Being in the mood for some light fun entertainment
because of you know what, I looked through the Twins very short resume to
see what films I hadn't seen and was surprised that I had missed this one
way back in 2007 when I was picking up HK DVDs in Chinatown every weekend.
Not missed it I should say, but I never got around to seeing it. And it has
Sammo Hung in it which makes it doubly surprising. Sammo and the Twins has
to be a winning combination - and it was. This rather goofy film that makes
little sense has more action in it than your normal straight forward action
film with four large action set pieces that were quite enjoyable, They are
a mix of extreme wire work and legitimate martial arts.
Along with Sammo we get a large role for
Yuen Wah - in fact in a double role - in which he fights himself at one point.
On the younger side there is Jacky Wu Jing, who has gone on to great fame
with the Wolf Warrior films but had already been in some good martial arts
films by this time - Tai Chi II, SPL, Fatal Contact. So he is the real deal
and gets plenty of kicks and punches in as do Sammo and Yuen Wah. A real
pleasure to watch, wires and all. Wires are a two-way street. If used wisely
they can add a lot to a film but if used excessively - like normal people
jumping 20 feet or a punch knocking you back 20 feet, they can seem ridiculous.
This leans very much to the ridiculous side. And in a lot of films that would
bother me, but not so much here because everything about most of the Twins
action films is ridiculous.
Though this is in theory a Twins film they
share equal screen time with the others - and a bunch of other twins! I lost
count but I think there are about 6 sets of twins - real ones unlike The
Twins - who all know kung fu! Or at least fake it reasonably well. Could
Hong Kong (and China) have all these kung fu twins available? Perhaps. With
little background explanation it seems that two brother twins (Yuen Wah playing
both roles) adopted all these twins and taught them acrobatics, martial arts
and larceny. But one of the Yuen Wah's took some of them away from that life
and put them in a circus. The others stayed behind to become killers and
crooks.
It all begins on a train where Sammo and
Wu Jing are monks with a mission to bring a Tibetan artifact to Hong Kong
which is thought by others to have magical healing powers. It turns out to
be a MacGuffin because it doesn't but it sets everything into action. They
are attacked by a few groups of twins leading to a good action scene inside
and on top of the train. The Healing Stick gets loose and falls below into
a small town and the chase is on that ends up in Hong Kong. Sammo recruits
The Twins who are aerialists in a circus. Lots of fights and crashing through
panes of glass like they are sugar, which I guess they are, ahead.
It is by all means a very very messy film
with no core and jumps around from character to character like a pinball
machine. Its only speed is fast forward (with a regrettable stop for a treacly
sub-plot). I probably should not have enjoyed this as much as I did - but
Sammo, Yuen Wah and The Twins in the same scenes just brought a smile to
my face. When I watch a Twins film I am not looking for artistry, cohesiveness
or seriousness - I just take it scene by scene and some of these were quite
enjoyable. Even the silly parts such as Sam Lee as a cop questioning every
one of the vendors in one of those small malls stuffed with tiny shops that
Hong Kong has and everyone being from somewhere other than China and not
speaking Cantonese felt right.
The odd thing here is that the film ends
before it is finished - kind of on a cliffhanger though not a very suspenseful
one - and I would guess that Twins Mission II was in the planning - and then
the sex scandal hit. And that was that. There was a film after this in the
same year - Naraka 19 - that has both Twins in it, but Charlene only has
a brief cameo. The Twins were great fun while they lasted - a fresh breeze
of youth and silliness - this period represented to some degree the changing
of the guard to a younger generation of actors. But unfortunately for them,
also a period of HK films in decline to some degree - certainly in numbers
of films made if quality might be debatable by some. I don't think any of
them have made an indelible mark in films in the same way as those who came
before - Chow Yun-fat, Andy Lau, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte
Lin, Michelle Yeoh and so so many more.
