The Guillotines

血滴子

Hong Kong/China/Taiwan, 2012, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D, 112 mins.

Director: Liu Weiqiang 刘伟强 [Andrew Lau].

Rating: 7/10.

Entertaining action drama boasts strong performances but an unfocused script.

STORY

China, early Qing dynasty, 1740. In the fifth year of the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (Wen Zhang), on the northwest frontier in Gansu province, an anti-Qing, quasi-religious faction called The Herders, formed by the legendary Tianlang (Huang Xiaoming) 15 years earlier, started killing imperial officials. To eradicate the threat, the Manchu court sent a secret assassination squad of six people known as The Guillotines, who captured Tianlang alive. On the day of his execution, Tianlang escapes and one of The Guillotines, Guaerjia Musen (Li Yuchun), disappears. The commander of The Guillotines, Gong’e (Wang Yu), orders the five remaining assassins to pursue and kill Tianlang, and tells their leader, Nala Leng (Ruan Jingtian), to bring back the body of Guaerjia Musen, who is his daughter. The Guillotines take along Guo Bailan (Li Meng), a young woman who helped Tianlang escape, as a hostage. Against the wishes of Gong’e, they’re also accompanied by Feimu Haidu (Yu Wenle), the emperor’s chief bodyguard, who is secretly planning to replace The Guillotines with soldiers armed with western artillery. The group finds Tianlang in a remote township, Wuguan, but doesn’t dare to do anything as all the locals support him. Guaerjia Musen is still alive, having been starved and tortured by Tianlang to teach her the meaning of suffering. Tianlang demands that Nala Leng exchanges himself for her, otherwise he will kill her. Nala Leng agrees, although Feimu Haidu tells him that soldiers with artillery are on the way. The handover ends in chaos, and eventually The Guillotines find themselves with a price on their heads, hunted by Feimu Haidu and betrayed by the emperor they were once sworn to protect.

REVIEW

About an hour into The Guillotines 血滴子, which until then has been a fairly formulary action movie about a Manchu emperor’s assassination squad hunting a Han Chinese freedom-fighter, the script suddenly comes up with an interesting idea: what happens when professional assassins, reared to become unthinking killers and deliberately trained not even to read or write, are themselves betrayed by their emperor and left stranded? Furthermore, how to make the audience sympathise with them as they now become the good guys, on the side of the Han heroes? It’s an idea/problem that the script, credited to no less than six writers – including Lin Aihua 林爱华 [Aubrey Lam] and Chen Jiayi 陈嘉仪, both of whom previously worked with producer Chen Kexin 陈可辛 [Peter Chan] – grapples with during the second half but never really develops or resolves in a fittingly powerful way. Though it’s an entertaining enough ride, thanks to professional direction by Hong Kong veteran Liu Weiqiang 刘伟强 [Andrew Lau], The Guillotines always has the feel of a film that could have been much better than it finally turned out – a project that went through so many re-writes and paste-jobs that it would have been better to have simply gone back to scratch and totally re-invented it with one clear idea.

The biggest stumbling block turns out to be the Chinese title itself – that of a classic Shaw Brothers movie, The Flying Guillotine 血滴子 (1975), directed by studio journeyman He Menghua 何梦华 and starring Chen Guantai 陈观泰 and Gu Feng 谷峰, about a flying steel helmet that lops off its victim’s head and was supposedly used by the Manchu Yongzheng Emperor as an instrument of terror. Though The Guillotines uses the same Chinese title (which literally means “The Blood Dripper”), it’s set later, during the reign of Yongzheng’s son, Qianlong, and has a completely different plot. The deadly decapitator of the title – here much jazzier than the Shaw Brothers version – only features in the first 20 minutes, and then largely in an opening sequence to show off the 3-D. Thereafter, the plot pretty much ditches the weapon as a dramatic device.

