Bai ma hei qi

By far thee most hilarious, cracked-out kung-fu movie I have EVER seen!!! I am really sad so few people have ever heard of it; this is pure gold!!

Basically, this is a western gangster movie adapted to a rural Chinese kung-fu setting. VERY rural! These two misfits get out of jail by being "volunteered" to "sheriff" some middle-of nowhere podunk town. The town turns out to be completely run by local gangsters, and much back-stabbing and double-crossing ensues.

But this is a comedy! A really ballsey, absurd comedy! And not only that, but as far as I can tell, there is such a reliance on puns and obscure cultural references that didn't translate through to the English dub (and the dub acting is really bizarre/great as well!), that you'll be screaming WTF all the way through the movie!) really, there is some CRAZY stuff in this movie what makes no sense, unless maybe if you are Chinese? Don't expect to have any idea what is going on until you've seen it quite a few times, and even then, some bits are just inexplicable (the hand game? 426? the oranges!?!)

And to top it ALL off, this thing is actually CHOCK FULL OF SOME GREAT KUNG-FU! And it's kinda long, at that! Sure, much of it is totally ridiculous, but the execution and choreography of it all is really quite tight! And where else do you get to see _Yang Sze_ whooping ash with a chair? Crutches? Sandals!? A freakin wok!?!

Still, the story itself is even interesting. An archetypal, fable-like tale of the big dumb brute teaming up with the smart, witty, irreverent trickster to cause tons of mischief.)

Gloriously absurd and discordian to it's fullest.)

The acting, (overacting) directing, and almost impossible to understand English dubbing, make this movie very difficult to watch.

I have reviewed quite a few martial arts films over the last few years, so my hating this film isn't because I don't like the genre. Also, I have a very high tolerance for "bad" martial arts films, so this one had to be really, really bad for me to give up on and and not even finish the film (something I rarely ever do). Understand that I have watched such films to its conclusion as one with guys in gorilla costumes doing kung fu and their masters using their three foot tongues as weapons--yet I just couldn't finish BOLO.

So why did I hate this film so much? Well, it was the worst of all possible worlds. First, the print from EPI/Gotham City was just terrible and the film only came in the cheesy dubbed version. Second, the film was too often played for very broad and dumb laughs. Googly eyes, silly grins, dumb cartoon-like sound effects and an annoying over-the-top gay character all were painfully unfunny. Third, even with bad dubbing and dumb comedy(?), the film could have been decent if the martial arts action had been better--which it wasn't. Instead of hitting each other or doing what looks like real martial arts, it was too choreographed and looked quite fake. Midway through the film, I was fantasizing about Sonny Chiba stomping onto the set and kicking everyone's butt--that's how much I disliked the film.

Yuck.

What seems to be a light hearted comedic kung fu movie is actually a tight psychological thriller with each character reflecting a facet of the psyche of the viewer. Bolo himself represents our hulking innocence. The most innocent and simple tasks become confusing and threatening in Bolo's world. Almost as though Bolo is attempting to reveal our pitiful arrogance by showing us the world through the eyes of the severely mentally retarded and then hanging us with the realization that this is how the world actually is to all of us.

The protagonist comes under attack by increasingly ugly townsfolk thus holding a mirror up to our own culture of destruction as the suspendered representation of our cynicism mockingly sneers at him for denying the baser aspects of existence. And just as our own cynicism grows in reaction to continued exposure to blighted existence, so too does the well dressed man grow in power and influence.

The time period the movie occurs in is unclear as elements of period china, late seventies America, British controlled Hong Kong and Japanese occupation era china seamlessly coalesce giving the picture a very "Titus" sense of epic timelessness

As the movie progresses, allies suddenly attack each other for no reason and 40 seconds later they forget it thus demonstrating the Byzantine conflicts of urges within our own egos. Character development takes a backseat since each character is a timeless human archetype and the change in the movie's personality only occurs with the destruction of all other competing drives.

There is also very terse biblical symbolism throughout the maddeningly complex narrative. Bolo's love for the 7 foot tall stick woman mirroring St Peter's own struggles during the formative days of the Christian religion being only one of hundreds of examples.

Honestly though, this movie cannot be simply deconstructed in a beginner film class by a professor. Undertaking that task is a time consuming and painful spiritual journey to the very brink of oblivion as the movie doesn't shy away from inherent subconscious horrors that lurk in the viewer. To deconstruct the movie would require the entirety of the viewer's graduate study. Additionally the difficulties increase since the film actually manages to weave together an image of the viewer himself. No two people will have the same Bolo experience.

Two misfit convict (Yang Sze and Jason Pai Pao, who both also produced this film) gets out of prison only if they become a lawman in a town full of corruption. Several funny scene including a comical music video highlights this slightly diffrent kung-fu film. Sze, known for playing a Bruce Lee villian in ENTER THE DRAGON directs something diffrent here compare to most Kung-fu film. He also has a diffrent looks, as if he was trying to do a career change. Pao, who was last lead in THE BLACK DRAGON is also good. Recommended to Kung-fu fans.