"Come Drink With Me" Set The Bar High For Future Wuxia Films With Equally Great Action, Sets and Story

"Come Drink With Me" is a wuxia film from 1966 produced by the legendary Shaw Brothers studio. They practically invented the martial arts movie as we know it today and effectively started the Hong Kong film industry in the 1930s. Credit also goes to the talented directors and actors involved in their films. This particular movie is an early example of the beautifully detailed, beautifully choreographed action movie style that clearly influenced the martial arts epics of recent years by directors Ang Lee, John Woo and Zhang Yimou, among others. In Come Drink With Me, sets and story development are just as important as the fighting.

The film opens up on a conflict between a regional governor during Ming Dynasty China (which was a 300-year period beginning in the 1300s) and a bandit gang. They capture the governor's son because the governor has captured the gang's leader. Golden Swallow (played by Cheng Pei-Pei), the governor's daughter, is sent to settle the matter. She stops at the inn the bandits frequent and asks for liquor. Smiling Tiger Tsu Kan (Lee Wan-Chung), a smarmy man who reflects his namesake well, attempts to negotiate with Golden Swallow but the two do not come to an agreement about prisoner hand-over. That's when "the dance" starts. Each of the bandits, all having a particular weapon speciality of course, start to circle up on her, making "distracting" small talk. She doesn't appear armed but the bandits soon learn what she can do with two short swords she has hidden. Incidentally, Cheng Pei-Pei's nickname is "The Queen Of Swords." This battle ends in somewhat of a stalemate.

The inn scene is also where the main male protagonist enters. Drunken Cat Fan Tai-Pei (Yueh Hua), who appears to be a drunken beggar fool, bangs on the inn door, trying to get in as the fight is going on. As the movie progresses. his true nature begins to show itself. In barging into Golden Swallow's room and expertly stealing her weapons through slight of hand, he gets her out of the room before the bandits can capture her. Then he doles out secret messages in song with a chorus of kids.

Golden Swallow learns that the bandits make their headquarters at a Buddhist monastery. While praying there she encounters the bandit's leader Jade Faced Tiger Yin Chung-Yu (Chan Hung-Lit), a man who's pure white robes contrast with his cruelty (earlier in the movie he kills a young monk with a poison dart to the eye). His face is also covered in white make-up making him look like a cross between David Bowie and The Joker. There's an excellent creep factor with this guy. This encounter leads to another fight but with more bandits this time. Golden Swallow even loses her weapons at one point but a hidden Drunken Cat secretly throws them back to her. Jade Faced Tiger hits her with a poison dart and she barely manages to escape the monastery.

More revelations about Drunken Cat surface when he finds Golden Swallow and nurses her back to health. He has a connection to the corrupt abbot of the monastery and needs to defeat him in the name of justice and honor, which is the reason why he has been helping Golden Swallow. They agree to work together to accomplish each other's goals. Drunken Cat's arc exemplifies the story within a story element common in Asian cinema.

The next big battle happens when the prisoner exchange doesn't go as planned. Golden Swallow and a band of other female fighters take on the bandits, including Jade Faced Tiger and Smiling Tiger, while Drunken Cat settles his score with Abbot Liao Kung (Yueng Chi-Hing) and shows off his impressive kung fu skills. This is also the point where the movie gets a bit cheesy. Drunken Cat and Lioa Kung have chi powers which manifest themselves as what appears to be icy wind from their fingertips. Since the Force in "Star Wars" is modeled after things like this it's impossible not to think of it as such. The 1966-level special effects don't look that great. You can see the chi powers coming from nozzles in their sleeves. This really isn't necessary to the plot or even the action because the two adversaries easily distinguish themselves through hand-to-hand fighting. It kind of takes you out of the movie a bit because there's no indication of an fantasy-like elements in the rest of the film.

Like any good action movie, the good guys defeat the bad guys. The contrast between the more one-on-one fight of Drunken Cat and the Abbot and the pitched battle between multiple forces with Golden Swallow and her warriors versus the bandits provides a nice well-rounded conclusion.

One calling card of wuxia films as opposed to some other martial arts movies is the attention to detail in the world outside the fighting. This is probably due to wuxia's origin as literature. This movie is not the expansive epic of say "Red Cliff" or the emotion-filled "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" but you do get to know most of the characters as people and not just as fighters. "Come Drink With Me" is clearly an influence on and important precursor to the modern wuxia movie like the aforementioned films. Director King Hu had a background in set design and it shows in this movie. The buildings, inside and out, are both intricate and look used. Their fully-realized nature enhances the viewing experience and transports you into the Ming Dynasty. Nothing feels too much like a set. Also, the costumes each character wears are distinctive and reflect their personalities. Possibly the most important triumph of this movie is that there's a strong female protagonist in Golden Swallow. This was not something seen much in 1960s films of any genre.

