Combat at Heaven Gate
Director: Yu Chik-lim
Year: 1993
Rating: 6.0
Made during the early
90’s at the height of the action/kung fu flying films, this low budget film
tries to capture a bit of that magic with very mixed results. It appears
to possibly be a Mainland production (and is able to utilize some wonderful
historical sites) and suffers from some of those Mainland action film maladies
– weak special effects, disjointed editing, obscure actors (for the most
part) and inconsistent fight choreography. The film was also as confusing
to me as watching Mahjong being played in HK films.
Still for the most part I enjoyed this frenetic
fast paced film. It has an almost Indiana Jones/Saturday afternoon serial
movie feel to it. It jumps all over the place – never takes itself too seriously
– and is full of action. Unfortunately a film like this depends very much
on the ability to make the flying scenes somewhat credible and here the wire
work is just atrocious as people are jerked all over the place. I am not
sure what goes into good wire work – budget or time or simply the skills
of the people pulling the wires? – but whatever it is – this film was very
much lacking in them. Which is a shame because you could sense there was
some imagination being used for these scenes, but the execution just could
not handle it.
The film begins with a prologue that takes place in ancient days when a doctor
has been called from the capital to cure a high official of a migraine headache.
The official is attempting to cure it himself by having ten women play tug
of war with his head. It looks like fun – but it doesn’t do much for his
headache! The doctor arrives – accompanied by his assistant Sibelle Hu –
and with a few acupuncture thrusts he eases the man’s pain. Regretfully,
the doctor goes on to tell the official that to cure him for good he will
need to cut open his head and remove the cockroaches that are within! This
doesn’t set too well with the official and he has the doctor executed. Sibelle
and this concubine look at each other for a frozen moment in time as this
is announced.
Jump ahead to the 1930’s and it appears that this doctor had the cure to
every known disease written down in his books and clues to the whereabouts
of the missing books have been uncovered – pointing to somewhere called Heaven
Gate. The Chinese, the Japanese and the Germans all start looking for the
books and doing everything they can to stop the other parties from finding
them. This leads to a lot of action – primarily hand to hand – and seemingly
many of these people have learned the trick of jumping large distances (though
in an oddly herky jerky manner!).
And for some reason that is never explained two of the women – one from the
Chinese group and one from the Japanese group look exactly like doctor’s
assistant and the concubine! Maybe they didn’t have enough actors. This short
summary is actually much more straightforward than the film really is - as
the movie jumps from scene to scene with little explanation or sense – but
with a good sense of fun.
