September 2007

John Mosby talks to top Bollywood action man Akshay Kumar about his career and the rise of Bollywood’s popularity across the world in recent years...

Without doubt, this is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, its output dwarfing other territories and genres. Until recently the west has perceived that output to be the all-singing, all-dancing celebrations of life and love, but our perception - and indeed the actual industry - is constantly evolving and the umbrella ‘Bollywood’ phrase (as understood by western audiences at least) probably doesn’t do the wide-spread possibilities and styles, full justice. With festivals like Bradford’s Bite the Mango and Yorkshire’s recent hosting of the Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards and its star-studdied award ceremony, it’s clear that there is a ton of potential being realised.

If one was to look at the stars of the Bollywood industry, many might not be instantly familiar with western audiences, but that is changing and changing fast. Actors like Akshay Kumar have been getting the type of reception in traditional territories that the likes of Tom Cruise do in America. In fact Akshay’s career has many parallels. Over the years he’s starred in a vast range of different movies - comedies, dramas, action outings (including the hugely successful Khiladi films), trained in many martial arts and has been a high profile...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

Impact takes a look at the UK’s new Asian Fever label (an off-shoot from Elephant Films), which makes it debut with the titles Blue (2003), Colour of the Loyalty (2005), My Wife is a Gangster 2 (2003) and She’s on Duty (2005).

This month Impact takes a look at the UK’s new Asian Fever label (an off-shoot from Elephant Films), which makes it debut with the titles Blue (2003), Colour of the Loyalty (2005), My Wife is a Gangster 2 (2003) and She’s on Duty (2005). The entire My Wife is a Gangster series has been well chronicled in these pages so we’ll be checking out the other three features this time around - each of which is making its UK debut and is considerably more obscure; however in the case of Colour of the Loyalty that is a damn shame.

Indeed, despite possessing a title that seems wrapped up in bad English (one cannot help but wonder if someone, somewhere got a tad mixed up in the international translation department because The Colour of Loyalty would make a hell of a lot more sense), this is a great, tightly-directed little Infernal Affairs/ Young and Dangerous spin-off from Hong Kong. Starring top character actor Eric Tsang (from the Infernal Affairs trilogy itself) as - what else? - a triad leader called Brother Dragon, the movie keeps the larger-than-life thespian to the background for much of its running time in order to...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

This month sees Anime Attack head back to the dark ages with an ultra-violent tale of sword and sorcery courtesy of MVM and based on the best selling adult manga by Kento Miura.

Anyone called ‘Guts’ is pretty much pre-ordained to not become a flower arranger or ballet teacher and the hero of Berserk is no exception. Guts (aka The Black Swordsman) is a tortured soul, born from the hanged corpse of his mother and brought up in the way of the warrior by a demented and doomed father figure who tries to kill him before his voice has even broken, his is not a happy lot...

Berserk opens with our tortured hero approaching a town in the grip of a demonic overlord who is more than happy to raze both the town and its inhabitants to the ground, just to get Gut’s attention. Once his attention has been got though, the aforementioned grim overlord soon wishes he’d left the Dark Knight alone as he proceeds to cut the demon in two with the biggest chopper you’ve ever seen and then shoots it in the face repeatedly with a crossbow. Nice…. Following this hyper-violent opening, Berserk heads back in time to Gut’s teenage years as a young mercenary in the employ of various feudal lords of the war torn kingdoms of Midland and Chuder. Following a spectacular victory over a rotund, axe...

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After losing his ‘Identity’ and ascending to ‘Supremacy’, will Matt Damon’s ‘Ultimatum’ live up to the hype? We think so...

Matt Damon, once best known for lighter movies and his friendship with Ben Affleck, has long since proved his credentials in Hollywood. Now, after roles in The Good Shepherd and The Departed, he’s returning to the role that arguably made that transition into the A-List complete: Jason Bourne. But with the amnesiac spy now bent on finally ridding himself of his pursuers, can the film franchise pack the same punch as before in a crowded multiplex of movies?

“The first two films were very good at being powered by questions. ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who killed my girl?’ And the answers that he gets in the first two movies are satisfying, but not complete... This third film has got to be about answers. By the end of this film, you’ve got to understand how Jason Bourne became Jason Bourne.”

So says Paul Greengrass, the director of The Bourne Ultimatum, rounding off a trilogy of stories loosely adapted from the books of the same name by Robert Ludlum and which have been updated with huge success for a modern, cinema-savvy audience. Before James Bond got a re-imagining and Greengrass went on to direct the controversial United 93 retelling of the...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

The Simpsons movie finally hit cinemas last month. Impact recalls some of our favourite action-movie homages from the long-running anarchic animation.

The Simpsons has long been considered one of the most subversive cartoon shows ever made - poking fun at pop culture and our attitude to it. With the movie version finally in movie-theatres, Impact picks out a yellow handful of some famous (and infamous examples) of Matt Groening’s dysfunctional family and their parodies of the action genre...

Episode 1F13: Deep Space Homer
A disillusioned Homer, beaten to an employee award by an inanimate object, complains to NASA about their boring shuttle launches and finds that they are looking for an ‘average schmo’ to be their next astronaut. However will inanimate objects still trump the animated Homer when things go wrong in orbit?

Films referenced: Total Recall, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Alien, The Right Stuff

Episode 2F01: Itchy and Scratchyland
The Simpsons visit a theme park that looks like a very strange version of Disneyworld and trouble ensues when the robots created to look like the violent cat and mouse characters look set to turn on their masters.

