INVINCIBLE POWER OF KINDNESS (1993)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

This film's unusual streaming title persuaded me to check it out, as well as learning that one of its co-stars was the famed kung-fu performer Ti Lung. According to various online reviews, though, KINDNESS is a condensed version of a movie running three hours, A WARRIOR'S TRAGEDY-- a title also used onscreen for this adumbrated streaming version. To further complicate things, KINDNESS/TRAGEDY was also a nineties remake of a 1977 chopsocky, THE PURSUIT OF VENGEANCE. That film also starred Ti Lung in the role of Fu, a stoic fighter determined to avenge past wrongs to his family-- but this seventies movie is not readily available to me, any more than the three-hour TRAGEDY.

I can't judge the long version of this film, but the condensed one seems less like a "tragedy" and more like a mystery, one of the many Chinese spectacles in which practitioners of kung fu end up playing detectives in order to suss out who did what to whom. KINDNESS is complicated in that this time here are two fighters who are initially uncertain as to whether or not they should be allies. One is the aforementioned Fu, a grim fellow with a limp (whose bad leg never prevents him from jumping about like an Olympic gymnast). The other is Yip Choi (Frankie Chan), a jovial fellow who uses humor to disarm opponents, though he has his serious side as well. Both are invited to a dinner by a kung-fu master, Ma Hong-kwang, who is rumored to be the mastermind who slew a famed swordsman, Pak, who was Fu's father. But is Ma the killer, or is it one of several other suspects?

As with many Chinese mystery-movies-- some of which I've reviewed on this blog-- this one throws out so many side characters that their dramatic impact is weakened, even in a film like this one, with a lot of strong performances. And the matter is complicated in that all of the characters in the drama are wuxia swordsmen. They often sport weird weapons (an invisibility cloak makes an early appearance here) and magical powers that they can transfer to their weapons, or even just neutral physical objects. There's nearly no one in KINDNESS who even comes close to being an ordinary human being. Nevertheless, Ti Lung and Frankie Chan have good chemistry, and many of the support-players-- such as Ma's daughter (Anita Yuen) have strong moments, as when she seeks to seduce both fighters into doing her will. 

KINDNESS does not have a good reputation online, though that may be the result of some reviewers drawing comparisons to the seventies iteration. Chan, in addition to being the movie's co-star, also directed and co-wrote the script from its source novel, and I think he did at least as good a job as Tsui Hark did in similar splashy FX-films of the eighties.  Some reviewers complained about the overabundance of wild powers and weapons seen in KINDNESS, and this makes me wonder if any of these critics ever saw a wuxia film before.  On IMDB I looked over Chan's credits as both actor and director, and the few Chan movies I'd seen hadn't knocked my socks off. At very least, he should be praised for giving most of the main actors a lot of close-up character moments, which is not exactly a strength found in a lot of Chinese chopsockies.