cover for spying for the motherland, while in fact they will then defect not caring a hoot about either. After this bit of anti-communist propaganda (the plotters work in full view of portraits of Lenin and Marx, among others), the scientists are never heard of again. And neither are the luckless thieves who break up the crates and accidentally defrost the bodies. Why did we have to watch them for interminable minutes is beyond me.

Totally unnecessary murder/rape sequence	Cool shot of Maggie Cheung

But then the film finally takes off with Yuen Biao being perpetually confused much more than a couple of centuries of time differential would allow. He is amazed at the light switch, the telephone, the kettle, the TV set (and for some reason takes a while to leap out of the way of a speeding car) but cannot wrap his mind around Maggie Cheung's quite transparent ploy. Just how long one will fail to realize that she is a prostitute, I don't know. At any rate, there are some genuinely funny sequences as she "teaches" him some modern life basics and then employs him as a house servant. Inevitably, we know, these two will fall in love.

Your biceps are so... gay!	This Jeep - like a rock!

So much time is spent on the couple that when Yuen Wah reappears, it's quite shocking. Some implausible coincidences later, he winds up, predictably, with Maggie. The light-hearted scene quickly turns ugly as it goes from Maggie being playful and coy to her weeping in the bathtub with a broken arm. Of course, it is at this point that Yuen Biao has decided to ignore her and it is not until he realizes just whose clutches she's in that he rushes to her rescue. The ensuing fights are pretty impressive, mostly because Yuen Wah gets to leap (for real) from a jeep suspended on a crane.

A Bedpan Story	Chinese Women Lib: smoking permitted while operating heavy buckets

Then we're back to comedy mode as Maggie and Biao have a lover's spat and Maggie gets to abuse a policeman, and then we're back to martial arts for the explosive sequence of the final confrontation. I was actually quite happy to see Maggie Cheung play a role that many "respectable" actresses would not have touched. She is quite convincing as the low-class prostitute, and the full range of her talents is in evidence from the fake rape scene, to her interaction with Biao, the sudden shifts in mood with Wah, and the excellent scene with the police officer (the one where she bangs her shoe on the desk). She lights up the entire film and makes it more than the forgettable action flick it would have otherwise been.

This thug only uses organic bullets	Not to be confused with Highlander on the roof

There is, of course, the obligatory "reform of the bad woman," which in Chinese films inevitably means falling in love with a man and becoming domesticated. Maggie does precisely that as if the only way to become a respectable woman (as opposed to a prostitute) is to wash floors, do laundry, cook for a guy, or lug around huge buckets. I could have taken this as her attempt to represent herself as a good woman by Sau-Ching's outmoded definition of what it means but then again I know better. In fact, Wing Chun leads to absolutely the same conclusion, as does the modern She Shoots Straight, where the affirmation must come from the heroine being pregnant with the guy's son because the guy gets himself killed too early. The film obviously cannot resist rewarding the heroine too even though Sau-Ching is gone back to his past: a reincarnated Sau-Ching pops up only to be mobbed by the happy Polla much to his confusion (but we know it will turn out just fine).

I will scratch your sword if you scratch mine	Perrier Commercial Gone Bad

The Hong Kong Legends DVD replaced the awful HK release I used to have. It presents the film in anamorphic widescreen at 1.85:1 OAR, and the transfer is excellent. I watched the film with the Cantonese soundtrack and the optional English subtitles and have no complaints about either. (The disc includes the original mono as well as a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix, as well as the 5.1 English dub.) Among the very cool extras are interviews with Yuen Biao and Yuen Wah in which they reminisce about the making of the film and shooting action films in general. There is a feature length audio commentary with Bey Logan but as usual I did not bother.

December 29, 2006