01-03-2015, 05:36 PM
Tsui Hark’s latest vehicle is a very loose retelling of the Tiger Mountain legend, which communist China has largely poached for their own propaganda needs. As such, the PLA soldiers (communists) are the heroes, greatly outnumbered in their battle against mountain bandits. Caught in the middle are the villagers.
The movie employs a modern-day framing device that is so corny that you can see its ears and tassels (trust me; this bad metaphor is entirely justified). I will pretend the framing device does not exist for the remainder of this review.
Zhang Hanyu plays Yang, the rogue go-it-alone PLA soldier bent on infiltrating the Tiger Mountain fortress to weaken it from within. Tony Leung Ka Fai plays the evil ruler of Tiger Mountain, Lord Hawk, with cartoonish abandon. Brian Eno does a respectable job playing Tiger Mountain itself, though there are moments when you can see him breathe.
To fully justify the use of “tiger” in the title, Yang battles a gigantic CGI Siberian tiger (of zero mass) for a good ten minutes -- decent enough entertainment if totally implausible, as a tiger fight should begin and end with “pounce.” Yang’s tiger conquest gets him into the fortress, where he meets the grotesquely hawkish Lord Hawk who has a pet hawk on his shoulder. Yang also makes the acquaintance of an abducted village woman -- played by the ever alluring Yu Nan (seen in Expendables II) -- who has become Lord Hawk’s sex slave. Half-crazed, Yu Nan tries to kill Yang until he reveals he is working undercover and is on her side.
The PLA soldiers, while waiting to begin their assault on Tiger Mountain, engage in a few squirmishes with bandits. These battles take place in China’s famous Mystery Spot, where soldiers can ski forever downhill while firing machine guns and end up back where they started.
Court intrigue abounds in the fortress as time and again Yang is nearly found out. Yu Nan keeps changing costumes and guises for eye candy, and her puffy lips forever beckon in a lurid tour de face.
I neglected to mention the existence of two maps of the mountainous region. When combined, they show where large numbers of recruits are hiding out -- or at least that’s my take on it. This split-apart object of value seems an obsession with the Chinese -- as if they harbor a fear that their ying-yang symbol might someday fly apart with catastrophic consequences. Whatever the reason, their arts are littered with split-apart medallions, coins, weapons, secret texts, paintings, or in this case a meaningful map, all needing to be found and made whole again.
But while this “map” trope is introduced early on as important, it seems to get lost along the way. So let’s just ignore its import.
Which brings us back to Yu Nan, who frustrates the viewer to no end, because her painted Hindenburg lips can never quite find a proper mooring mast upon which to combust (Yang proves too goody-goody), leaving her to drift aimlessly about in the frigid rarified latitudes over Eno’s inert crags.
Eventually the PLA soldiers make their assault on Tiger Mountain, doing so once more at China’s famous Mystery Spot, as the commander ski-jumps across a wide abyss with no loss in altitude to secure a zip line that the soldiers can cross. And yes, there are two endings, one without an airplane, one with, and it’s watchable enough, in cartoon land, but it leaves me wishing that Chinese directors would at least make the attempt to be logical, rather than following Hollywood’s fatuous lead. And oh wouldn’t it be nice to work in some nudity here and there as well, really, film is a visual medium, or at least give Yu Nan’s lips a suitable mooring mast for pyrotechnic purchase.
The movie employs a modern-day framing device that is so corny that you can see its ears and tassels (trust me; this bad metaphor is entirely justified). I will pretend the framing device does not exist for the remainder of this review.
Zhang Hanyu plays Yang, the rogue go-it-alone PLA soldier bent on infiltrating the Tiger Mountain fortress to weaken it from within. Tony Leung Ka Fai plays the evil ruler of Tiger Mountain, Lord Hawk, with cartoonish abandon. Brian Eno does a respectable job playing Tiger Mountain itself, though there are moments when you can see him breathe.
To fully justify the use of “tiger” in the title, Yang battles a gigantic CGI Siberian tiger (of zero mass) for a good ten minutes -- decent enough entertainment if totally implausible, as a tiger fight should begin and end with “pounce.” Yang’s tiger conquest gets him into the fortress, where he meets the grotesquely hawkish Lord Hawk who has a pet hawk on his shoulder. Yang also makes the acquaintance of an abducted village woman -- played by the ever alluring Yu Nan (seen in Expendables II) -- who has become Lord Hawk’s sex slave. Half-crazed, Yu Nan tries to kill Yang until he reveals he is working undercover and is on her side.
The PLA soldiers, while waiting to begin their assault on Tiger Mountain, engage in a few squirmishes with bandits. These battles take place in China’s famous Mystery Spot, where soldiers can ski forever downhill while firing machine guns and end up back where they started.
Court intrigue abounds in the fortress as time and again Yang is nearly found out. Yu Nan keeps changing costumes and guises for eye candy, and her puffy lips forever beckon in a lurid tour de face.
I neglected to mention the existence of two maps of the mountainous region. When combined, they show where large numbers of recruits are hiding out -- or at least that’s my take on it. This split-apart object of value seems an obsession with the Chinese -- as if they harbor a fear that their ying-yang symbol might someday fly apart with catastrophic consequences. Whatever the reason, their arts are littered with split-apart medallions, coins, weapons, secret texts, paintings, or in this case a meaningful map, all needing to be found and made whole again.
But while this “map” trope is introduced early on as important, it seems to get lost along the way. So let’s just ignore its import.
Which brings us back to Yu Nan, who frustrates the viewer to no end, because her painted Hindenburg lips can never quite find a proper mooring mast upon which to combust (Yang proves too goody-goody), leaving her to drift aimlessly about in the frigid rarified latitudes over Eno’s inert crags.
Eventually the PLA soldiers make their assault on Tiger Mountain, doing so once more at China’s famous Mystery Spot, as the commander ski-jumps across a wide abyss with no loss in altitude to secure a zip line that the soldiers can cross. And yes, there are two endings, one without an airplane, one with, and it’s watchable enough, in cartoon land, but it leaves me wishing that Chinese directors would at least make the attempt to be logical, rather than following Hollywood’s fatuous lead. And oh wouldn’t it be nice to work in some nudity here and there as well, really, film is a visual medium, or at least give Yu Nan’s lips a suitable mooring mast for pyrotechnic purchase.
I'm nobody's pony.
