SPL - A Review
This isn’t really a blog update.. this is more of a fan’s tribute to one of HK’s better movie outings. Rather than post this up in the review section of Friendster.. I’d rather keep it simple..
SPL has been on nearly every other HK martial arts fan’s radar for nearly a year… there were claims of the return to the good old HK actions days of inventive fighting choreography, hardboiled and gritty plots and gun blazing aplenty, all made famous by the likes of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, John Woo and Chow Yun Fatt. The initial buzz was promising as well… the pairing up of the venerable large one of the former 3 Dragons of HK, Sammo Hung ( The other 2 being Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao) with veteran actor Simon Yam Tak Wah ( of The Mission fame) and martial arts superstar Donnie Yen seemed like a match made in martial arts cinema heaven. Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung are no strangers to international audience having strutted their kung fu in a number of American movies and series (Martial Law, Blade 2, Shanghai Knights etc.) and they’re even more of a legend in their own rights in their hometown of Hong Kong.
HK cinema was pretty much in a slump during the turn of the new century. Gone were the days of slick kung fu and HK wackiness to be replaced by a blowout of CGI-bloated, EEG pretty face farces. Although we were treated to classics like the character driven, minimalism of those Infernal Affairs movies as well as heart-wrenching art movies like In the Mood for Love, sadly things were never really the same. Jackie Chan tried to bring us back to the good old days with his EEG-laced New Police Story but there was a lack of cinema spark despite his best efforts.
Which brings us to the movie in question: SPL
SPL was picked to represent HK at the Toronto International Film Festival and there were whisperings of standing ovations and champagne bottle pops! around. So were the rumours true?
Were the buzzes and the initial positive thumbs-up all that it’s cracked up to be? Or were they just the ramblings of self-delusional HK cinema fans who needed to justify the purpose of their hope for the revival of HK martial arts cinema?
Thank the Gods… this movie rocks!
SPL refers to the 3 stars of Chinese Astrology that is represented by the 3 main actors. Collision with one another is meant to either create a good life with one another or open up a-huge-can-of-FUBAR (f**ked-up-beyond-all-recognition, incase u didn’t watch Tango & Cash :p). And since this is a HK action movie in the theme of gangster-vs-cops… thankfully it’s the latter. The story revolves around Simon Yam’s character, Detective Chan who’s got a huge grudge against crime boss Po (Sammo Hung). Basically 3 years ago, Detective Chan was responsible for the protection of a witness that would’ve indicted Po for his crimes. Being the resourceful crime boss that he is, Po instructs his top hitman Jet (played with sadistic flair by former wushu champion Wu Jing) to arrange an accident for the witness. As a result, both witness and his wife get killed leaving their daughter in the care of Detective Chan with a tumour in his brain. Cut the long story short.. Chan’s out for Po’s blood and he’s running out of time. Po’s not the forgiving one either as Chan keeps pissing him off for busting his balls every chance he’s got.
Cut to 3 years later… Chan’s grudge is still as strong as ever and he’s only got 3 more days to retirement. He makes a decision to cross a few lines to nail Po with his loyal men under his command. Enter Detective Ma (Donnie Yen), a righteous, committed, master kung fu cop who’s due to take over Chan’s unit. This put both cops at odds with one another due to their clashing methods. Basically, everyone’s got a grudge against someone and when u throw in 3 highly trained martial artists and a lot of morality-crossings… thing’s are gonna get messy.
Director Wilson Yip deals with the material well and he brings a stylish, noir-ish world to contrast well with the abundant ass-kicking going on. His subtle tactics are there with the greyer-than-grey characterisation that he’s famous for.. where the cops are bad-asses but still righteously cool, where the bad guys are brutal but still human. This is punctuated even more by the score of the movie which indicates that when things go down.. they do so with blairing french horns.
Then there’s the action which is where SPL remains undefeated so far in the year. The fighting sequences are fast but intensely brutal with enough body-slamming and bone-crunching to satiate any martial arts fan’s appetite. The knife-vs-baton fighting sequence between Donnie Yen and Wu Jing hands-down are the highlight of the movie. It feels less like a choreographed sequence and more like 2 masters really going at it at each other. Both are observing each other’s moves and responding accordingly. Rumour has it that Director Wilson Yip told both stars to just go at it instead of meticulously choreographing the whole thing.
The fight between Sammo Hung and Donnie Yen proves that both men are still in top form. While belief should be suspended for some of the sequences, this should hardly hurt the movie which so far delivers something those Matrix movies couldn’t.. hardcore, brutal, believable(almost) and inventive action sequences. Not since the classic Iron Monkey (or if you must… Ong Bak) has there been such an enthralling mixture of martial arts moves. This is a movie where the main stars are the real deal, authentic martial artists and not CGI and wire-enhanced fakes that truly contributes to the realness of the fighting sequences.
While not a perfect movie, it certainly deserves a place on every martial arts fan’s top 15 movie list. We don’t get many movies like this anymore and it might be a while before we get another one. So my suggestion? Enjoy this movie to it’s fullest because it’s all we’ve got for now.
4 1/2 out of 5 stars. :D
