Vengeance!
Reviewed by Yves Gendron
The theme of vengeance lies at the very heart
of Hong Kong kung fu cinema. Heck, it was even dubbed "Cinema of Vengeance".
It is so completely prevalent in fact and so crudely applied at times that
it is usually taken as something of a derisive cliché even by the
genre regulars. It's your usual "You killed my father/brother/master
NOW YOU DIE". With this 1970 Shaw Brother pot boiler production titled
well... VENGEANCE, less levity would be in order however - as not
only the theme of vengeance is being displayed at its strongest and purest
here but also as the very first of the "Blood Brothers" movies by martial
art cinema masterful director Chang Cheh that paired David Chiang and Ti
Lung. It's a major watershed movie of the then nascent kung fu genre and
remains a damn good movie to this day.
In Shanghai during the days of the early Republic
(1911-48), hot tempered Peking Opera actor Kuan Yu-lou (Ti Lung) is infuriated
by the sight of gang boss Feng Kai-sheng (Ku Feng) flirting with his beautiful
but flighty actress wife and Kuan lets him know of his displeasure by ransacking
the martial art school Feng owns and beating-up his boys. In retaliation
Feng plots Kuan’s murder which is encouraged and sanctioned by all the
local bigwigs - rich man Chin Chieh-kuan, corrupt police captain Kao and
the powerful local warlord who has his own sights on Kuan's wife. Kuan
is ambushed in a teahouse and dies after a savage bloody battle. Shortly
afterwards Kuan's brother Kuan- Hou-yu (David Chiang) also a Peking Opera
actor comes back from the south with the steely resolve to avenge his brother’s
death and he has the fighting skills as well as the canniness to back-up
his plans, with the help of his love the beautiful Hua Chang-Feng
(Wang Ping).
VENGEANCE could be rightfully considered as one
of Chang Cheh’s sharpest directorial efforts ever as he used the settings,
cinematography, music and sound effects to create a heavily claustrophobic,
tension-filled, moody atmosphere of gloom, menace and tragedy which regularly
explodes into action scenes of raw, furious mayhem, performed for the most
part as whirlwind like bloody operatic brawls. Occasionally however a sad
melancholic mood sets in with sweet jazz tunes for quiet, tender scenes
between David Chiang and his sweetheart. Chang makes ample use of graceful,
lingering camerawork such as pan and travelling, running across the scenery
making an organic whole of the entire space, which further increases both
the tension and the atmosphere. Chang however also used further stylistic
tricks for the same purpose. There are plenty of slow motions in the action
scenes for example. Halfway through Ti Lung’s ambush, the scene switches
from colour to black and white. Also during the ambush, there are impromptu
flashbacks of Ti Lung performing an opera fight where his character is
grievously hurt yet continued to fight on as he does in the teahouse ambush.
All this contributes to making the scene even more dramatically haunting.
Of course, the film’s appeal does not just lie
in its cinematic gracefulness; the intense charisma of its top performers
is just as crucial. Furious, majestic, Ti Lung first, then David Chiang
and lets not forget Wang Ping who plays the sweet yet determined Hua Cheng
Feng, who flirts superbly in order to get close to one of the killers.
Both Ti Lung and Chang were sensibly different heroes from their martial
predecessor Wang Yu - much less stoic and far more expressive. Chiang is
especially - intense and grim certainly but with his peculiar, slightly
scholarly look and a floating mane of hair. Something of an effete, romantic
leading man, one however who unlike all other traditionally wimpy characters
of this sort could kick major ass, slit a throat or pierce a heart without
blinking. Yet for all his single-mindedness of purpose and ruthlessness,
he still was a tender, melancholic lover. In a way he was a precursor to
the likes of Tony Leung Chiu-wai as well as Leslie Cheung in their action
parts, except of course that unlike them his action skills were real.
Needless to say this was a new, fantastic novelty for the audience at the
time. Chiang won an acting award for his part in a regional film festival,
and it made him a top martial star during the first half of the seventies.
The movie may actually suffer from one drawback
though - the plot is perhaps a bit too convenient for the avenging hero,
almost to the point of being too obviously contrived. For example, after
killing one of his targets in a hotel David Chiang uses the elevator and
the front entrance to get out of the premise without much trouble even
though his victim’s men swarmed around all over the place. Also, a couple
of characters are bluntly dispatched once their narrative usefulness is
ended so as to close a plot thread. The film is also quite slowly paced
at times with many moments of silences and dramatic stops. Some may say
that it makes the film a bit dull in places but it does serve the purpose
of increasing the dramatic tension and atmosphere.
