6/25/2020

Career Tribute: Tony Leung Will Break Your Heart


Tony Leung Will Break Your Heart
by Jen Johans



Soulful, stirring, and often somber, even when he isn’t playing a lover, Tony Leung will break your heart. Famously dubbed by “The Times” in London as “Asia's answer to Clark Gable,” the Hong Kong native (whose full name is Tony Leung Chiu-wai) is one of the most acclaimed and adored actors of his generation.


Routinely reading his scripts at least forty times before – as he confessed to “The Guardian” – possibly calling the writer in the middle of the night with his thoughts, for Leung (who celebrates his birthday on June 27), acting is not so much a profession as it is his addiction . . . as well as his therapeutic recovery.


Giving him an outlet for the feelings he'd been holding onto since he was a shy, repressed child whose gambler father had walked out on the family when Leung was just six-years-old, the ability to exorcise his emotions under the guise of playing someone else hooked him as soon as he signed up for an acting course at the age of nineteen.


Quickly finding stardom on the small screen in the early 1980s as the protagonist of the popular series “Police Cadet” – opposite his soon-to-be frequent leading lady Maggie Cheung – Tony Leung was one of five up-and-coming young male stars who were labeled “TVB's Five Tigers,” which you could liken to Hong Kong television's answer to the Brat Pack.


Making the move to film, Leung found his way into early critically and commercially successful ventures like Taiwanese helmer Hou Hsiao-hsien's Venice Film Festival award-winner “A City of Sadness” in 1989 and John Woo's “Hard Boiled” in 1992.


Reuniting with Woo two years after he worked with the director on his personal opus “Bullet in the Head," in the now contemporary crime classic “Hard Boiled," Leung was cast opposite one of Hong Kong's biggest box office draws, Mr. Chow Yun-fat.


A veteran performer who'd starred in the epic crime series “A Better Tomorrow,” and “The Killer,” both of which had turned him and Woo into huge box office sensations, it was Chow who was given the undisputed lead role in Woo's final Hong Kong “bullet ballet” before the director made the move to Hollywood.


The end result marked a decidedly different outing for the filmmaker. Criticized for glamorizing killers in his earliest films with Chow, in “Hard Boiled” – which underwent copious changes in its 123-day shoot after the death of screenwriter Barry Wong – Woo opted to use the same formula he'd had success with before, only this time with a police officer in the role of the protagonist.


Not playing a hitman or gangster this time but a hard-headed, impetuous cop nicknamed “Tequila” who's eager to bring down the Triads responsible for his partner's death, just as he did in “A Better Tomorrow” and “The Killer,” it's the wildly charismatic Chow Yun-fat who has the showiest role in Woo's film.


Yet, written as a cross between Don Johnson in “Miami Vice” and Bruce Willis in “Die Hard,” as marvelous as he is in “Hard Boiled,” because it's missing the same quiet poetry of his romantic antihero in “The Killer,” the film's soul is found less in Chow's lead than it is in the subtly mesmerizing turn by supporting player Tony Leung. And with this in mind, on repeat viewings, you'll notice that it's Leung who manages to sneak in and – while you're being dazzled by Chow's ability to fend off a hospital full of armed assassins while cradling newborn babies – sails away with your heart. In fact, the first person to acknowledge this was Chow himself who felt like the film's final cut removed some important moments for his admittedly one-dimensional character to show the depth of his feelings, which is why Leung's supporting turn rings so true.


At least partially inspired by Alain Delon's character in Jean-Pierre Melville's crime classic “Le Samuraï,” “Hard Boiled” finds Leung in the type of coolly contemplative role that has since become synonymous with the star while playing a police officer who's been on a deep undercover assignment with the Triads for far too long.


Torn by his allegiance to two father figures on both sides of the law who ask him to kill and protect in equal measure, the only peace Leung finds is from living a solitary life on his boat. Docked in the bay, much like his yacht, Leung is forever waiting to set out for a new life on a new land far away from everything he knows and wants to forget. Making paper cranes as a form of penance and acknowledgment of the lives he's taken, Leung's tragic yet compelling internal struggle adds emotional depth to what is otherwise a completely awe-inspiring work of action filmmaking.


