The Lost Bladesman | 關雲長 [ Movie Review ] ★★★

The Pitch

Donnie Yen as Guan Yu? Can he pull it off? We have idealized Guan Yu as a 7ft tall man with long beard and red face. Donnie Yen is not exactly the tall guy that people would immediately think of when there's any casting rumor for the role of Guan Yu.

But since Donnie Yen is currently the hot property in the Hong Kong / China martial arts film industry, he is obviously the go to guy if you want to sell a martial arts film. Nevertheless he has also shown us that he could carry a dignified aura when he portrayal Ip Man in recent years so the height difference might not matter that much.

It would be interesting to see if his portrayal of Guan Yu could help boost his career in the same way as Ip Man had done previously.

Beside that, he had also roped in directors Alan Mak and Felix Chong (co directors for Lady Cop and Papa Crook & Overheard) and Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly) into this movie about Guan Yu's uneasy friendship with Cao Cao and how he crossed five passes while slaying six Generals. This story arc of Luo Guanzhong's historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms that focus on these two iconic characters had not been adapted for the big screen before and it's likely to draw the fans of epic historical battle of China in.

The Plot

During the warring period of Han Dynasty, Cao Cao (Jiang Wen) had attacked his rival warlord Liu Bei (Alex Fong) and managed to capture Liu Bei's family members. Liu Bei managed to flee while his sworn brother Guan Yu (Donnie Yen) remained under Cao Cao's command. Guan Yu was a formidable warrior and Cao Cao tried to enlist his aid by showering him with gifts and honorary title. However Guan Yu was a loyal friend of Cao Cao's enemy Liu Bei and he rejected Cao Cao's offer.

As Cao Cao tried to sway Guan Yu over to his side, he discovered that Guan Yu is secretly in love with his sworn brother's concubine Qilan (Betty Sun). In a last bid to buy Guan Yu's loyalty, Cao Cao sent Liu Bei's family members back and attempted to trick Guan Yu to show his love to Qilan with aphrodisiac wine. However Guan Yu managed to stay rational and stopped himself from taking advantage of Qilan.

A messenger arrived to inform Guan Yu on Liu Bei's whereabouts and after knowing where his sworn brother was located, he left Cao Cao's camp with Qilan. Cao Cao was unable to stop Guan Yu and due to a previous agreement, gave orders to his generals to give Guan Yu a safe passage through his territory. His generals on the other hand felt that it's a mistake to release Guan Yu back to the rival camp, so they plot to kill Guan Yu as he embarks on the journey back to Liu Bei.


The Perspective

Not being well versed in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Last Bladesman was rather tedious and bewildering. There were plenty of things that were left unexplained or shown and being a first timer to this story arc of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it was difficult to stay afloat with the sequence of things that happened. Let's just say that I had to Wikipedia after the show to get a better idea on what happened.

The significant of Guan Yu "Crossing Fives Passes and Slaying Six Generals" didn't translate well in this adaption. It felt like an excuse to showcase one fight sequence after another. The Wikipedia page on this segment also revealed that The Lost Bladesman had diluted the original tale so that they could fit in the unconvincing love angle between Guan Yu and Qilan. It would have been preferable if they had stick closer to the source material and abandon Qilan as love interest.

Otherwise, it was a relatively entertaining film to introduce newbies to this story arc of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Donnie Yen was adequate as the legendary Guan Yu but it was Jiang Wen who had stole the show with his rendition of Cao Cao. It might be an unfair comparison as Cao Cao definitely had more intriguing materials to play with. Not exactly a must watch but it wouldn't hurt to catch it.

SP : The Motion Picture | ＳＰ野望篇 [ Movie Review ] ★★

The Pitch

The SP here stands for Security Police and it centered around the trials and tribulation of a team of Japanese politicians bodyguards. SP first found life as a TV series (3rd Nov 2007 to 26th Jan 2008) and like many popular Japanese TV drama series these days, SP was made into 2 motion pictures (this being the first one and a second one that's likely to be heading to Singapore cinema eventually).

The most interesting aspect of this movie (for someone who have not caught the drama series) would be that this movie topped the Japanese Box Office for 3 weeks (from 30th Oct to 14th Nov 2010)* and the follow up movie SP: The Motion Picture II is currently at the top too ( 3 straight weeks from 12 Mar to 27th Mar 2011)*. It's intriguing to find out what the drawing power that this franchise got on the Japanese audience that make them come back for more.

(* Box Office Information from AsianMediaWiki.com )



The Plot

For the uninitiated, SP: The Motion Picture basically introduced a team of Japanese politician bodyguards. The focus here lies on the team leader, Soichiro Ogata (Shin'ichi Tsutsumi / Suspect X) and one of the member Kaoru Inoue (Junichi Okada). Inoue stood out from the rest with his special "ESP" abilities to remember stuff, detect traps and even premonition. Needless to say, as the protagonist, he would go above and beyond the call of duty.

The plot thickens when Secretary General Kunio Date (Teruyuki Kagawa / 20th Century Boys series) gathered a group of politicians from various departments for a meeting to create crisis that would unite the Japanese citizen. Among the group, Ogata been tasked to carry out the plan and attempted to recruit Inoue for the sinister cause.

It's not hard to figure out how would the hero react to such invitation. Before he got time to ponder more about Ogata's unexplained cause, an emergency occurred and his team had been tasked to protect another Secretary who was making his way to the Prime Minister house. Let's just say that it won't be an easy mission for the hero and his team mates.
  
The Perspective

As someone who going into this movie without any knowledge of what happened in the TV series, it's relatively easy to get up to speed. Although one might not know the significant of certain character that died in the TV series, it's easy to figure out the plot setup and characters' motivation.

This movie also focused on how the Security Police protects the various politicians from potential harms. But in a strange way, it did too much of "securing" for it's own good. The movie gets bogged down by one security mission after another. It's not only bland (just imagine following a security details around), it does nothing to advance the story and there were plenty of loopholes in their operations.

The most glaring loophole would be how the security team would choose to hand to hand combat when they have other form of weapons with them. It felt like a blatant attempt to show realistic take down that security forces might use. While the fight scenes look different from the usual exaggerated kungfu fight scenes, it felt that the security operation had been stupefied so that they can show the audience how they whack people with their bare hands.

Last but not least, Inoue was quite a boring and tedious character to follow. He got all these supernatural powers that makes him a super bodyguard. It's almost impossible to surprise him when he could see into the future or detect what's round the corner. But the power are wasted in a manner that even when he detects that something is wrong, he would usually react a moment too late. Kinda negated his special abilities most of the time and it makes one wonder why give him special powers in the first place when it doesn't do much for his character or the story.

As the first part of two movies, SP: The Motion Picture failed to entice me to catch the second movie. In fact, it felt like a telemovie that didn't deserve the cinematic treatment. It also felt like if it had remove the introduction arc (for newbies like me), the movie would probably have enough screen time to get to Secretary General Kunio Date's big sinister plan. Perhaps there's more in the TV series and folks who had watched that might appreciate this movie more but right now, it's doing nothing to interest me to the TV series or the 2nd movie.