Archive for February, 2005
Gun Brothers
Stock villains make the screenwriter’s job easier; they strip out all that pesky exposition and get straight to the meat. No audience member wonders why the bad guys are bad, they just are. Stock villains make for quick moving, if somewhat lazy filmmaking; white hats versus black hats, with none of that irritating grey.
In American WWII movies, screenwriters could always rely on Nazis to fill the role of stock villains. Hong Kong never fought the Germans, but their films had the Japanese to take the Nazis’ place.
The white hat of Gun Brothers is Chi Yiu Tun (Ling Yun). Although he’s called “gun brother” in the subtitles, that’s a confusing mistranslation, as no one knows that Chi Yu Tun even has a brother (this is important later on). Maybe the translators were trying to suggest that Chi Yu Tun is so good with guns that he must be related to them. Regardless, the more literal translation, “Bandit with a thousand faces,” is far more logical after Chi takes out an entire Japanese base with a pistol and a suitcase full of disguises.
When not gunning down entire battalions, Chi dates the daughter of the collaborationist governor, evades the grasp of Inspector Ma Tak Li (Tien Feng) and plots the next steps of his one-man resistance. But when he falls into a trap set by Ma, Chi’s face is scarred and his cover is blown. On the run, he hides out with his circus acrobat friends.
Yes, circus acrobat friends. My guess is that Chi was supposed to be an ex-circus performer, earning a living as a trick-shot gunman. But if anyone in the movie ever explained that bit of backstory, it didn’t make it into the subtitles.
Waltzing in from stage left comes the films deus ex machina, Chi’s so-far-unmentioned twin brother, Chi Yiu Nam. Apparently, no one else knows about Yiu Nam either, because when he assumes Yiu Tun’s identity no one stops to think, “Hey, could he be that twin brother who was studying abroad?” Inspector Ma, who’s certain he slashed Yiu Tun across the face, can’t explain why the playboy’s face lacks a scar.
Logic is abandoned, as are several of the film’s sub-plots, in the pursuit of patriotism and victory over the Japanese and their collaborationist friends. None of it makes much sense, and the script consistently takes the laziest route possible. But, oddly, that doesn’t make the film less fun. Good guys win, bad guys lose, stuff blows up real nice. Lazy is not the same as bad.
Gun Brothers
Dir: Chen Kang, Wu Jiaxiang
Released: February 21, 1968