Here is hoping that this is not the last
I see of actress/ stunt woman/ martial artist Liu Yaxi. She dominates this
Italian martial arts revenge film that is a blast and hits all my unseemly
pleasure zones. She is the real deal from China having been the stunt woman
for Mulan and other films. All too often, I come across impressive martial
artists in contemporary films and then they vanish or sink quickly into low
budget productions. Even more true for females. Maybe the Chinese film industry
will take her on. She rocks and the film doesn't wait too long to show us
that. An Italian film isn't exactly where you expect to find a good martial
arts film. My guess is that the director Gabriele Mainetti spent a lot of
his youth watching The Way of the Dragon.
Don't expect a sophisticated or complicated
narrative. It is kung fu revenge. Keep it simple, keep it moving. Not that
it is all action with only two large set pieces and a few smaller fights,
but the non-action parts add to the impact of the film; build out the characters,
slip in some pathos and in a scene that felt like it was smuggled out of
Fallen Angels is a love letter to Rome. In a short prelude, two young sisters
in China are learning martial arts from their father. Two. In a period when
there was the One Child Policy. Xiao Mei (Yaxi) has to remain hidden for
years. Jump to the present time and she is searching for her sister Yun (Haijin
Ye) who has is missing. She has gone to work in an all-around entertainment
building that includes a high class bordello, a low class brothel, a restaurant,
a gambling den, a massage happy ending joint and a mahjong parlor. All any
man could ask for.
Mei intentionally manages to get taken in
by sex slavers and when the line-up of new girls is asked to remove their
clothes, she refuses. A tough guy comes over to convince her. First beat
down. Where is Yun she screams as she takes on a platoon of thugs with anything
that is handy. She battles up the stairs, into the brothels, down hallways,
into the kitchen, then the restaurant and rolls into the street. In the middle
of Rome. I felt tingles. There is another side of the story about an elderly
neighborhood Mafia money lender who looks after Marcello who runs an Italian
restaurant. The two stories collide in tragedy. At 130-minutes, it seems
that the director fell in love with his story, adding dips and dashes as
it goes along in its setting in a multi-cultural city that is alive and vibrant.
