Lord of East Asia Sea II


Reviewed by YTSL

Although I did not find the 2½ hour long “Lord of East China Sea I” to be a particularly great -- or even gripping -- movie, the completist in me felt compelled to also check out the follow-up Poon Man Kit directed effort that promised to complete its particular biographical take on one of Shanghai’s richest and supposedly most influential men during the first half of the 20th century.  The first film’s having had one of the more abrupt endings around contributed as well to my actually having some curiosity re how and where the life story of Luk Yuet San would go after the 1920s meeting that the former fruit seller turned opium trade tycoon had with the Kuomintang’s notoriously militaristic -- but also corruptible -- Chiang Kai Shek.


Imagine my disappointment then upon discovering that:  That whose 102 minute length final version is apparently half an hour shorter than what was shown during its initial public screening (See Paul Fonoroff’s “At the Movies”, 1998:302) doesn’t begin where Part I of the saga had left off but, instead, only covers a time period that has its start in 1936 (and end in 1952).  Still, the history minded will realize that the years that are spanned in LORD OF EAST CHINA SEA II are among the more eventful ones in China’s past.  More precisely, they encompass those in which the country found itself at war with -- and had significant parts of it occupied by -- its Japanese neighbor and traditional enemy as well as undergoing the kind of political upheavals that eventually led to the wrestling of power from the Chinese Nationalist Party by the Communists (who continue to rule over Mainland China to this day).
 

The main protagonist of LORD OF EAST CHINA SEA II (who is once more portrayed by Ray Lui) is shown as being very much affected -- like most anyone would be -- by the winds of change and (inter)national events that form more than the backdrop of this movie.  To a larger extent than one might expect though, Luk Yuet San gets cast in a more passive and hapless than active and heroic light for much of this largely dramatic -- but at times unintentionally laughable -- piece.  Perhaps the film’s makers opted to do this because they couldn’t come up with a better way to try to absolve and/or explain the involvement of the work’s lead personality in the business of feeding opium to the masses (that surely had a hand in weakening China, and therefore making it more prone to be exploited and run over by others) along with his at least partially assenting collusion with the Kuomintang (whose Beijing-based top rankers are depicted as being apt to reduce the Shanghainese socio-economic elite into powerless shells of what they previously were as well as pawns in their own city).
 

Despite his attempting to suggest that “I’m illiterate but I am smart”, this is not the impression this (re)viewer got about Luk Yuet San.  Instead, this individual increasingly came across as a disappointingly small as well as extremely small-minded man who, even in his humbler days, was saddled with the supposedly archetypal traditional Chinese problem of being overly preoccupied with having and maintaining “face” (at the expense of everything and everyone else).  Worse, with each passing year and rise in social station, there seemed to have developed an increasing cowardly streak on the titular lord’s part that was apt to manifest itself most markedly in the man’s turning to alcohol and sexual practices in times of danger and trauma for his loved ones, others he professed to care for, his supposedly beloved city, and the larger world.
 

An action that resulted in Carina Lau’s Miss Liu character being condemned to terrible torture in the first of this two film series was already pretty hard to take, never mind excuse (the decision of the man who sacrificed one of two women he supposedly loved dearly).  However, LORD OF EAST CHINA SEA II “trumps” this by having a truly disturbing montage which shows Luk Yuet San getting drunk and fornicating -- with Cecilia Yip’s consenting Donna character -- while Japanese soldiers go about doing such as burying alive Chinese men and raping Chinese women (misdeeds which the work’s viewers are left with little doubt that that duo were aware was happening in other parts of Shanghai while they did what they did).  When taken together with his being so ill-prepared for the fall of Shanghai as to be performing Chinese opera when Japanese bombs started to rain on the city and opting to dance with a professional hostess while his eldest son got led away to jail by an enemy, one can only conclude that the ultimate fate that this far from noble person was shown having was one that was actually too good for him to deserve.
 

After spending more than 4 hours viewing LORD OF EAST CHINA SEA II as well as I, I have to confess to feeling pretty puzzled as to why it is that Luk Yuet San was thought worthy of being the subject of any bio-pic, let alone one -- or two, depending on how one counts it -- as lengthy and big budget as this Stephen Chiu production.  Something else that I want to know is how and why it is that prominently billed plus not at all untalented actors and actresses like Elvis Tsui, Carina Lau and Cecilia Yip were accorded so little screen time by the people in charge of making this work (As with Part I, Kent Cheng is about the only other actor other than Ray Lui to have a chance to stamp his presence on the often good looking, but weakly scripted, cinematic fare).  The major thought that kept on occurring to me as I took in this seriously disappointing offering though was that so much had been wasted on making a thoroughly mediocre -- as well as neither very edifying nor entertaining -- movie.

My rating for the film:  5.