Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I’ve attended film festivals all over the US, from the tip top of mountains to on-the-beach as sea-level as you can be, but this is my first international film festival where the predominant language isn’t English.
So you can imagine my reaction when I was sitting down for the opening night movie, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, when a very enthusiastic guy came out and rattled off French for 10 minutes. I applauded when the audience did and tried not to look as out of place as I felt.
Then another person came up to talk and she’d drop in four or five words of English here and there, so I did the same thing I did before… Smiled and applauded when appropriate.
Thankfully, Fantasia’s Mitch Davis (who looks like he could front for a really rad Heavy Metal band, by the way) came up and gave an introduction I could follow along with. All these guys seemed really equipped at pumping up an audience. Even the introductions I couldn’t understand really got the audience charged.
When Jay Baruchel walked out to wave his hellos he was greeted with roaring applause. To put this into context, Baruchel is a local boy made good and a geek who has been attending Fantasia since he was 14 years old, so there’s a large amount of hometown spirit going on.
The movie rolled and I got exactly the movie I was expecting from the trailers. I’d wager you will, too, so if the trailer looks like a big budget studio bore to you, then you won’t be surprised, but to me the trailer promised a fun movie where Nic Cage and Alfred Molina, two of my favorite working actors, get to ham it up and fight with magic. And boy do they.
I wish movies like THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE were the low point of studio films. Sure, it’s a little formulaic, sure it doesn’t have much teeth… yeah, there’s some America’s Funniest Home Video style ball jokes… but there’s also a real sense of fun and an ease that helps you just slip into the groove of this fantastical tale.
The film opens with a narration and flashback sequence where we learn that Morgan Lefay has been trying to initiate a powerful spell that’ll raise the dead and destroy any living being. Merlin and his apprentices are the only things standing between her and success.
Cage is one of his apprentices and is left a couple of tasks… one is to find Merlin’s successor (called the Prime Merlinian, which is kinda dumb, but hey I went with it) and the other is to watch over the trapped Morgana.
This opening is one of the coolest, yet weakest parts of the movie. Instead of showing this all in flashes and bits and pieces while a narrator tells us what’s happening I’d much rather have seen an extended opening scene. It’d be like if John Boorman opened Excalibur with a 4 minute flashback sequence and then jumped right into Arthur’s story.
Baruchel said they filmed for 6 months, so it’s possible they shot the whole opening and decided to cut it down.
So, Cage finds Merlin’s successor in modern day New York in the unlikely form of a young boy who grows into the even more unlikely form of Jay Baruchel.
One of the things I really liked about this movie is that it never slows down. From the moment Alfred Molina is unwittingly released it’s a chase to find the Russian doll that imprisons Morgana and her followers (each one is imprisoned in a layer of the shrinking doll with Morgana at the center).
There’s a great pace, a great energy and then you have your bad guy as a magic cane wielding Alfred Molina? Get outta here! And Molina’s henchman is a David Blaine like magician played by Toby Kebbell? And your good guy is a pickle-shaking Nic Cage (you’ll understand when you see the movie). Yeah, lots to like here.
The flick is just eccentric and fun by default. The use of magic is genuinely cool.
The problem is that the story isn’t all that new or original. It’s a hero’s journey tale and from the moment you hear the mark of the Prime Merlinian, the only wizard who can destroy Morgana, you know exactly how the end is going to play out.
Maybe my Nic Cage affection is overruling my critical brain. Maybe having just experienced The Last Airbender I’m just happy this movie has scenes that cut together and actors that can deliver lines of dialogue. Or maybe Jon Turteltaub and Jerry Bruckheimer delivered a really solid kid’s flick that older audiences have a good chance at stomaching, too.
One funny anecdote from Baruchel’s Q&A afterwards was that he’s afraid he freaked out his co-star, Monica Bellucci when he first met her by telling her that IRREVERSIBLE is his favorite movie. The audience got a huge laugh at that. Baruchel laughed, too, then said, “’You’re the best at getting raped.’ Yeah, that didn’t go over so well.”