At the time Chang Cheh made VENGEANCE, he already
had nearly a dozen swordplay films under his belt as well as a couple of
gangster movies like DEAD END. He then somehow mixed up the two together
and thus created a new breed of martial art movie the likes of which had
never been seen before. It was not quite a kung fu movie however (a term
that would not get coined for two more two years in the USA when the Bruce
Lee movies were all the rage), more like a prototypical version of it,
with swords, daggers and hatchets instead of fists and no emphasis on the
fighting art in itself. It had many of those characteristics however like
a Republican era setting, an emphasis on raw physical combats and the prominence
of the vengeance theme. While vengeance was indeed a major plot point in
earlier martial movies, these tended to be more like empowering fantasy
where the stoic heroes stood-up and fought back against oppressors.
With VENGEANCE however, perhaps for the first
time, an angst-filled enraged hero was aggressively going after an adversary
who was the object of his anger. Who these targets were in VENGEANCE was
most significant: a gang boss, a rich landowner, a corrupt police officer
and a warlord. These types in the good old Republican day tramped over
the common people as if they were only ants to be crushed and there is
a crucial cathartic scene when the David Chiang character has his foot
on the neck of his top level enemy, and asks him who he is. There can be
no greater vindication/gratification for an avenging hero then to force
an oppressor to acknowledge him. And while the movie was set in Republican
times, it had a most contemporary ring to it with the notable exception
of the warlord. The sorts of villains VENGEANCE’ s hero had to deal with
- thugs, corrupt cops, rich people, were still alive and well within modern
Chinese society, making the need and catharsis for revenge quite intimately
felt by the viewing public.
VENGEANCE’ s tale prominently features Peking
opera which is quite fitting considering that with it’s mixture of operatic-like
action and intense drama, the film pretty much works as a sort of cinematic
derivative of Peking opera itself. That the Kuan brothers were opera actors
was equally significant as they went, in their actions, against the established
tradition that actors passively accepted oppression (tradition seen in
such films as Chen Kaige’s FARWELL MY CONCUBINE) and it created a link
between the VENGEANCE protagonists and the legendary sword heroes of the
past featured in Chinese operas - a point further emphasised of course
by the flashbacks done during Ti Lung’s ambush as well as David Chiang’s
introductory scene.
At the beginning of this review VENGEANCE was
actually called the first “blood brothers” movie, which were a series of
angst-filled, bloody martial dramas by Chang Cheh pairing David Chiang
and Ti Lung together, but actually that's half the truth. Yes, Chiang and
Ti Lung are in the same movie and do play brothers but Ti Lung is dispatched
20 minutes into the movie and except for a still photo and a brief flashback
they have no scenes together. Regardless, the film most definitively cemented
Chang Cheh’s cinematic style and themes with which he would continue for
nearly a decade - well after his "blood brothers" period was over - until
the later part of the seventies with his "Venom” films when his work would
get more gimmicky than tragic heroic. But because Ti Lung and Chiang were
not together, instead of Chang Cheh’s usual male bonding theme, Chiang’s
crucial on screen relationship was with his sweetheart. Contemporary
western viewers may find these scenes where the two are together quite
slow and dull but they do anchor Chiang’s character as a caring lover instead
of a mere killing machine, and it enhance the drama as the audience figures
out that of course they are not destined to live happily ever after.
VENGEANCE’s fight choreography is being credited
partially to Chang Cheh regular choreographer Tang Chia but instead of
his usual partner Lau Kar-leung, some fellow credited as Yuan Xiangen has
taken his place. Where was Lau at the time, who is this Yuan fellow (who
doesn't seem to be credited anywhere else) and if had any relationship
with the famed Yuen clan is not know. Many of the Yuen brothers can be
actually glimpsed in the movie however including Yuen Shun-Yi (a gambling
henchman in the hotel hall), Yuen Woo Ping and Yuen Cheung-yan (as uniformed
guards), as well as a couple of unknown Yuens who this reviewer did not
recognise. Tang Chia and the Yuen brothers had a special relationship
as Tang was their fathers (famed Peking Opera performer and future DRUNKEN
MASTER titular character Simon Yuen Siu Tien) favourite student and thus
their own "elder brother". At least some of them, including Yuen Woo-Ping,
worked as his top assistant. Other recognisable faces are the future "Charles
Bronson of Asia" Chang Sing as a sniper, future kung fu star Chen Kuan
Tai seen sporting a moustache and guarding a door before being killed,
and future bad guy Fung Ark-onn as a henchmen at the very end of the film.
In conclusion, it should be well remembered
that VENGEANCE is most definitively not like the balletic kung fu extravaganzas
created by Jackie, Sammo and the Venoms but feels more like the heroic
bloodshed movies that John Woo would do in the late eighties. Unfortunately,
seventies kung fu movies are not as well appreciated or remembered as heroic
gun plays and are to this day widely seen just as somewhat silly chopsockies
by many. A sole viewing of VENGEANCE however would be enough to convince
nearly anyone of the utter fancifulness of such presumptions. For no matter
the age, the poor preservation or the horrid dubbing that one may come
across, the films pure tragically dramatic heart as well as it's burning
hot action are both still so massively powerful to this day that even the
most jaded contemporary viewer ought to be quite engrossed by this movie
as it truly deserves to be.
Rating: 8.0
Trailer