Jianyu (2010)

"I would turn into a bridge for 500 years and endure the wind and rain"

It probably sounds as melancholic as a soaked cat meowing in the rain, but this is one of the few good lines in the first half of the script from the movie I'm writing about today. Nevertheless .. I'm still writing, because there is a second half of the movie (or maybe because I'm in the same mood with the cat mentioned above .. even though there isn't any rain on the horizon)

"Jianyu" or "Reign of Assassins" as international title, is said to be the most recent movie directed by John Woo, but not exactly by John Woo ... how come ? Well .. it seems that what John Woo directly did was to coordinate some action scenes, and his name was placed on the posters more for marketing purposes. But, probably this doesn't matter too much. The movie is a wuxia = asian fantasy = the genre with ancient martial arts mastering heroes (more or less flying around) + the related setting (usually middle age China). Even if I have a pretty positive opinion in general about the asian cinema (there is a sufficient number of good movies produced there that get only limited distribution worldwide), I never was really a fan of wuxia. Actually I was really disappointed by probably the most known title of the genre: "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". The only exception is "Hero" which had a nice story and was quite good in visual terms. Well, going back to "Jianyu", what can I say is that I have mixed feelings about it .. but it might be better to tell a bit about its story first ..

It is said that long ago, a Buddhist monk managed to master the most hidden skills of kung-fu .. and after that died. But even if his soul was gone to other realms .. the body of course remained on terrestrial grounds. And considering the CV of the deceased guy those bones were ranked as holy relic, a rumor being spread, that whoever gets them will master also the martial arts. Well, because of that many people, among them various assassin clans are trying to get the relics, these being split in two parts at some point. The movie starts with an attack against a minister who is in possession of half of the holy body, attack conducted by one of the mentioned assassin clans - "The Dark Stone". Following the attack the minister and his son are killed, and a women, member of the clan, manages to steal the relics and to run away. At least this is how things are presented by the first minutes of the movie. Of course all this doesn't play well with the plans of the clan's chief, a guy pretty much resembling Darth Vader, carrying a hood to cover his eyes and speaking with a gloomy whispering voice (no breath filters added though, we're in the middle age China). Well, to give a conclusion for the movie's initial setting, the idea is that the assassin gone rogue with the relics gets on the most wanted list for the recovery of the loss and this is pretty much the point from the plot develops on.

There are some more things to tell about the first part of the movie, but it will reveal too much. Especially considering that what's above pretty much covers already the essential storyline for the first half. And as I said in the intro this first half is ... simply put .. a mess. Even if it's superb visually and also considering the audio part (as all the movie actually) the script is close to plain rubbish. The actors actually probably deserve a lot of appreciation for managing to keep it somehow "watchable" considering the exaggerated drama that's typical for asian cinema however, the lack of credibility even in the case of a fantasy which makes it to seem pretty stupid quite often, and also the flashbacks that are interwoven in such a bad manner that you probably should watch those parts at least twice to get the point. Well, something changes after the first half .. the action starts to make sense. A love story that seems quite stupid in the first place reveals much more complex stuff behind it and gets to generate the first major twist in the movie. You can see it coming from some point onwards, but it still adds a lot (even with a bit of cheesy drama that's added, but again this is typically for romance stuff in asian cinema). Actually everything starts to make sense as I said in the second part. Even the scenes you were initially tempted to laugh about, like the Darth Vader character voice, have a meaning that's not just "let's put it like this in the script because it just looks cool". At least for an important part of them, this doesn't hold anymore. You get a reason in the second part of the movie for why it was like that. And for example talking about the "Darth Vader voice" the reason is actually the second major twist of the movie. But I'll stop here :) and let the potential viewer to discover more.

As said before, after watching I have mixed feelings in how good is it ... Unfortunately the first half of the movie is somewhere between boring, stupid, not credible, and hard to watch (by the way, the trailer actually might suggest the same thing) and unfortunately the film lasts for two hours. And when I'm saying half of the movie, I really mean half of the movie = you have something like one hour to wait for seeing something that manages to keep you in front of the screen, besides the visuals. But, probably is better for a movie to be like this = save itself in the end, instead of starting ok and bury itself in the second part (anyway, it's for sure even better not to bury itself at all ...). If I would rate piece by piece I would probably give 2 for the first half, and 4 for the second, so the average ...

Rating: 3 out of 5