Giving him the more romantic inclinations that wouldn't have been out of place for Chow's killer in “The Killer,” even though it's Chow who's in an on-again, off-again relationship with his superior (Teresa Mo) in “Hard Boiled,” it's Leung who sends her white roses and coded Elvis lyrics when he needs to convey a message to the police department.


And in this respect, Leung's performance in “Hard Boiled” marks a terrific precursor to his staggering turn in Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's 2002 “Infernal Affairs” trilogy, which was remade by Leung's favorite American filmmaker – Martin Scorsese – as “The Departed” in the states with Leonardo DiCaprio in the Leung role.


A top-notch work of Hong Kong cop noir and a great introduction to Leung for new film fans hoping to see something a little more western minded before they venture onto the actor's more daring art films, even though it was made twenty-eight years ago, “Hard Boiled” still feels fresher than most CGI heavy, assembly-line manufactured action movies being released today.


But as great as he is at adding hidden layers to his co-lead or supporting characters in his mainstream Hong Kong fare, it's the lovers that come to mind most when you think of Tony Leung and doubly so when you look back on his heyday in the '90s and early '00s.


So fiercely devoted to his craft that he'll learn anything for the right collaborator, film, and/or role, when it came time to meet up once again with his most frequent director Wong Kar-wai in Argentina for the gorgeous gay love story "Happy Together" in 1997, Leung took up not only the tango but also Spanish. Still, this was not the only time he would adopt a whole new language for a role. Most notably, Leung learned Mandarin for Zhang Yimou's 2002 stunner "Hero," which, despite being dubbed in the final release, paid off for Leung five years later when he spoke Mandarin in Ang Lee's startling film "Lust, Caution."


Yet, regardless of the dialect that Leung takes on in the multilingual "Happy Together," fans of Wong Kar-wai know that his films are truly universal. Dedicated to the human connection we need and crave in others (director Sofia Coppola is a huge fan), Wong's movies speak a language we immediately understand – a language Leung is more than fluent in throughout his filmography – the language of love.


"Let's start over." Habitually said by his “Happy Together” character's flighty lover (played by Leslie Cheung) whenever he hopes to reunite with Leung's romantically drained lead and begin anew, “let's start over” is the refrain that holds the pair in each other's orbit after they venture from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires and break up yet again.


Knowing that he can no longer let himself backslide into a relationship where the two men's affection for one another is outweighed by suspicion and mistrust, by the end of the film that garnered Wong Kar-wai the prize for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, Leung's protagonist knows that in order to start over, he's going to have to ignore the “let's” and go it alone.


Watched in quick succession with Woo's “Hard Boiled,” the parallels are obvious between his '92 solitary protagonist and the conflicted one he plays here who's heartbroken by his lot in life and his relationships with others, from his ex-lover to his father to a co-worker with possible romantic potential. And indeed, the double-edged sword of promise and penance wrapped up in the phrase “let's start over” seems to apply not only to his “Happy Together” character in one of Leung's strongest performances to date but to all of the men he's played for Woo, Wong, Zhang, Lee, and beyond.


Yet although his collaborations have been legendary, in the more than half a dozen films they've made together over the past three decades, in the end, it's Wong Kar-wai who seems to best understand how to use Leung's penchant for emotional complexity to disarm viewers and draw them in. Famous for his chaotic productions which find Wong shooting without a script – and often with only a kernel of an idea as to who each character should be which might change multiple times during the improvisational shoot as the actors feel things out with his guidance – the trust and respect the two have for one another is unmatched.


While “Happy Together” marked one of Leung's most soulful performances for the filmmaker, the actor is perhaps most famous for Wong's “Chungking Express” – where he played a lovesick cop so distracted by an ex that he nearly misses the chance at a new love – and the director's 2000 masterpiece “In the Mood for Love.” Starring in the latter as a repressed married man living in 1960s Hong Kong who develops an attraction to the wife of the man his wife is having an affair with (played by Maggie Cheung), "Mood" finally garnered Tony Leung the award for Best Actor from the Cannes Film Festival that everyone assumed would've been his three years before for “Happy Together.”


Skilled at bringing to life his own unique brand of morally and internally beleaguered men who fall in love without trying and want to start over but can't until they figure out what (and who) it is that they truly want, Leung shined exceptionally bright in Zhang Yimou's 2002 film “Hero" as the epitome of this type of role.


