Palm Springs was filled with strange and exotic films the starting weekend of the Palm Springs International Film Festival, now in it's 36th year. We had a chance to catch two over this little more than a week festival. You still have a chance to see these two films as part of the festival.
Director Soi Cheang
What came next was like renting an old school martial arts movie from blockbuster. I mean Sammo Hung is immediately in it, and if you know martial arts films, you know that's a good sign. Insanely spaced out, but reminiscent plot of an outsider, this time an illegal immigrant, played by Raymond Lam as Chan Lok-kwunget. His life sucks and gets the bejezus knocked out of him almost literally at every turn and then is taken in and becomes part of a gang/family. Crisis over land, then comes the revenge. In fact, the only missing by the numbers part of this movie is the usual montage of training or learning a new technique. Everyone is already an amazing fighter.
To sum it up we're pretty much with Chan Lok-kwunget as he learns to live and escape another gang in the wonderful backdrop of the now gone Kowloon, walled city. A super condensed place to live, lending itself to some amazing fights. You might also now Kowloon if you played Stray, the third person cat game, which has you transverse a very similar city albeit with robot inhabitants.
Lok's taken under the wing of former gangster Cyclone, played by Louis Koo who steals the show through most of the movie and befriends the gangsters and weirdos Kowloon.
For a martial arts film it takes its sweet time building up how bleak Lok's life is, Cyclone's past and some day-to-day living in Kowloon, starting friendships and for a while we don't have any major fights till the end. That's when the movie goes crazy!
mullet. What I thought was a run-of-the-mill second-in-command character merely around for a beat down and comic relief becomes without a doubt, the reason for the best fight in the movie.
The movie alludes to it in the beginning, but keeps it on the down low and we see super-human feats you could chalk up to John Wick action movie logic on why people can even move after going through walls. However, King straight up has magical powers/chi powers that I did not see coming. This straight up super-annoying Starscream jack&ss who gets knocked out early on is amazing in both brutality and power. By the end he's taking on four other accomplished lead fighters at once. When the gave him guns for a second, I was like why, he's already too powerful. It's pure old school action made now and my G-d is it good.
Director Michael Angarano
Being released by Vertical Entertainment
It take a while, as a 6 hour drive from LA to San Fran is, and you sure could put this as a dramedy, it still has enough laughs to give you a full gas tank.
During a very thoughtful Q&A the audience and myself found out that the Director Michael Angarano created the film as a inside joke with his co-writer Christopher Nicholas Smith. They were struggling actors in LA when writing it and they thought one day, why not actually do it...in conversation only. They did eventually do the drive and didn't seem to recommend it.
Also, over the course of the film Michael Angarano casted Maya Erskine as Tallie, who became his wife and mother of two of his children.
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| Michael Angarano & Maya Erskine |
