Chinese blockbusters given limited theatrical release in America GO!
Jackie Chan is an old man, he can't possibly have that many action films left in him, so I find it keenly interesting to see what he's producing anymore. His latest, Dragon Blade is a expensively mounted and almost prototypical Chinese period blockbuster that emphasizes unity and brotherhood of many peoples while still finding some white guys to terrorize them. The plot is simultaneously under cooked and convoluted, and the last act nationalism is a bit much, but the creme of the cookie here is still tasteful, thanks to numerous really well done sword duels and some bonkers melodrama. Chan has still got it, and is featured in most of the sometimes quite violent and always entertaining clangs of metal, but the surprise here is how well John Cusack and especially Adrian Brody do in their approximation of Hong Kong action choreography. Quality wise, its really at the lower tier of latter day JC films, but the action is some of the best he's put on in quite some time, so far from a total loss, and hey, seeing Cusack and Brody ham it up is fun.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Wolf Totem isn't the film itself, which is pretty typical middle-brow 'city boy learns the ways of a more naturalistic society' tale, but that the director of Seven Years in Tibet eventually got to make a big-budget Chinese film that's critical (not overwhelmingly, but its there) of the Cultural Revolution. That would have been unthinkable not so long ago, I guess things do change over time. That Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear, Two Brothers) sure does love his animals, and nature, and Wolf Totem is at its best as it depicts the Mongolian life on the steppe and their complicated symboitic relationship with the wolves of the plains. It features some stunning photography and is currently being screened in IMAX 3D, so at the very least the pictures sure are purty. The mid-film wolf vs. herders vs. stampeding horses in a nighttime blizzard setpiece is spectacular, culminating in a vision straight out of Guy Maddin's 'My Winnipeg'. I'll probably forget most of the film in time, that part I'll remember well.