Inspired by Jing Ke's assassination attempt on the King of Qin which took place in 227 B.C., in “Hero,” Jet Li's nameless swordsman regales the king with tales of his successful battles against three of the man's most wanted enemies, including a man named Broken Sword (Leung) who fights alongside his lady love Falling Snow (played once again by Maggie Cheung).


A secondary supporting character whose true motives are uncertain for nearly two-thirds of the stylish wuxia feature, as Li shares his version of the events that brought him to the palace, we see the plot involving Leung's character unfold a handful of different ways as Li's narrative evolves from start to finish.


Is Broken Sword a jealous, possessive lover who acts impetuously and seduces Zhang Ziyi out of brokenhearted spite at Cheung's one-night affair with Donnie Yen? Is he a resigned, peaceful man who's outgrown life as a warrior? Or is he something else entirely – something that exists halfway between the two poles?


Leung's performance in “Hero” is passionate, ponderous, and (once again) predominantly quiet. A subtle turn overall, Broken Sword allows the actor to play both sides of the same solitary, zen-like coin of the man he's embodied for most of his career – a man who's looking to start again but doesn't completely know how to do so.


A gripping, somber, and lushly beautiful epic that found Leung and Cheung hired by Zhang precisely because he loved their chemistry in Wong's “In the Mood for Love,” the fascinating “Hero” questions how history is made and asks whether a sacrifice crafted from love carries just as much weight as one made of sword and blood.


Much like “Hard Boiled,” and “Happy Together,” “Hero” is proof once again that – having perfected silence as a child only to live to manifest his repressed emotions as an adult – Tony Leung plays thoughtful, quietly tormented men better than nearly anyone since Robert De Niro. (Thus, it should come as no surprise that De Niro and Leung are mutual fans of each other's work.) Always ready to learn a new skill and speak a new language besides – of course – love, in his richest and most daring performances, Tony Leung puts everything on the line to break your heart while also risking his own. He's the addiction as well as the cure.



Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reservedhttps://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

6/17/2020

Movie Review: Babyteeth (2019)




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In the startlingly original coming-of-age romance Babyteeth, first-time feature filmmaker Shannon Murphy brings the abstract concepts of love and death deliriously to life just as they're set to collide. 

Centering on the unlikely romance that develops between Eliza Scanlen's terminally ill fifteen-year-old Sydney, Australia girl Milla and a twenty-three-year-old small-time drug dealer named Moses (Toby Wallace), the film, which was written by Rita Kalnejais and based upon her eponymous play, is as starkly bitter as it is surprisingly sweet.

 A far cry from director Adam Shankman's pretty as a picture adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks weepie A Walk to RememberBabyteeth is driven less by the protracted drama that often accompanies most end-of-life movies than it is dependent upon the ever-changing emotions of the individuals at the heart of the film who are stuck in life's cruelest predicament. 


Messy, soaring, angry, feverish, freewheeling, and impulsive, Babyteeth doesn't alternate between moods so much as it does embrace them as they happen simultaneously. Early on in the movie, this culminates in one particularly chaotic scene when Milla brings her new friend Moses home for dinner.

Barely functioning from too much anxiety medication doled out by her psychiatrist husband Henry (a tremendous Ben Mendelsohn), Milla's protective mother Anna (a strong Essie Davis) isn't quite sure how to process this new development. Hurt that instead of meeting her mother at the beauty parlor to get her hair chopped off, Milla trusted a cute stranger with access to dog-grooming equipment instead, as Anna watches the two together, you sense that the thing she's jealous of most is that Moses stole time away from her daughter that was rightfully hers. 

Instantly suspicious of the twenty-something – who makes a far worse second impression on Milla's parents by breaking into their kitchen in the middle of the night to look for drugs – Henry and Anna are stopped from calling the authorities when they see the excitement in their daughter's eyes at his return. Ignoring the real reason for Moses' visit, as Milla chats animatedly with her new crush, her parents recognize something that they haven't seen in their daughter in quite some time – hope. 


Defying the two by kissing Moses goodbye when her mother drops her off at school, it takes a few more run-ins with the young man for Henry and Anna to realize that no matter how much they might disagree, if their daughter likes him, right now that's all that matters. 

