Once Upon a Time in
Shanghai
Director: Wong Ching-po
Year: 2014
Rating: 5.0
The tale of the Boxer from Shantung by the Shaw
Brothers has been told a few times and till this one, I have not seen any
of them. So, I can't make any comparison except that the original is considered
a classic and this one is not. A problem for me was simply a few style choices
that the director made. He desaturates the color of the film - sucks it out
like a vampire - so it falls into some murky nether land between black and
white and color and is mainly distracting. I thought I had a lousy copy till
I read a few reviews mentioning this. The photos here that I took from the
Internet are not what the film looked like. And though the action choreography
is from the legendary Yuen Wo-ping, it is mangled in the editing process
by changing the speeds and too many cuts. The film has some fine martial
artists - let them do their thing without manipulating it. The director is
Wong Ching-po who had previously directed two terrific triad films - Ah Sou
and Jiang Hu - but this one never engenders any emotion and the relationships
between the characters that the audience is supposed to care about feel paper
thin like shorthand.
Ma Yongzhen (Philip Ng) comes to Shanghai
in the 1930s to make good. He wears a jade bracelet that his mother gave
him to remind him that his right fist is a deadly weapon. He killed cows
with one punch. Shanghai is controlled by four gangs in the Axe Brotherhood
but in reality, the Japanese are behind everything. Three of the gang leaders
are old time Hong Kong greats - Fung Hak-on, Yuen Cheung-yan and Chen Kuan-tai.
Chen had played Ma Yongzhen in Boxer from Shanghai, so a nice tribute. But
a new force has come to break things up - Long Qi (Andy On) who with his
loud raucous laugh and martial arts skills has taken over half the city.
Ma becomes a low paid laborer and comes
under the protection of Master Tie (Sammo Hung) once a Big Brother in the
triads, but now a leader and feeder of the poor. Ma falls for his daughter
Ju (Michelle Hu Ran). I had expected that Ma and Long Qi would become bitter
enemies, but after one fight that ends in a draw, they become buddies. And
they both hate the Japanese. Ma begins to work for Long Qi and begins gathering
a following of men - which you think will lead somewhere but it never does.
Eventually, Ma turns into Bruce Lee and kills dozens of Japanese and Axe
gangsters, often with one blow. This has the typical brew of anti-Japanese
and nationalistic propaganda. One of these days I need to get around to watching
Brother from Shantung. This version just didn't work for me.