Dr Wai in “The Scripture
with No Words”
Director: Ching Siu-tung
Year: 1996
Rating: 5.5
There is no doubt
that this film was an attempt to do something big and different. A great
cast of Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Charlie Yeung and Takeshi Kaneshiro were
put together, some fabulous sets constructed and definitely a few bucks
thrown at this. But it never comes together in a coherent manner and it
never really connects at all on any emotional level with the viewer. It
has some brilliant parts, but the script leaves the viewer so unconcerned
with the characters that these parts lose any dramatic tension what so ever.
Basically, you are left with some good special effects and a few good action
set pieces, but if there is no emotional investment from the viewer – what
does it really matter.
These problems stem from the basic premise
of the story. Jet Li is a pulp serial writer who is undergoing writer’s
block. The main reason for this being that his wife Rosamund Kwan is filing
for divorce and it is breaking his heart. So his two assistants - Charlie
Yeung and Takeshi Kaneshiro – help him out and all three take various cracks
at writing the next installment. Everyone has their own agenda though and
wants to integrate themselves into it - thus causing the story to go off
in all directions. The protagonist of his stories is a fellow called “Dr
Wai, the King of Adventurers” and he is basically a graduate of the Indiana
Jones School of film heroes. The story stitched together takes place in
the 1930’s and the King of Adventurers and the Japanese are both after a
box with immense destructive powers (think Kiss Me Deadly). There are some
excellent action sequences as the King battles ninjas, sumo wrestlers and
other evils. The film goes back and forth between the life of the writer
and the characters in the book. The same actors show up in both strains
of the story.
Of the ninety-minute running
time, probably 70 of it is devoted to the fantasy story. The problem is
that neither story has any heart. We never get to know the “real” characters
well enough to care about them and the fantasy story is so tongue in cheek,
so disjointed and is one extra level removed from reality. How can you care
about characters in a book within a movie? To some degree the fantasy story
is used to resolve the problems of the people in the "real" life section,
but that "happy ending" was much too simplistic to believe. In the story
within the film Dr. Wai (Jet Li) is tasked by the Chinese government to steal
a letter from the Japanese that will lead him to locate the ancient Scripture
with No Word that was lost hundreds of years previously. Jet and his assistant
Takashi dress up in drag in order to get into a party at the Japanese Embassy.
He runs into a Japanese waitress played by Rosamund when he is dressed as
a woman and then later as a man and explains to her that "This is my hobby.
Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman". Billy Chow - in real life her divorce
lawyer - is Japanese security and they have a decent little fight. More later
on. But that was Takashi's telling - when Jet takes over the writing Rosamund
turns into a "merciless evil bitch" who experiments on men and is handy with
a whip. Yes, we like this version of Rosamund better!
It has some good wire/special effect action
scenes and definite ambitions but at the end of the day that is about it.
It’s a shame really because if they had just dropped the writer part of
the film and made the fantasy the guts of the movie and then done it with
a little more care and less cartoony this could have been a good if derivative
film. Oh wait. Apparently they did! They brought in Tsui Hark to add new
scenes. This is considered the International Version and from a few accounts
it is not easy to get your hands on. The director is the legendary Ching
Siu-tung.
