stuartmcd

The main problem with Volcano High is that it is half an hour too long. I felt that the first half of the film worked pretty well. The plot was incoherent, but there was a sense of movement, and the tension was building well. But when the evil teachers turned up, and that naughty kid Ryang got beaten up (repeatedly), the film suddenly stopped moving.

For the first part of Volcano High's the action sequences were amiably ludicrous, but also fairly understated. People flew around but no one really cut loose. At the final confrontation, we were ready for a bit of visual hyperbole, and I was expecting something as mind-blowing as the finales to Storm Riders, or Swordsman II, but instead the film closed with a protracted and very dull punch-up.

Visually, though, Volcano High is tremendous. While the action was derivative of the Matrix, it struck me that the camerawork and choreography had more life and grace than in that film. The comedy was amiably goofy, and the actors were charismatic.

So, not a bad film, but I think that any other persons wishing to make wu xia high school comedies can improve the formula by applying more care and attention.

The great thing about this film (and the sort of thing that upsets people who like seeing martial arts fights where you can see every kick and every punch) is that most of the fighting is just blurs of motion punctuated by shouting and clashing blades. This is what I love in HK fantasies: fight scenes that are so incomprehensible you're left going: huh?

Tsui Hark's best example is Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, where the viewer has to actually fill in the blanks for themselves. It's edited in such a way that that the film we see feels like only a portion of the story. In some contexts this technique would be stupid, but in fantasy it's wonderful. It's the inverse of the computer graphics bare-all approach, and it's lucky that we had the HK film industry to provide an alternative to Hollywood in this regard. (I say had, because, since Storm Riders, cg in HK is more prevalent than before.)

This approach to fight scenes is impressionistic, and with the final fightscene in Dao it's almost operatic. At no stage do you get a feeling that the fight is actually rational. The use of sound and music in the film is also wonderful, especially in the menacing flashback scene. It's hard to think of a more effective way of setting up a backstory, and gives new life to that tired old cliche, the revenge story.

So that's all good. Sometimes, however, the impressionism gets a bit out of hand. Things take on a Wong Kar Wai pretentiousness, like the horrible Ashes of time, where Leslie Cheung sits around feeling sorry for himself for no appreciable reason. In Dao, the voiceover of the female character gets really annoying. Her mutterings only really serve to remind us she is there, as she has only one pivotal scene in the film (where tells the hero his origin story).

The film is also a bit over-bloody for my taste, but it certainly leaves one with no illusions about the brutalness of the world in which the film is set.

Dao is one of those films that is so strange and vivid it leaves a strong resonance with the viewer long after it is over. It has faults by the barrel, but I'd rather have it and Tsui Hark with us than a legion of James Camerons and Roland Emmerichs.

The good thing about this film (it was called The 36th Chamber of Shaolin on my cassette box) is that it makes kung fu look really hard -- rather than, as it so often does, like a couple of guys having an angry dance. I guess part of that comes down to talent, and part of it direction and editing.

The film is very slick, and despite the yawn factor of the 'secret mystical sect' schtick, I liked the fact that the training exercises where oblique, and that the only actual shaolin fighting that occurred in the temple came down to the contest scenes with the senior monk. In essence, the film caught, well, the essence of shaolin well. I guess, not having studied there...

The plot isn't particularly imaginative, it has to be said. It's like a five paragraph folk story stretched uncomfortably into 90 minutes of film. The concluding scenes are a bit perfunctory, though it's quite nice seeing a final fightscene where the good guy utterly trounces his foe from start to finish (unlike the endless toing and froing of final battles in films like Fist of Legend). It's refreshing, but it lacks drama, and the monk comes across, as Buddhist monks have to, like a passionless automaton. (The film is a bit humourless as well, it has to be said, leaving one longing for the merry hijinks of an early 90s kung fu fantasy.)

In all, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is an excellently gritty film, although if you want gritty revenge plots I think Tsui Hark's the Blade is a better bet (and a lot trippier).

If you want classical kung fu at its most elemental, this one does the job admirably.