Glen here…
It has occurred to me that the first criticism vomited thoughtlessly out of many reader’s mouths once they read my review of CBS’ new series MARTIAL LAW is: "That stupid Glen, he doesn’t know about Hong Kong action movies! He doesn’t know about Jackie Chan’s early days or Sammo Hung!".
At the risk of sounding preemptively defensive, let me address that argument here and now by simply saying "bullshit". Long before Jackie Chan movies were being widely distributed here in the States, long before Sammo Hung became recognized as the genius stunt coordinator that he is, long before most Americans had even *heard* of Jackie Chan or Hong Kong cinema, I was watching these movies on video tape - or trudging down to the University of Texas to watch the films in a theater that…no longer exists. I was watching these kind of movies even before Harry started watching them. I was watching them when they were subtitled, not dubbed. I know the genre from which I speak. And on that basis, I find it very difficult to recommend MARTIAL LAW.
MARTIAL LAW *can* be fun, but it is inconsistent and uneven, making its viewing a bit tiresome and frustrating in the long haul. It’s action scenes are brilliant - you may frequently find yourself realizing you never knew a human being could move the way these people move, do the things they can do. But for all the hardcore, in-your-face action madness and bravado, MARTIAL LAW is peculiarly distancing and sometimes off-putting. Sequences set between the action are frequently too broadly played…too comedically over-the-top…for consumption by anyone with expectations of genuine wit. Leaving impatient viewers to wait for the slam-bang, which just doesn’t seem to come fast enough.
The plot is simple: there’s a criminal investigation going on in China. Sammo Hung is a cop trying to catch the bad guys. The bad guys up and move to the States. Sammo follows them here. He teams up with two other police officers (Tammy Lauren and Louis Mandylor) to catch the villains and solve crimes, kicking butt in all kinds of interesting ways as he goes. Our cops teach Sammo something, he teaches them something. . Yadda yadda yadda.
The "between-the-action" sequences in Hong Kong cinema have often been wildly variable. One can only assume that the presence of master HK director Stanley Tong ("Supercop") is MARTIAL LAW’s greatest asset and most critical detriment. In MARTIAL, Tong has brought to mainstream television screen amazing feats of physical prowess the likes of which most Americans have never seen, They are boldly photographed with angles and sensibilities that effectively put you into the center of the chaos. This is a good thing, and should open many people’s eyes to a world of action and stunt work that is quite dazzling and very entertaining. Reversely, a reliance on over-the-top bouts of slapstick humor (which in HK films often ranges from just plain silly to quite brilliant) often gets in the way of storytelling which could otherwise be addictively propulsive.
Even though he is supposed to be a fish out of water, Hung seems a little *too* out of the water. He seems somewhat lost in the madness, like he too is waiting until the script lets him kick more ass. And when he does, he looks and feels like he is at home. Still, he is an intriguing presence, and one always gets the sense he’s thinking a lot more than he actually articulates. This could be a fun gimmick if employed on a regular basis. But I’m not even sure it’s a gimmick, I think it’s just him.
Despite all these nitpciks and damnations, the likelihood that MARTIAL LAW will find a core audience is rather high, I would think. Most television viewers have not seen this kind of entertainment before. And even though it *might* ultimately seem unrewarding to people who are well versed in the genre from which it sprang, the masses could well embrace it as fresh and vibrant and new - never realizing that it is *not* as good as it should have been, given the vast talent involved in bringing this peculiar and kitchy brand of storytelling into our homes.
