SOUL OF THE AVENGER (1996)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

The nicest thing I can say for this movie-- one of just three directed or co-directed by Steven Kaman-- is that the title I saw it under, SOUL OF THE AVENGER, is much better than the title on IMDB, "For Life or Death." At least the first title sounds like a typical one for a routine kung-fu action-film, though SOUL is far less than routine.

There really should be no great mystery as to how to make an entry-level kung-fu film. Even bad ones can sometimes boast the virtue of an anything-goes extravagance. But SOUL looks like a marriage between two wildly divergent film-ideas. One is a standard martial arts film about an evil kung-fu cult pursuing a renegade member. But this is merged with a strange, listless film about a homeless drunk, Earl (Mark Pellegrino), who gets mixed up in the affairs of the renegade and his enemies, because the renegade takes refuge in Earl's body, occasionally lending him fighting-skills.

So right away, even though all of the action takes place in contemporary America, there's a conflict between a Chinese world that's full of magical glossiness and an American one which is inhabited by lowlifes constantly on the make. It's not really a portrait flattering to either culture.

So, the plot: Kaan Woo (James Lew) was once a member of the Black Dragon society, led by the magical mistress Ling Li (Nancy Kwan). He was apparently her lover as well, though the script is fuzzy on this subject, and though we see Kaan hanging out with a much younger woman, one Caren, it's not even stated outright that Kaan left Ling for  Caren. Kaan remains on the run from Ling's enforcers for some time, including her main henchman Xavier (Richard Norton). Then one fateful night Kaan meets the homeless Earl on the street and gives him a little money. Earl follows Kaan and sees him attacked by Xavier's forces. Xavier doesn't like Earl watching and kills him with a magical "chi" blast. Kaan is so upset by the death of this innocent that he does something almost no noble hero has done before: he infuses his spirit into Earl and brings the drunkard back to life. 

Though Kaan's body appears to be dead, Ling intuitively knows that he's still alive in Earl's body. She plans to resuscitate Kaan somehow, which will mean Earl's death, but for some reason she doesn't just stick Earl in a cell, but lets him roam around, supposedly "investigating" Kaan's appearance. The only half-decent thing about this tedious waste of time is that it sets up some action for the actress Karen Sheperd, playing a friend of Caren's who beats up Earl (whose kung-fu skills tend to come and go). 

Eventually Ling-- who does a little "magical" wire-fu but no fighting as such-- gets ready to reincarnate her old lover. I frankly didn't follow how Kaan manages to bring back his old living body without killing Earl, though there are some other good-guy mystics hanging around, so maybe they helped him out. Most of the fight-scenes by Lew and Norton are subpar at best, and Sheperd is the only one whose battles are halfway appealing. Pellegrino is the best actor in the group, having distinguished himself with roles like "The Devil" in SUPERNATURAL, but he can't do anything with the waste-of-space that is Earl, who has no backstory and no interesting tics. This sort of thing makes even the worse crap from Albert Pyun look good.