Admirably, however, Babyteeth doesn't sugar-coat the fact that Moses is a homeless drug addict, dealer, and thief. Challenged to evolve thanks to Milla's love – like every single one of the film's main characters – it's to Scanlen and Wallace's credit that we begin to see Moses through her hopeful gaze early on. A powerful breakthrough by the actor who won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor for his performance at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, Babyteeth also marks a strong follow-up by Scanlen to her similarly tragic turn in Greta Gerwig's 2019 adaptation of Little Women.  

Fearing and knowing that Wallace's Moses will break her heart at least once, the frenetic hand-held cinematography of DP Andy Commis pulls us tightly into the frame alongside our young protagonist. Putting us on equal footing with Henry and Anna throughout Murphy's intentionally visceral film, we feel as lost, protective, loving, and as desperate as Milla's parents do to try to make everything okay . . . at least for now. 


Visually inspired by A Woman Under the Influence and Breaking the Waves, Murphy is smart enough to remember that this is a film about a teenage girl after all. Filling Babyteeth's aesthetically pleasing cinematography with bright, bold hues to heighten the film's sense of urgency, as soon as those colors leave the screen for any length of time, the tone shifts almost imperceptibly and we start to feel on edge. 

Stirred by the soulful, sensitive turns by the dynamic ensemble, while the entire cast is outstanding, Babyteeth belongs to Ben Mendelsohn overall. Having taken a backseat to Scanlen and Wallace in the third act along with Davis, the Animal Kingdom film star sneaks back in to give one of the most achingly true, tender performances of his entire career in the film's gorgeous, succinct coda. 


A major directorial debut from the veteran small screen helmer, in Babyteeth, Murphy battles against the conventions of the women's weepie subgenre. A study of contrasts, the film is a fervent reminder that as prepared as we think we are for love, life, or death – since we have no idea how we'll deal with anything until it actually happens – it's better to have as much back-up as we possibly can.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reservedhttps://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

6/11/2020

Film Movement Movie Review: The Killing Floor (1984)



Now Available to Rent



An incisive fact-based chronicle of the first big attempt made by Chicago slaughterhouse workers to fight against workplace abuse by joining an interracial union — before the city erupted in chaos during the horrific race riots of 1919 — gifted actor turned director Bill Duke's The Killing Floor originally premiered on PBS network's acclaimed series "American Playhouse" in 1984.

Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (in addition to contributions by foundations, corporations, and unions from across the country), Floor was made three years after President Reagan made the shocking decision to fire eleven thousand striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization in 1981. The recipient of the Special Jury Award from the Sundance Film Festival, watching The Killing Floor now in 2020, I couldn't help but feel that Duke's searing work is even timelier today than it was in 1984. 


In a quietly powerful, moving, multilayered performance, Apocalypse Now and Death Wish actor Damien Leake steps into the role of young Mississippi sharecropper Frank Custer. And in his voice-over narration that opens the film and reoccurs throughout, we watch as Frank leaves his wife and children behind to try to find a better life for them all. Traveling along with his best friend and lifelong neighbor Thomas (Ernest Rayford), the two men make the journey to Chicago as just two of the tens of thousands of southern Black citizens who ventured north to where jobs were plentiful during the first world war.

Eager to find work in the industrialized "promised land" and then send for their loved ones to come and join them as well, the men report to the stockyard of one of the city's five huge meatpacking plants. No stranger to the work since — as Frank explains — he'd killed lots of hogs back in Mississippi, once he takes a position in the stockyard, it takes him a little while to realize why certain coworkers stick together in packs.

Witnessing the power of the unionized group in action as they stand tall to prevent one of their own from being fired — regardless of the land he emigrated from and the language that he speaks — it isn't until Frank attends his first meeting that he becomes inspired to join the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America Union. Yet while Frank initially flourishes, things don't work out the same way for Thomas. After getting badly beaten in the "the hide room" on his first day at the plant, Thomas decides to give up that pursuit, walk away from the racists who'd beaten him bloody, and enlist in the first world war instead. 


Featuring a dynamic cast of top-notch character actors including Alfre Woodard and Moses Gunn as well as Chicago theater veterans like Dennis Farina and John Mahoney, the film was given a full 4K DCP digital restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2019 in honor of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Chicago race riots, which are depicted and covered in the movie. 

