blog好き

Nov 25 2005

Categories: cinema, live action

4 Comments »

The Myth (神話) is really one decent movie and one train wreck rolled up into one. It just doesn’t know what it wants to be: a slapstick Jackie Chan comedy that pretends to be serious (a la Armour of the Gods) or a grandiose Chinese historical drama (a la Hero). It has all the makings of a typical Jackie Chan comedy (and I know my Jackie Chan comedies…), where he plays, “Jack,” an archeologist who dreams about being an ancient Chinese general. Jack and his sidekick Will are trying to discover the secret to levitation, and they it all leads to typical Jackie Chan slapstick fun: fights under a ladder, random hawt multicultural chix0r, and the fact that he never kills anyone. I liked this part of the movie as it is what Jackie Chan does best– the fights are interesting and the glue factory bit is my favorite (even though I’m seeing a ladder for the umpteenth time), the Indian chix0r is really hawt, and no one dies by Jackie Chan’s hands. Think of this half of the movie as Jackie Chan tossed into Tomb Raider with an Indian belly dancer with an ample rack thrown in as well. As for plot, who cares? Who watches Jackie Chan movies or Tomb Raider for the plot?

Sadly, there’s another half to the movie where Jackie plays General Meng, who is a walking commentary like Jet Li was in Hero. Jackie Chan is no Jet Li. It’s really hard trying to take him seriously when he’s in his full regalia and barking orders when the prior scene had Jack fumbling around like an idiot in his boxers. It’s like replacing Russell Crowe with Jim Carrey for Maximus. It just doesn’t work. Jackie Chan is just not the grandiose hero type. Also, the fights deviate away from traditional Jackie Chan slapstick… Meng’s fights are more visceral swordplay that seems more in par with what Jet Li would do than Jackie Chan. The fights are extremely violent and bloody; for example, at one point, he rams a spear through someone in gruesome detail. Meng himself slays more in this movie than Legolas does at Helm’s Deep… so much so that I immediatedly dubbed him Thunder God Strike Freedom General Meng. The image of Jackie as Meng decapitating hundreds of soldiers just doesn’t jive with the other half of the movie where he goes out of his way to help people trying to hurt him, and that’s the fundamental problem with the movie: identity crisis.

The General Meng storyline also features a hawt multicultural chix0r, only she’s Korean, and her Mandarin is quite poor. (Maybe it’s because all the Chinese actresses are too busy making a movie about being Japanese whores.) She is the princess who belongs to the Emperor, but she is in love with Meng. After Meng rescues her from the Koreans, they start back to China, only she keeps throwing herself at the oblivious Meng. She tends his wounds, warms him up by stripping, and she even does a little mouth-to-mouth, and General Meng is still resisting her advances. Not even Keiichi Morisato is this clueless.

The movie becomes very disjointed as they weave the two storylines together loosely using Jackie Chan’s dreams. One moment he’s rolling down the highway in a BMW talking on his Nokia, the next he’s using his sword to deflect incoming arrows. It seemed like the movie was more interested in making stylish cuts between the two halves rather than develop a better story that more logically interweaved the two. The ending parallels Titanic– the boat, not the movie– as it hits an iceberg when trying to finally reconcile the two halves, and now we have Jackie Chan trying to be both Jack and General Meng. Fantastic. How am I supposed to take the Meng/Princess love affair seriously when Jackie Chan’s doing his normal sthick and pawing around like a drunken master? The final twenty minutes of the movie is just a plot disaster that would make Gainax proud.

The juxataposition of the two eras seems like a good idea, but it rarely works in practice. (See Jinki:Extend) All that’s left in the end is an audience that goes, “Hun? That was the ending?” “Why did they want to kill Meng in the first place?” “Why does this girl like Meng anyway?” and “What happened to the hawt Indian chix0r?” I think that the modern, comedic part of the movie had promise: it wouldn’t be a Rush Hour, but it would definitely be on par with Who Am I?. The historical part is a wreck. Not enough time is devoted to introducing the characters nor their movitation. To make a good historical drama, characters need more motivation for what they do, and The Myth just doesn’t spend any time developing this motivation.

The cinematography is a notch below Hero and about two notches below Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers. The modern day shots of Hong Kong aren’t very interesting, and the ancient China locales were mostly barren deserts. Maybe they had to shoot in a desert because of Jackie Chan’s arthritis in his advanced age (he is over 60 now).

The music… the soundtrack is typical Chinese historical drama fair, and for the vocals, let’s just say that the Korean lady sings a song in Cantonese, and Jackie Chan sings a song too. Let’s just move on.

Since this movie is financed by the Chinese government, there were a few nice bits of propaganda. Jackie has a tirade about countries that rob other countries museums and put the stuff into their own, which is pretty much directed at Taiwan. And then there’s the fact that General Meng’s character, like Jet Li’s in Hero, not only dies for the common good, but places duty, loyalty, and obediance over love as any good communist would agree.

Overall, it was a braindead two hours. The fights were excellent; Jackie Chan is humorous as ever, even as a serious Chinese general; and there’s plenty of hawt chix0rs. I enjoyed this more than The Medallion and The Tuxedo, if that’s saying much. Just go in with the expectations of Yet Another Jackie Chan movie and not hope for the next Gladiator or Hero, and The Myth will be fine.