Crying Freeman (1995)

The talented, yet under-appreciated Mark Dacascos stars as the “Crying Freeman,” the popular assassin of manga fame in an international film directed by an upstart French filmmaker who thinks he’s John Woo and Tsui Hark in one? Either sounds like a potential genre fan’s dream or a recipe for disaster. In the case of CRYING FREEMAN you get both.

Freeman is an assassin who has been trained by a shadowy Chinese organization to protect Chinese interests. Apparently, the Japanese Yakuza is stirring up trouble and Freeman is ordered to eliminate the leading family that happens to be in Vancouver, BC. The first to die is the son and unfortunately for Emu O’Hara (Julie Condra), she witnesses the whole thing. Suffering from a severe case of boredom, she decides to patiently wait for Freeman to return and kill her off. He dons a rusty hockey mask (it is Canada after all) and takes care of the Yakuza father in dramatic gunplay fashion. Instead of killing Emu, Freeman gets “jiggy” with her and together they run off to Japan where he’s told to take on another mission.

By this point, we’re coming to understand why he’s called Crying Freeman. He sheds a tear for each of his victims because underneath, he has no desire to kill. Once a world-class potter, he was kidnapped by an old hag who chained him to a idol and did all kinds of nasty things like tattoo his body. At this point, you may not believe a word of any of this, but it’s true.

After remaining members of the Yakuza clan randomly kill off a dozen or so Chinese to get the attention of Freeman’s group, he’s sent to kill the rest of them along with his trusty partner. Then again, his partner has been ordered to kill Freeman as well once the job is done. Things don’t work out for Freeman’s partner and it’s up to the remaining members of the Sons of the Dragons to take on Freeman who just wants to go off and shape clay with his girl… or whatever.

I apologize to fans of the Crying Freeman manga for my irreverent review thus far. I hear the film is actually quite faithful to the comic book. But on its own, the story, or should I say, the script is much like director Christophe Gans’ second feature, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (2001) in that it tries to take on too much. Style-wise, the film owes much of its look to modern Hong Kong action cinema. If you put the film in that context, a lot of the ridiculously unbelievable gunplay is quite forgivable. What is not forgivable is the all too frequent breaks in action for the story’s propagation of schlock.

Julie Condra, who has spent most of her career on the small screen is absolutely horrid. Maybe she does do the best with what Gans offers but two times nothing is still nothing. Rae Dawn Chong is another television transplant who just can’t rise above that level. Tchéky Karyo, who played a reasonably entertaining villain in KISS OF THE DRAGON opposite Jet Li sounds like he’s had his voice dubbed. Doesn’t matter though – there’s nothing of interest to lose in the translation.

Mark Dacascos is an actor I want to like. He’s an outstanding martial artist and has a fair amount of charisma. It’s just that he appears to have sold himself out in this film (not to mention some of his other films). All I can say is that it’s demeaning. Attention ladies – he spends a lot of time running about naked for little reason and we only get to see him really show off his fighting skill at the very end. Even so, Gans’ style is so heavy-handed that even this seems like a television ad for Gap jeans. I was a big fan of BROTHERHOOD OF THE WORF despite its obvious faults but back in 1995, Gans still had even more learning to do. CRYING FREEMAN has the veneer of a large-scale production that is too sincere for its own good. Fans of the manga or of overblown behemoths like THE ONE (2001) may disagree.