REVIEW: CLASH

There once was a time when, if you wanted to see Asian action movies you had two choices:  Hong Kong and Japan.....  ok you only had one choice (sorry Japan).  Then in 1999, South Korea decided to jump into the action pool and made a huge splash with Shiri, and before you knew it we were seeing a steady output of Michael Bayish thrillers coming out of North Korea's less douchy downstairs neighbor.  Then Thailand took the plunge (ONG BAK) followed by mainland China (communist propaganda disguised as blockbusters) and even Indonesia went for a piece of the pie (THE RAID).  Somewhere along the way, Vietnam wanted to break off a piece of that.....  and they're still breaking for that damn piece.....  (I hope you see where this is going).

CLASH (BAY RONG) is a 2009 martial arts thriller about a team of mercenaries trying to steal a valuable laptop from a bunch of French underwear models while dealing with their own internal strife.  The team is lead by Phoenix, a hard as nails tough girl played by the ridiculously beautiful Thanh Van Ngo who is trying to get her daughter back from the evil mastermind.....  who.....  took.....  her.......

.....sorry....got distracted for a moment...

what was I doing again?

Oh yeah!  Typing.  Joining Phoenix on this dangerous, martial arts filled mission is Quan, a mysteriously competent criminal who gets out of jail the morning before everything goes down.  Quan is played by actor, writer, model, martial artist Johnny Tri Nguyen.  Nguyen is a veteran actor and stuntman, having performed stunts as Green Goblin (Spiderman) and Spiderman himself (Spiderman 2) as well as getting beaten silly by Tony Jaa in TOM YUM GOONG.  In 2007, Johnny got tired of standing in the shadows and returned to his native Vietnam to become the action star the country needed (or is it the one they deserved?).  His first starring role came in the film THE REBEL, an actioner set in 1920s Vietnam co starring Dustin Nguyen (no relation) of 21 JUMP STREET.  THE REBEL was.....  ok, but it was a start.  It also gave Johnny the chance to get close to Thanh Van Ngo (the hottie above that keeps distracting you from reading this riveting review) and before you know it, these two big stars are an item!

Pictured:  The Brangelina of Vietnam

So here you have it, Vietnam's power couple heading up an action thriller by a team that was focused, talented and who'd all worked together and were (ideally) hitting a stride....  and yet the final product turned out to be wholly underwhelming.  It's hard to believe (considering ALL the glowing reviews from around the internet), but CLASH somehow manages to fall flat on it's face constantly.  The characters all seem very stock, lacking enough depth to really make you care about them and the story has been told a thousand times before but much better (see:  RONIN).   You can see every twist coming, and by the end of the film everybody is either miserable or dead.

But, then again, you can't see this in RONIN....

so fuck RONIN...

All the film's shortcomings could have been forgiven if it would have delivered on the action, and all signs were pointing to it having the goods.  The trailer was pretty amazing, and reports were coming in that the cast had been working on the fights for months so they could perform them in longer takes without the aid of ADD editing or Parkinson's shaky cam.  Well, for what it's worth the preparation worked:  the action is shot clean and isn't edited into oblivion.  One thing it didn't help with was making the fights seem like actual fights!  

If you watch, you can see the stuntmen politely standing there eating punches like good little human targets and all the moves are telegraphed so you can see them coming a mile away.  Whatever sense of realism the movie manages to create is destroyed the moment people start "pretending" to fight.  It's a real shame too since the performers are all very talented, but it's wasted on amateurish execution.  This is the second worst crime an action movie can commit (the worst is being boring).  Good action has a flow to it, like a brutal dance; if a movie like THE RAID looks like Fred Astaire, then CLASH comes off like David Hasselhoff (yeah I made a DANCING WITH THE STARS reference, wanna fight?).  

You'll never survive Fred's Ultimate Dragon Kick!

In the end, CLASH isn't good enough to recommend nor is it bad enough to recommend ironically.  By the time all is said and done, you'll wonder why you sat through it.

This is why

There are so many better action thrillers out there (even on Netflix Instant View, where I saw this) that it's hard to justify committing the 90 minutes necessary to watch this borefest.  Word is, the team behind this and THE REBEL are working on a third film.  One can only hope the third time's the charm.

An Introduction

The year 2000 was a strange time for all of us.  It was probably the last time any of us can remember where there was no apocalyptic threat to our civilization:  no pandemic outbreak, no terrorist attacks, no intrusive internet telling us how corrupt our leaders actually are.....  and this kind of mentality bled over into the films of that year.

....and we needed something to take our minds off of how stupid we all felt....

in all honesty, most of the movies that will be looked at in this series were made in 1999, the year we all thought that Y2K was gonna end the party (and Bill Gates ascended to God status).  The action movies of 2000 were, in many ways, the pinnacle of what the 90s had built toward; basically, a bigger, badder, more politically correct version of the craziness that was 80s action movies.

It was also a time of transition.  Many of the conventions of the last decade were starting to show their age, along with many of the stars that dominated the genre (lookin at you Schwarzenegger) falling out of favor with audiences.

Though it's anyone's guess as to why.....

Why am I doing this blog series?  Because I'm a movie nerd with a penchant for the action genre.  Also, in many ways the action genre (along with science fiction) is one of the drivers for movie technology and technique as a whole.  It's interesting to look back on the sensibilities of a more innocent, pre-911 time.  James Cameron put it very well when asked if we'll ever get a sequel to True Lies when he said "an action comedy about Islamic terrorists just doesn't play anymore".

sigh.....  just not as fun as it used to be...

So if you have any interest in action movies (especially if you think the genre has gone to hell these days) then keep an eye on this blog.  Seeya soon.