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Review
by Kozo: |
Thanks
to the deep pockets of Celestial Pictures, the massive catalog
of Shaw Brothers films are due to be released on DVD. What
that means is ten DVDs a month of old HK Cinema, remastered
and restored for everybody's favorite digital format. Old
flicks are on tap, made by the likes of King Hu and Chang
Cheh, and starring people like Cheng Pei-Pei, David Chiang
and Ti Lung. There's even a Wong Jing film in there. It's
like heaven.
Many of the to-be-released films
have been touted as classics. That may be true for the heavily
initiated, but there are probably many interested newbies
who would like to check out these flicks but have no idea
what they're like. I would have to count myself among them,
as my HK Cinema knowledge involves names like Stephen Chow,
Wong Jing, Ekin Cheng and Maggie Cheung. The worlds of Chang
Cheh and Lo Lieh mean little to me, so this is a golden
opportunity to answer that eternal question: are these films
really classics? And will a person weaned on Drunken
Master II and Comrades, Almost a Love Story find
any of this stuff good?
Considering King Hu's Come
Drink with Me, I would have to say yes. Considered a
classic of the genre and a seminal woman warrior flick,
it stars Cheng Pei-Pei in one of her career-defining roles.
She plays Golden Swallow, who attempts to free her brother
from the clutches of a band of evil thugs. They want their
leader freed in return, but a deal isn't initially forthcoming.
Swallow is aided by Drunken Cat (Yueh Hua), an inebriated
beggar who's actually a kung-fu master. Fighting ensues.
The action here isn't of the
Ching Siu-Tung fast-motion variety, nor is it cartoonishly
choreographed ala Jackie Chan. Instead, it's exactingly
staged, beautifully framed, and artful in its perfectly-timed
rhythms. The action here resembles the work of Akira Kurosawa,
in that it uses stillness as effectively as it does motion,
and presents action realistically, but with a stylized cinematic
edge. The swordplay in Come Drink with Me looks like
you'd expect real swordplay to look.
The action compensates for
the fact that the plot is no great shakes. It's your standard
good guy vs. bad guy stuff with a female fighter thrown
in for extra spark. That said, Cheng Pei-Pei is quite lovely
(and young) as Golden Swallow, and handles the action sequences
with great dignity. Likewise, Yueh Hua shows good presence
as Drunken Cat, and the cinematography dazzles with its
vibrant color and gorgeous scope framing. For its time,
the film was considered a revelation in martial arts filmmaking,
but even now it holds up incredibly as just a well-made
film. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that it plays better
now than most of Hong Kong's early-nineties wuxia do.
This isn't to say that Come
Drink with Me is inherently superior to all of the films
that it preceeded. It's really hard to make that sort of
qualification. Whereas some critics (including Paul Fornoroff)
state that they prefer Come Drink with Me to Crouching
Tiger Hidden Dragon, it's likely that some modern audiences
would disagree. There is some truth to the fact that CTHD
is a more emotionally satisfying kung-fu epic. The film
features pronounced melodrama and a tragic love story, which
heightens the appeal to modern—and Westernized—audiences.
But, Come Drink with Me
is refreshing in that it presents a spare, stripped-down
story with no extra fat, so to speak. Soul-searching and
pronounced inner conflict don't occur here. This is simply
a well-staged, brilliantly shot kung-fu film without all
the unnecessary bells and whistles. An analogy could almost
be made to Johnnie To's Milky Way films, which present gangland
drama in matter-of-fact ways free of extraneous emotional
baggage. Those films are exhilirating in their pure storytelling,
where a film serves its genre and not its audience. Come
Drink with Me operates in much of the same way, and
provides good action, too. (Kozo 2002)
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