I liked Ip Man quite a bit, but I was with the lot that thought it felt like the start of a story, not a story in and of itself. I think the filmmakers did, too, because this one is almost non-stop action.
Now, I wasn’t sitting there with a stopwatch, but I’d hazard to guess that there’s not 5 continuous minutes of the runtime that doesn’t involve a punch or kick. There’s at least one fight every 10 minutes.
Picking up where the last one ended, Ip Man has recovered from his gunshot wound and is living nearly in poverty. His pregnant wife is trying to run the home, but they’re having to avoid the landlord and can barely afford their young son’s school fees.
Ip Man tries to start up his Wing Chun school using a rooftop gratis from the local newspaper editor who became a fan in the first flick, but gets no takers until one headstrong kid shows up saying he’ll pay school fees if Ip Man can best him in a fight.
Usually this is where we see hesitation from the good guys in these types of movies, but Donnie Yen just smiles knowingly and prepares for the quick fight.
As his legend rises, Ip Man and his growing number of students are confronted by fucking Sammo Hung, the head honcho of all the martial arts schools. The “test” that Hung forces on Ip Man is a thing of legend and possibly one of my favorite sequences I’ve seen this year.
All the masters of all the schools sit around a table surrounded by overturned chairs, legs sticking up in the air. The challenge that Ip Man must pass to join their ranks and teach is to stand on the table without being knocked off as master after master test his abilities.
This, of course, culminates in Sammo Hung and Donnie Yen sparring and goddamn what a fight it is. If you don’t know either of their work… I’m both angry at you and jealous. Look them up and watch their films. For Sammo, seek out Pedicab Driver. For Donnie start with Iron Monkey and then just explore.
Watching these two masters battle each other in a fantastically choreographed scene was geek nirvana. That feeling was helped by the crazy enthusiastic Fantasia crowd. They were cheering and whooping and hollering. It was like a rock concert.
For this scene alone the movie deserves your eyeballs.
If the whole movie had centered around Ip Man’s friction with Sammo Hung and the in-fighting with the different martial arts schools in 1940s China it’d be one of the crown jewels of martial arts filmmaking.
However the main story kicks into effect around half-way through and while it’s fun it turns the movie into something not nearly as cool. And that something, in a nutshell, is Rocky IV.
The British set up a competition that matches Western Boxing with Eastern Martial Arts and the main white baddie is a thick boxer named Twister (Darren Shahlavi) who is a monster in the ring and apparently hates yellow people. He kills his opponents instead of just knocking them unconscious.
So, it comes down to Ip Man to represent China’s honor as a nation as he faces down this dude in the ring.
Besides dividing the main story, making the movie feel like two separate films, this also brings in the horrible English-speaking acting element. Shahlavi gets a pass because he’s just a big, dumb angry brute, but there’s a corrupt British army official that was obviously hired because he could speak both Chinese and English, not because he can act.
The final fight itself is pretty good, though. Director Wilson Yip and Sammo Hung (who not only acts in the movie, but serves as the action director) do a good job at making Shahlavi a real threat. He’s like a pissed off rhino. One punch connecting can disable an average guy and prove a real problem for a badass like Ip Man.
But still. It’s Rocky IV. Instead of Russia vs. America in a boxing ring it’s Britain vs. China.
The overall film is still very good and I’d say I prefer this movie to the first, even if the first film is more complete, more one story. This flick is just too much fun to watch with an audience and as a martial arts fan. Great fights, great machismo on display from Yen. Every time he’s challenged in the film there’s that knowing smile. You can tell they wanted to work in little characteristics that Bruce Lee might have picked up on (Ip Man was Lee’s master in real life). In fact, there’s a little nod to Bruce at the end of the movie which got much applause from the audience.
If the flick plays theatrically go find the rowdiest, loudest crowd you can and give it a watch. If it doesn’t, find the DVD and gather your friends. It’s damn cool and really damn fun to watch with a group.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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