With so much going on right now regarding the incredibly important Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the gruesome murder of George Floyd as well as Trump's efforts to divide the populace with hate and misinformation — in a tactic that the meatpacking industry used to stop the unions in 1919 — there has never been a better time to watch this powerful film than right now.

Ending with a chilling coda that lets us know exactly what happened to all involved and also credits the heroic efforts of the laborers in the interracial union who paved the way for the union protection that the workers would receive in the 1930s, The Killing Floor is a truly compelling, blistering, and vital historical document. 


Heartbreaking when you consider that as the global war against Covid-19 rages on, workers in meatpacking plants are some of the hardest hit by the disease, the film — which was written by Leslie Lee and based on a story from producer Elsa Rassbach — makes me curious to learn more about the evolution of the industry's union over the last hundred years.

Although he was no stranger to directing TV by 1984, The Killing Floor takes Bill Duke's role as a future filmmaker to a whole new level and foreshadows his great work to come as he gives voice to people who are normally overlooked onscreen. From his commitment to the period and ability to transform what in someone else's hands might have been too stagy given the film's limited budget and sets, etc., Floor crystallizes Duke's greatest strength. Namely, as an actor himself, he knows precisely how to get the performances he needs out of his talented cast to make his character-driven humanistic work connect with his audience. The end result of his efforts is a film you cannot miss. Powerful, hard-hitting, but still exceptionally and tenderly crafted, UCLA's lustrous new restoration of The Killing Floor premieres in virtual cinemas this weekend, courtesy of Film Movement


Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reservedhttps://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

6/04/2020

Movie Review: Hammer (2019)




Now Available



In this efficiently made, swiftly paced new thriller from award-winning Canadian filmmaker Christian Sparkes, one impulsively bad decision begets another when Chris Davis (Mark O'Brien) tries and fails to execute a double-cross in a drug deal gone terribly wrong.

Grabbing a dirt bike from the scene when he's caught in the crosshairs of a gun, Chris barely escapes with his life before he's caught once again. Luckily, it's not by the dealer (Ben Cotton) this time but rather his estranged father Stephen (Will Patton) who happens to see Chris fleeing from the scene of the crime when he's stopped in traffic in the crossroads of his small Canadian border town and hits his own gas pedal in response. 


He soon catches up to Chris, whom we discover in a key line of dialogue had been forced out of his family's lives when he'd gotten in trouble for this sort of thing before. But when Stephen sees the panic in his son's eyes and the blood on his sleeve, he puts all of his preconceived notions of right and wrong out of his mind and offers his help.

Introducing us to the first of the three other members of the Davis family who will be ensnared in this debacle to varying degrees by the time the film is over, Hammer uses the universal theme of the blood ties that bind to transcend what might otherwise have been a narrative derived solely from first-person films noir. 

Fusing the drama together with a light dose of symbolism as well as raising questions of moral responsibility toward not only parents to their children but children to their parents as well, Hammer serves as a clever reminder that crime rarely impacts one person alone but instead affects every individual that person loves. The impetus for the film overall, in his sophomore effort and follow-up to his multi-award-winning feature debut Cast No Shadow, Sparkes intentionally set out to challenge "perceptions of who criminals are and where they come from." 


Wisely setting Hammer in the suburbs and focusing on an entire family (as opposed to only the criminal upon whom most genre films tend to fixate), together with its economical storytelling, this approach places us right inside the car alongside Stephen and Chris as they barrel down the road towards danger and the unknown for the rest of the movie's lean eighty-two minute running time. 

Although in need of a bit more closure and perhaps, one more hurdle to bring the rest of the family – especially the mother (played by Vickie Papavs) – more effectively into the proceedings than the last act offers, Hammer is still an impressively tense nerve-jangler overall. Benefiting from its dynamic cast, the film is bolstered in particular by its two leads, namely Mark O'Brien who first caught my attention in AMC's acclaimed word-of-mouth hit series Halt and Catch Fire, and veteran character actor Will Patton who's been stealing scenes since the 1980s. 

Released in Canada in 2019 and newly unveiled for rent on VOD in the states this week, in Hammer, Christian Sparkes proves once again that you don't need a big budget or special effects to catch viewers in the crosshairs of inventive character-driven suspense.


Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reservedhttps://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.