Despite the hiccups, the half-baked chi powers and an altogether poor subtitle translation that lends an air of confusion to certain scenes (which really isn't the movie's fault itself though),"Come Drink With Me" is a great movie. The vastness of it's scope for the time period it was made in, plus the fully-formed plot and the great kung fu and sword-fighting action, make for a film where all the pieces fit.

"Iron Monkey" Is A Seamless Blend Of Kung Fu Action, Political Intrigue And Humor

"Iron Monkey," from 1993, like several Asian films, is not actually about the perceived main character. This movie serves as an origin story of Wong Fei-hung, a real 19th century martial arts master, acupuncturist and revolutionary. Since his death in 1924 he has become a folk hero and has begun to slip into semi-mythical status as some of the hundreds of film depictions of his life are less than historically accurate. In "Iron Monkey" Wong Fei-hung is a kid, traveling around with his stern martial artist father Wong Kei-ying. The events of this movie influence Fei-hung to become a champion of the people.

The Wongs (The father played by Donnie Yen and the boy played by Angie Tsang - yes, a little girl played a little boy) arrive in a town with an inequity problem. There are many in poverty while the regional governor Cheng (James Wong) hoards all the gold and the best food for himself. But somebody is doing something about it, a Robin Hood-like character in the form of the masked and black-clad Iron Monkey. Yang Tianchun (Yu Rongguang) is the Iron Monkey. He is a respected doctor who often gives free medical service to the poor and charges the rich to pay for it. This is a guy Occupy Wall Street would love. At night he uses his stealthy kung fu skills to take gold from the rich to give to the poor. When he robs the governor the greedy man orders bumbling Chief Fox (Yuen Shun-Yi), his head of security, to apprehend the Iron Monkey. Anybody who is good at martial arts and/or has any association with monkeys is considered a suspect. This leads to some funny arrests like a man who supposedly "sneezes like a monkey."

Wong Kei-ying and Wong Fei-hung are arrested. Kei-ying agrees to help capture the Iron Monkey if the governor will let his son go. The governor says he will only after the Iron Monkey is defeated. Kei-ying finds that most of the locals hate him for cooperating with the despised governor and won't sell him any food. In comes Doctor Yang to the rescue and the plot device of him helping the man who's trying to bring him in and shut him down.

Eventually Wong Kei-ying learns the truth about Yang and why he spends his nights as the Iron Monkey and the two agree to join forces to take down the governor. But a new threat arises in the corrupt Shaolin monk Hin-hung (Yen Shi-kwan), who matches Governor Cheng's spineless greed with an evil disregard for life. Hin-hung is an imperial official who takes over the Governorship and vows to take down the Iron Monkey himself. Hin-hung and his band of frankly ugly, sneering monks and one sword-wielding disfigured nun provide much more of the challenge than the previous governor's men. Chief Fox turns out to not be such a bad guy after all, certainly not the Sheriff of Nottingham-type of character he was in the beginning and secretly and not-so-secretly helps the Iron Monkey. From this point, the fighting action from everybody, including young Fei-hung, builds up to a final confrontation for Wong Kei-ying and Doctor Yang against the evil monk.

The fight scenes are excellent in this movie. But you can expect that from director Yuen Woo-ping, well known in both Asia and the U.S. for his action choreography. The fights are interesting to watch and expertly use the environment of the sets and props, like wooden beams, filled burlap sacks, tile roofs, tables, chairs, fire, clothing etc., as weapons and staging areas. Each fighter also clearly has their own style which also reflects their individual personalities well. This drives home the fact that martial arts is just as much mental as physical.

The humor is weaved seamlessly into the action and the politically-charged plot. Nothing feels too forced. Governor Cheng is a great weaselly, sniveling character, forever complaining about and chasing after his multiple wives. There's a great scene where Yang and his assistant Miss Orchid (Jean Wang) dress up as imperial officials to steal from the Governor. Both are wearing fake-looking beards and talking in funny accents. In one scene, Yang tells a rich patient that he is over-sexed and needs to lay off the shark-fin soup.

The one flaw in "Iron Monkey" is that Miss Orchid could have been developed better. She has some good fight scenes but is still fairly one-dimensional. It seem like her addiction was mostly to provide additional evidence that Doctor Yang is a kind and ethical man, as there is a flashback scene, filmed in an oddly thick blue hue, of him rescuing Orchid from either being raped or killed.

"Iron Monkey" is a great introduction to a Chinese folk hero portrayed as an adult by such stars as Jackie Chan and Jet Li. This is also a very well-rounded movie that appeals to all types of audiences with it's pleasing mix of fluid kung fu action, political intrigue and comedy. This type of film is a good gateway drug and jumping off point to both the longer, denser and more complex epic, historical period wuxia movies and to the leaner-plotted, fighting-focused kung fu films.