Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert

Happy to report that, based on the evidence presented here, eighty one year old director Yuen Woo-ping hasn't lost a step when it comes to orchestrating fluent and exciting action sequences. Adapted from a successful Chinese comic series, Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert sadly inherits an indistinct, two-dimensional approach to storytelling from its source material, one that perfectly simulates the act of physically flicking through sketched situations or pouring over columns of clashing horse riders. At one point in the film a great map of the titular wilderness is revealed, said to be the life's work of a departed Khan, but Blades of the Guardians never quite manages to make us believe that its subjects are travelling these huge distances or traversing a three-dimensional landscape. For all the rushing in every direction, the locations of these warriors are dictated, primarily, by whichever battle they need to be taking part in next. Thankfully, Yuen is still very much an expert when it comes to describing these characters through their approach to combat. Wu Jing's Dao Ma, a disgraced cavalryman turned bounty hunter, adapts to the level of danger in front of him: playfully batting away nonthreatening underlings one minute then, when responding to a violent affront, equally adapt at kicking an evil nomad's head clean off their shoulders the next. Highlights include a duel between Dao Ma and Yu Shi's ghostly swordsman in a burning oil field and a not-long-enough interlude that combines Yuen's superheroic wuxia with the horse-hopping action of John Ford's Stagecoach and the swirling, computer-generated peril of Mad Max: Fury Road. 

Tiger Cage

Tiger Cage, director Yuen Woo-ping's take on a modern, urban crime thriller, distinguishes itself from the rest of the streak thanks to a healthy appetite for excess and endangerment. The film's opening shoot-out, when the central narcotics task force are at the height of their powers, is sprawling and relentless. Civilians are caught up in the crossfire as an undercover drug bust spills out onto the streets, before crashing over neon-piped promenades and concrete sprawl. As soon as the police have chased off their quarry, Tiger Cage switches gears to focus in, leadenly, on the forced camaraderie displayed by work acquaintances. The false note these sort of unfunny capers usually strike in similar films actually ends up working in Tiger Cage's favour when it is slowly revealed that several key players within this chuckling department are on the payroll for a heroin smuggling ring. 

As the group dynamic dissipates, the film narrows in on a trio of rookie cops played by Jacky Cheung, Carol Cheng and a young Donnie Yen. Obviously, given that this is film directed by Yuen Woo-ping, Yen is given ample opportunity to shine: his hot-headed plod, Terry, a more than convincing answer to a pair of heavies deployed to massage a dockside drug deal. This is Yen pre-megastardom though, so his high-kicking hold on Tiger Cage is only fleeting. Yen's twirling showcase quickly comes a cropper, suddenly depositing Terry in a situation that is reminiscent of the doomed heroics so beloved of Shaw Brothers great, Chang Cheh. As the stakes continue to ramp up, Tiger Cage only gets meaner and coarser, casually disposing of, apparently, crucial characters and trapping Cheng and Cheung's disgraced fuzz in situations that have more in common with a bloody, Italian horror film than your standard police procedural.

Dynamo

Despite the obvious setback, Bruce Lee's death didn't stop Hong Kong's more devious movie producers from attempting to make new Bruce Lee films. Dozens of counterfeit projects sprang up in the wake of the star's passing, many positioning themselves as sequels or continuations of the actor's brief but transformative career. Dynamo takes a novel approach to this bootlegging. Director Shan Hua's film forgoes picking at the departed actor's scraps to focus instead on the real life rush to find a credible replacement. Dynamo then is a Bruceploitation film specifically about the unsentimental business practices that drove that particular sub-genre - it acknowledges the cynicism, channeling it into an overarching state of anxiety.

Bruce Li plays Lee Ting Yi, a taxi driver who impresses Mary Hon's charming but unscrupulous talent agent with his martial arts skills and muscular good looks. Lee's hackman is exactly what she's looking for: a fresh face for the fame machine. Despite Dynamo's hard-nosed framing, the film keeps Li and Hon's characters apart, essentially in separate pieces. One concerning a likeable backstabber, making a name for herself in the PR trade; the other a mixed-up martial arts film in which a cabby trains with his very own drunken master (an entertaining Ku Feng) before being relentlessly attacked by mobsters in picturesque environments. That Dynamo survives only as a choppy English dub (that may or may not be missing scenes) only exacerbates this sense of disconnection. Li's energetic fight scenes - choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping - are exciting but the threats he faces are dramatically ill-defined and, despite a last-minute kidnapped girlfriend, even strangely impersonal.