Dreadnought
by Alex
Martial arts flicks are like the Catholic Mass – if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. The key to appreciating them comes in understanding the variations in each and the history that lies behind them. Faure’s Requiem is a wonder to listen to, but it’s even more amazing if you understand its extended, sublime setting of the Pie Jesu in contradistinciton to to Mozart’s wrathful Dies Irae. So too with martial arts films, which are – like all cultural production – inevitable commentators on the tradition out of which they emerged and responses to what has come before. And Dreadnought, like Faure’s Requiem, wafts us up to heaven on angelic wings of hook-happy chop-sockey virtuosity.
If you are a fan of martial arts flicks like I am, you get a bit teary-eyed the minute that Wong Fei-Hung’s theme song starts playing. Like the X-Men or Jesus Christ, Wong Fei-Hung is a character that the popular imagination refuses to give up on. We’ve grown up on them. Every time Kitty slides through a wall or Jesus says something obscure about finding coins under a bed we nod in comprehension – we know where this is going. So it is with Wong Fei-Hung flicks. The minute we see the child Fei-Hung and his father enter in Iron Monkey significantly clutching their umbrellas, we know the whole future story, from Jackie Chan’s impish misbehavior as the adolescent Fei-Hung in Drunken Master II to Jet Li’s Confucian rectitude in Once Upon a Time in China. This biographical scope sweetens a viewing of Yuen Woo Ping’s Dreadnought all the more – one of the earliest Wong Fei-Hung movies filmed and simultaneously one of the latest in the character’s biography, this flick fulfills our expectations more fully than the Gospel of Mark or the now-hoary Trial of Magneto in X-Men Episode #200.
The movie is, quite simply, perfect in idea and execution. Kwan Tak Hing excels as the elderly wuxia – indeed, watching the last of his landmark performances of Wong Fei-Hung (cited by Fei-Hung’s widow as ‘just like him’!) makes you keenly aware of the massive shadow out of which Jet Li and Jackie Chan were trying to step. And a youthful Yuen Biao excels as the timid laundry boy whose mastery of textile-washing kung fu allows him to blossom – in a single fight – into a hero.
This film has got it all. I’ve already mentioned the out of control laundry-kung fu (including a training sequence that puts the sequence in Tai Chi Master to shame). But there’s more. The scene where Fe-Hung fights off the ‘Demon Tailor’ while simultaneously being measured for a suit is just a start. And let’s not forget the full-on martial arts medical diagnosis that involves Fei-Hung setting his own hand alight in a sort of Chinese pyrotechnic version of a Vic’s Vapo-Rub rubdown. Finally, the movie feaures a Lion Dance scene which is quite simply the best I have ever seen on film or anywhere, period. Liberal playing of the Wong family theme song and a decent dose of No-Shadow kicks more than makes up for the lack of umbrella work.
But in the final accounting, it is Kwan Tak Hing as the elderly Fei-Hung that carries the day. As irrepressible in old age as he was in youh, Hing’s (Tak Hing’s? Kwan’s?) Fei-Hung is as compelling as you would expect from a man who has played him in over 80s films. Like the chariot race is Ben Hur, Kwan Tak Hing maintains his classical compellingness despite – or perhaps because – of the advances made in special effects in recent decades. We’re talking about a man who played to soldiers during the Sino-Japanese War. His performance as Wong Fei-Hung at the age of 76 is exactly as remarkable as the opus he had created up to that point – which is to say, ‘extremely’.
With Dreadnought now available on DVD, a valuable piece of cinematic history is finally available to a wider audience. Let he who has ears hear.
I agree with you 99% on this review: I don’t think it can be considered one of the earliest interpretations of Fei-Hung on screen. As you noted, Kwan Tak Hing played him in a series of films (“Wong Fei Hung And The…” were the titles, akin to the Hollywood “Road To” movies). Additionally, Jackie Chan’s “Drunken Master” pre-dates it, as well as two Shaw Bros. features (those titles elude me at the moment) starring “Kill Bill”s very own Gordon Liu. An interesting note is that the Kwan Tak Hing’s original serialization was realized at 99 films, as 99 is a lucky number.
But yes, Dreadnought is more dope than a joint at a Cypress Hill cd release party. Coincidentally, I’m attending this event tomorrow.
Damn. It”s on dvd now, huh? better pick that one up ASAP. Appreciate the heads up on that.
And again, “Dreadnought” deserves the attention you paid it.
A good review (and not just in the “I like this movie” sense), but why start by dissing the genre? “Martial arts flicks are like the Catholic Mass – if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all” I would expect from a cultural fashion victim, not a professed fan. And the slur isn’t even remotely true, as you well know.
Cmndr. Plaza – You know, I knew that line about it being the first wasn’t true when I wrote it but then I still wrote it. I think I meant ‘first modern’ or ‘before the main stream flicks we mostly know’ (I don’t think Jackie’s original Drunken Master strays heavily into the W F-H mythos, but it’s been years since I’ve seen it). Craig – I appreciate your fervor, but I think you need to give more respect to the mass. :)
Alex -That is true; “Dreadnaught” came at a time when activity on the Shaw Bros. studios were a recent memory, and Golden Harvest had also lost its recent supernova, Bruce Lee. And really, Jackie’s “Drunken Master” jams (and do they jam) could be about any ol’ character, except that he is called Wong Fei-Hung, and when he puts the Drunken smackdown on Hwang Jong-Lee at the end “Under The General’s Orders” swells up to play him on to victory.
Craig -I’m totally tracking what you said. However, I am lucky enough to be a friend of Alex for eons now, and what I bet he meant was, “if you’ve seen one, you UNDERSTAND the structure of them all.” I’m also betting, Craig, that you have seen (and loved as deeply as Alex or myself) many films of the genre, and if you were introduced to a new one X minutes into it, you could track what is going on and what it is about -usually piety, vengeance, or the dastardly acts of a monk with white eyebrows.