Master of bloody martial disaster, writer/director Chang Cheh blasts viewers with a full-frontal assault of extreme violence and heroic bloodshed with a taste of artfulness in VENGEANCE! From the very start, the film oozes thick, tomato-red blood and excess that is both jaw-dropping and comical. A pity the film stumbles through an ineffectual romance for the Western-style action and David Chiang’s performance are phenomenal.
Ti Lung and David Chiang were paired up in numerous Chang Cheh masterpieces, yet this one played out slightly different. Ti is killed off early on in an ambush by dozens of knife-wielding thugs. It is 1925 in an undisclosed Northern Chinese city. The backdrop of the story is a conflict between various military leaders struggling to gain power following the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
Ti is a Chinese opera performer whose wife becomes the object of desire for Ku Feng, who plays a wealthy martial arts instructor. Ti physically tells Ku to back off, which only leads Ku to secure the aid of his influential friends to organize the trap that leads to Ti’s death. The scenario is played out in true Chang Cheh style with Ti suffering grisly mortal wounds while sending countless thugs to their deaths. In an inspired moment, Ti’s real life death is contrasted with an earlier stage death, followed by a closing curtain to represent his end.
Without missing a beat, David Chiang walks into town, pays a visit to Ti’s widow who happens to be sleeping with one of Ku’s thugs, and immediately begins getting revenge the only way he knows how by killing every SOB who had anything to do with his brother’s death.
The film is nearly non-stop action except for a midpoint lull as Chiang gets reacquainted with his lover. This is where Chiang shows a weakness as a director in scenes that clumsily depict the pair’s quaint romancing. But the good lovin’ is short lived for David has a date with Ku Feng, hiding in a well-guarded hotel room.
Chiang next thwarts a trap set for him where a hired killer (Chan Sing) sporting a gangster’s suit and armed with a sniper rifle waits. Finally, he joins forces with one of Ku’s reluctant conspirators to take on the last man responsible for Ti’s death, a general recently returned from the front.
A vicious battle of backstabbing knifes, sniping and brutal violence unfolds in a luxurious house as Chiang takes on the general’s men and the hired killer, and gets nothing but grief for the effort.
VENGEANCE is the first modern actioner from Chang that imports his heroic bloodshed motif from the swordplay genre. It works like a charm by replacing swords with knives and guns.
There is a clear effort by action directors Tang Chia and Yuen Cheung-yan to replace chivalrous martial arts with Westernized, knuckle-busting choreography. Arms swing wide, fighters grapple frantically and victims get perforated with quick thrusts of a knife. This results in a modern and stylized form of fighting more akin to ’70s yakuza thrillers from Japan.
This film also came out shortly before the golden age of kung fu movies began with the release of Jimmy Wang Yu’s THE CHINESE BOXER. So even though the setting and costumes match a pure kung fu movie like FIST OF FURY, the action does not.
This modernity in the action that goes beyond the 1920s is further emphasized by David Chiang’s sophisticated persona. He’s well dressed, sophisticated and cool as can be. Very reminiscent of a Frank Sinatra, David lays on the hip, bad boy image with style. Because of the stakes and his unwavering desire for revenge, you know he’s headed for trouble, but how he gets there and what he does as a result makes for loads of entertainment.
Chang doesn’t hold back and this is where the film overcomes its faults. The violence is unrelenting, unforgiving and easily erases the sloppy romantic interlude. Action scenes are gritty, but more stylized than realistic. Visuals are vibrant and very eye-catching. This is easily one of Chang’s best-looking films. The Chinese opera scenes, the staging on the fights, the rich colors, the sets, and the costumes all are distinctive and alive.
VENGEANCE feels a bit like a live-action comic book and even seems to have been inspired by the Japanese manga or Chinese comics of the era which were often bloody and very stylized. Chan Sing and his gangster image with the dark suit, white tie and Chinese chess board hiding a rifle all look like they would be more at home in a James Bond film than 1920s China. It’s a refreshing contrast to the sort of traditional kung fu art direction that would dominate most of the films in the ’70s.
Rounding out this modern feel is an interesting score that mixes some dark ambience during slow motion shots with some of the more commonly adventurous orchestral themes often used by Shaw Brothers.
Technically, the film mostly features great camera work and use of slow motion without all of the crazy fast zooms Chang would become notorious for. The only fault is in a couple of panning shots that noticeably are very jerky. It’s so bad in one scene where the camera follows an approaching Chan Sing, that it almost seems intentional, although it does nothing but degrade the scene severely.
VENGEANCE is a fairly unusual offering that strongly shows Chang’s influences from films such as Sam Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH (1969) and Arthur Penn’s BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967), both once considered extremely violent Hollywood films. Although he retained much of the bloodletting in subsequent films and even directed a few more semi-modern actioners such as ANONYMOUS HEROES (1971), few of Chang’s films can match this combination of a deliciously unrestrained momentum of carnage and artsy sophistication that bleeds into campy excess. With Chang at the helm, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
by Mark PollardRelated Topics:
Chang Cheh • David Chiang • Shaw Brothers • Ti Lung • Vengeance! (1970)
