JULY 18 — As a huge fan of fight flicks, I’ve been harping on about Chinese web movies, specifically those on iQIYI, for a few years already.
Due to the peculiarities of international film distribution and the taste-making powers of the media and film critics based in the West, these Chinese web movies are kind of a blind spot to the rest of the world, unless you’re a particularly keen fan of martial arts flicks who doesn’t really mind scouring all corners of the world wide web in search of the latest or next great fight flick or martial arts film star.
If you’ve read some of my columns here, particularly my annual year-end favourite films list, you’d have noticed me going on and on about films like Eye For An Eye: The Blind Swordsman, Eye For An Eye 2: Blind Vengeance, Black Storm and Blade of Fury, all of them iQIYI originals that you can stream on the platform if you’re a subscriber, and you can even watch some of these for free, legally, on YouTube, on their official channel.
The reason why I’m bringing all this up again is that, finally, one of my favourite actors in those iQIYI movies looks set to break through on the international martial arts movie stage with the release of one of the most anticipated action films of the year, The Furious.
That actor is Xie Miao, whose previous claim to fame was as a child actor supporting Jet Li in My Father Is A Hero way back in 1995.
After an almost 15-year break from acting to complete his studies, you can occasionally see his face in some TV series and small or supporting parts in films, with most of his major work happening in the Chinese web movies sector, including favourites of mine like the aforementioned Eye For An Eye movies and the ongoing Fight Against Evil movies.
His first major international spotlight as an adult came courtesy of the global hit The Furious, which made around US$37 million (RM151 million) at worldwide box-office and is set to earn even more now that it has arrived on digital.
The Furious is sort of a double whammy for me because not only does it represent the Chinese web movies that I’ve been loving, courtesy of Xie Miao’s star turn in the lead role, but it also represents another corner of the action movie world that’s not talked about enough — the Japanese fight flick scene — courtesy of debuting director Kenji Tanigaki (who’s the action director/designer for films like Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In and the Rorouni Kenshin films) and action director Kensuke Sonomura (director of the awesome Hydra and Ghost Killer, and also action director on films like One-Percent Warrior and the Baby Assassins films).
Hyped as one of the year’s finest action films, The Furious really does blend the best of both worlds — the sometimes wild and crazy ideas in all those Chinese web movies and the grappling and close-quarters hand to hand combat that has become the trademark of the Japanese action film scene — and deserves all the accolades and box-office success it’s experiencing.
However, if you’re a Xie Miao fan like me, there’s another more under the radar breakthrough happening in China for him, as the previously only straight-to-streaming release of the first two Fight Against Evil films have somehow, against all odds, made it to an actual cinema release for Fight Against Evil 3 earlier in the year.
Never mind that the cinema release was a bit of a box-office disappointment, as it only made around 29 million yuan (RM17.5 million) in cinemas, and iQIYI had to recoup their costs from the film’s online release, but I’d happily argue that the action sequences here, especially those heading towards the film’s climax, can easily rival anything from The Furious, with one or two sequences handled even better than The Furious.
I think one of the contributors towards the film’s box-office disappointment was the fact that tonally, the filmmakers’ decision to lean more towards action comedy during its first act, with some set-pieces sure to remind audiences of Jackie Chan’s brand of action slapstick, is a very unfortunate one.
It’s an acquired taste that I’m not sure everyone can overcome, even if I understand the commercial thinking behind that decision.
But, make no mistake, once the film unleashes itself from that action slapstick shackles, it powers forward as one of the more brutal and awesome action films I’ve seen come out of China, especially if we don’t include those crazy iQIYI straight-to-streaming action flicks, in the last few years.
The plot is even quite identical to The Furious, with both films seeing Xie Miao playing the hero and both in search of a kidnapped young girl.
How fitting and what a coincidence that is, to see Xie Miao announce himself on the world stage with these movies. Let’s hope there’ll be more great stuff to come, because a new international action star has definitely arrived.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
