Day: June 29, 2014

By Joe Bendel. Sure, a three hour baseball movie might sound like bizarre overkill, but it is still considerably brisker than many of Al Leiter’s outings for the Mets (we’re all fans here, by the way). It is long, but this scrappy underdog story of tolerance and resilience generally makes good use of its time. Taiwanese and Japanese players will indeed come together on the diamond in Umin Boya’s Kano, the centerpiece selection of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival, which screens Sunday, so forget that World Cup noise.

Despite the spectacular revolt dramatized in co-writer-producer Wei Te-sheng’s Warriors of the Rainbow: Sediq Bale, Japan has consolidated its imperialist hold on Taiwan. Despite the increasing (but unequal) economic ties between the two countries, Taiwan is not where the Japanese go when their careers are on the way up. However, for tightly wound account Hyotaro Kondo, it represents a chance to start over following a vaguely defined public humiliation. Yet, against his better judgment, Kondo soon volunteers to coach the Kagi Agriculture and Forestry Public School’s high school baseball team (called Kano for short).

It was Kondo’s intense coaching style that led to so much grief in Japan, but he has never had a team like this. For one thing, it is an ethnically mixed squad, consisting not just of Japanese and Taiwanese players, but aboriginal and Chinese students as well. They also receive next to no material support from their school. Still, Akira Go, the kid on the mound, has a monster arm. Everyone scoffs when Kondo vows to take the team to Koshien, Japan’s national high school tournament, especially given their ‘O-fer record, but guess what happens next year.

Despite its incontrovertible status as a sports movie, Kano neatly sidesteps a number of the genre clichés. The big game will duly choke you up, but in a far more satisfying way than you expect. Coach Kondo even says there is no crying in baseball, but good luck with that.

Masatoshi Nagase is truly the coach of all movie coaches as the strict but fiercely loyal Kondo. He commands the screen just like Kondo commands his players, but when he lets his softy paternal side peak through, it is always heavy. Oddly, perhaps the most distinctive supporting turn amongst the players is actually Ken Aoki as rival pitcher Hiromi Joshiya, whose trip to see Kano’s dirt playing field for himself while on leave from the Imperial Army supplies the film’s framing device. British based Japanese actor Togo Igawa also adds a note of gruff dignity as Kondo’s former mentor, Coach Sato.

Production designer Makoto Asano’s recreation of 1931 provincial Taiwan looks so real you can practically taste the mud and thatch. It is a high quality period production and probably the most epic baseball movie ever thanks to cinematographer Chin Ting-chang’s sweeping, wide screen visuals. Yet, the on-field camaraderie is not simply a good lesson in sportsmanship. It looks like a conscious attempt at Taiwanese-Japanese rapprochement , strategically coming at a time of high Mainland saber rattling (and frankly that is probably not a bad impulse to act on).

Happily, Kano does not feel like it runs anywhere near its three hours, but there is no getting around the generous helpings of baseball. As great as Nagase is, Kano’s appeal will probably be limited to fans of the game (which includes just about everyone in Taiwan judging from its domestic box-office). Earnest, entertaining, and appealingly old fashioned, Kano is recommended for lovers of baseball and those who follow Japanese and Taiwanese cinema when it screens Sunday evening (6/29) at the Walter Reade Theater, as the centerpiece of this year’s NYAFF.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on June 29th, 2014 at 12:14am.

By Joe Bendel. Eight-Faced Buddha is the Al Sharpton of Thai drug lords. That ridiculous coif should be sufficient grounds to throw his butt in jail. However, he also has an extensive body count to his credit and a massive wave of heroin headed towards Hong Kong. The only thing standing in its way is an extremely tired undercover cop, his handler, and their boss and mutual boyhood chum. Their friendship will be severely strained in Benny Chan’s action conflagration The White Storm, which screens during the 2014 New York Asian Film Festival.

So Kin-chau is due for some R&R with his very pregnant wife, but Chief Inspector Ma Ho-tin keeps sending him out for one more sting. They were supposed to finally bust his longtime target Black Chai, but when Ma learns the trafficker has a deal in the works with Eight-Faced, So must engineer a last minute escape for the both of them. So reluctantly goes deep undercover with Black Chai – with only Ma, their third Musketeer Cheung Chi-wai, and another honest HK colleague for back-up.

Frankly, the boundary between cops and criminals in Thailand is rather porous. Ma and his colleagues have to go rogue just to foil the crooked cops trying to rat out So. Unfortunately, when Ma’s game-changing operation goes wrong, it goes massively, cinematically wrong. It will fatally sabotage his career and plague his conscience for years, until a big twist suggests his guilt might be a tad misplaced.

There is nothing subtle about White Storm. It is all about projectile explosions and brooding, but it truly delivers some awesome over-the-top action spectacle. Nothing is off the table including a romance with Eight-Faced’s transgendered daughter, Mina Wei. Arguably, that is the most sensitively rendered element of this delirious gun-down. Evidently, Nick Cheung’s steamy publicity photo shoot with the transgender beauty queen Treechada “Poyd” Malayaporn raised quite a few eyebrows in HK, so mission accomplished.

In fact, all three big name leads are in fine form throughout. Louis Koo’s So slow burns like nobody’s business, while Sean Lau Ching-wan compellingly portrays Ma’s rapid descent from hot shot to a self-loathing shell of a man. However, Cheung takes viewers on the wildest character arc as his rapidly evolving namesake. Vithaya Pansringarm, who stole just about every scene in Only God Forgives, also turns up, playing a far more ethically ambiguous cop, but he is criminally under-employed.

While White Storm indulges in quite a bit of Thai exoticism, Chan never strays too far from an old school hail of bullets. Its super-charged energy level and tragic sensibilities follow in the tradition of some of the best HK action films. Highly recommended for fans of Hong Kong Cinema and the big name cast, The White Storm screens tomorrow (6/29) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of this year’s NYAFF.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on June 29th, 2014 at 12:09pm.