As well as the stranded-assassins idea, the script flirts with a whole range of other ones: Han freedom-fighter Tianlang (played with blazing eyes by Mainland actor Huang Xiaoming 黄晓明, so good in An Inaccurate Memoir 匹夫, 2012) is given a quasi-religious, Jesus-like look and charisma; the sole female member of The Guillotines squad (strongly played by tomboy Mainland singer Li Yuchun 李宇春, the spunky swordswoman in Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 龙门飞甲, 2011) is captured and tortured by Tianlang, “to give you the taste of suffering”, and then converted to a life of rural Han happiness; and her associate (blankly played by Taiwan’s Ruan Jingtian 阮经天, from Monga 艋舺, 2010, and Love 爱, 2012) finds himself conflicted by his Han roots and Manchu loyalties. Huang and Li are especially strong together, notably in a scene where he lectures her with a story after cutting down her broken body.

But it’s the emperor’s chief bodyguard, who’s in favour of western artillery over home-made gizmos, who emerges as the strongest character of all, especially in the icily focused performance by Hong Kong actor Yu Wenle 余文乐 [Shawn Yue]. The relationship between Yu and Ruan’s characters never catches fire in the way intended but, overall, the movie is largely motored by its strong line-up of actors, including the Mainland’s Wen Zhang 文章 as the silently ruthless emperor, and Taiwan veterans Wang Yu 王羽 [Jimmy Wang] as The Guillotines’ commander and Jin Shijie 金士杰 as an army general. (In a nice film-buffy reference, Wang made his own rip-off, Master of the Flying Guillotine 独臂拳王大破血滴子, 1976, some 35 years ago.) For its performances alone, the movie earns an extra point.

Liu, who replaced the originally planned Chen Desen 陈德森 [Teddy Chen] as director, goes for an interesting style that’s semi-realistic rather than studio-bound, with a mobile camera and plenty of ethnic flavour in the scenes of rural life. Apart from the VFX showcase opening, the action is gritty rather than flashy. And when the story finally gets down to basics, as Yu’s character climbs into impressive Manchu armour and leads the army against the yokel rebels, the versatile Liu easily switches gears to provide some good-old-fashioned spectacle, nicely abetted by the widescreen vistas of Hong Kong d.p. Feng Yuanwen 冯远文 [Edmond Fung] (72 Martyrs 英雄喋血, 2011) of Shanxi locations (doubling not very convincingly for Gansu province). Liu himself also contributes a distinguished cameo as the Yongzheng Emperor in flashbacks.

CREDITS

Presented by Media Asia Film International (HK), We Pictures (HK), Stellar Mega Films (CN), Polyface Films (TW), Omnijoi (CN), Dingsheng Cultural Industry Investment (CN), Huaxia Film Distribution (CN). Produced by We Pictures (HK).

Script: Lin Aihua [Aubrey Lam], Chen Jiayi, Xu Yuezhen, Qi Jiaji, Guo Junli, Lv Guannan. Photography: Feng Yuanwen [Edmond Fung]. Editing: Zhong Weizhao [Azrael Chung]. Music: Chen Guangrong [Comfort Chan]. Art direction: Liu Shiyun. Costume design: Wu Lilu [Dora Ng]. Sound: Zeng Jingxiang [Kinson Tsang]. Action: Li Dachao. Visual effects: Huang Hongda (vfxNova Digital Productions). Second unit photography: Yang Zhenyu, Yang Yong. 3-D: Vision Globale, Cubic Pictures.

Cast: Huang Xiaoming (Tianlang/Wolf), Ruan Jingtian (Nala Leng/Wang Lei), Li Yuchun (Guaerjia Musen), Yu Wenle [Shawn Yue] (Feimu Haidu), Jing Boran (Houjia Shisan), Wen Zhang (Qianlong Emperor), Wang Yu [Jimmy Wang] (Gong’e, The Guillotines’ master), Jin Shijie (Wan Jiang, commander of Green Standard troops), Zhou Yiwei (Buka), Pubajia (Chen Tai), Gao Tian (Hu Tu), Li Meng (Guo Bailan), Guo Peng (Su), Liu Weiqiang [Andrew Lau] (Yongzheng Emperor, Qianlong’s father), Cheng Jiuhan (chief eunuch), Ken Yang (herdsman), Chen Junzhong (Miao Qi), Wang Feng (Lu Ban), Bai Liwei (Kangxi, emperor), Zhang Zhihong, Xia Xiaolong.

Release: China, 20 Dec 2012; Taiwan, 21 Dec 2012; Hong Kong, 3 Jan 2013.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 15 Jan 2013.)