Films referenced: Westworld, Jurassic Park, Last Action Hero, Saturday Night Fever

Episode 3F15:
A Fish Called Selma
Troy McClure (“You may remember me from such films as...”) gets pulled...

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If you thought that he retired from making movies or that the Dolph-in was on the verge of extinction, just think again. Dolph Lundgren, the imposing Swedish born action star returns!

Over the past few years, Dolph Lundgren has taken his career into his own hands, doing more and varied publicity, like being portrayed in the German/French TV show Into the Night with..., featured as the first Hollywood star in a Russian music video and even performing in a boxing match for King of the Ring in Moscow! And he is not ready to stop his comeback yet, so Seagal and Van Damme beware!

After the above average Hidden Agenda, a couple of straightforward Sidney J. Furie actioners (Detention and Direct Action), and a very disappointing sci-fi experience (Retrograde), Lundgren was propelled into the director’s chair, replacing Furie on the helm of The Defender (still awaiting a UK release). One could wonder how the picture would have turned out had it been directed by Furie, but even the decent Direct Action is no match for the big Swede’s directorial debut. Building its plot around the war on terrorism since 9/11, The Defender follows a former American soldier, Lance Rockford, now leading a security team protecting the head of the National Security Agency, Roberta Jones, during a secret meeting with the world’s most wanted terrorist leader, Mohamed Jamar. When both...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

It's taken a long time for the Earthsea stories to reach the screen, but will the latest anime offering be better received (by the fans and the author herself) than the previous live-action outing? Life and film-making is never that simple...

There’s a traditional thinking that says you’re from Middle-earth or Narnia, that in childhood or adulthood you gravitated to either the world of J R R Tolkien or his friend and peer C S Lewis. Those with a wider breadth of fantasy know that there’s a third option and that was the world of Earthsea and its islands created by Ursula Le Guin. Geographically and thematically halfway between the two slightly better-known authors, Le Guin’s work has been a success in its own right.

The Earthsea books, like many fantasies, remained out of the reach of the film industry only because of the budget and effects that would be needed, but in the last fifteen years or so, Hollywood has caught up with the imagination and the success of Peter Jackson’s Rings adaptation meant it was only a matter of time before the industry started reassessing its options when it came to fantasy action heroics.

Le Guin first created Earthsea for a short story called ‘The Word of Unbinding’ in 1964, but most people became aware of her work with A Wizard of Earthsea which was followed by The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. For a long while...

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Hard and gritty Seraphin Falls may do for the American West what The Proposition did for the Australian Outback. Stars Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson discuss the story of revenge and survival...

Three years after the end of the American Civil War, two hearts still beat to the drums of war. Former Confederate colonel Carver (Liam Neeson) is driven by revenge. Former Union captain Gideon (Pierce Brosnan) is haunted by regret. But at night they share the same nightmares about what happened at Seraphim Falls...

High in the cold Rocky Mountains with trees, snow and sky for as far as his eyes can see, Gideon nestles by a modest fire and prepares to dine on a freshly caught rabbit. The first gunshot barely misses his face, but a second bullet burns deeply into his arm to lodge painfully between muscle and bone.

Carver has finally caught up to his prey, but not even the best trackers his money could buy can truly catch Gideon. Gideon resourcefully eludes Carver and his men, using the dangerous terrain (including a harrowing waterfall) to his advantage even as it works against him. What follows is an escape fraught with levels of peril, pain and ingenuity that would make Rambo nervous, and the physical/emotional dedication Brosnan pours into the film’s first 20 minutes adds up to some of the most powerful and believable acting he’s ever...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

Are they bad, misunderstood or just drawn that way? Beau Smith looks at the bad guys of comics...

Psychologists say that there’s a hero in all of us. On the other side of the coin they also say that there’s a villain in there too. Most of us have a conscious and moral compass to act as a leash to rein in our darker side. Some don’t...

Those who don’t end up being bad guys, villains, criminals and people you don’t want to be alone with in a dark alley or have cutting your hair.

In pop culture, films, novels, TV and comic books, we get to see bad guys in all shapes, sizes and forms. As a writer of comics for twenty years I’ve written hundreds of bad guys and just like super heroes, villains have their different layers as well.

On the hero side you have the ‘boy scout’ kind of heroes like Superman and Captain America. You have the heroes that dwell on the darker edge of heroism like Batman and The Punisher. You also have your ‘everyman’ heroes like Spider-Man and Wildcat. It’s the same with bad guys. You’ve got your full-blown psychopaths like Doctor Doom and Darkseid. They rate up there with real life psychos like Hitler and Osama Bin Laden....

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

New Police Story director Benny Chan returns with Invisible Target, a hard hitting Police thriller that confirms that Hong Kong action cinema is very much alive and kicking! Impact’s Eastern Editor Mike Leeder casts an eye over the result...

Invisible Target opens with a bang as an armoured truck containing $100 million dollars is waylaid, robbed and destroyed by the vicious ‘Ronin Gang’, a team of former soldiers turned criminals led by Jiang Ying-hau (Wu Jing), and including Lu (Andy On), Chi (Vincent Sze) and their sister amongst the members. The gang blows the van up, and make off with the cash leaving a number of innocent bystanders dead and dying, and the surviving member of the armoured truck’s security team Hee (Sam Lee) in severe shock and on the verge of a mental breakdown.

Six months later, the Ronin gang re-appears and three very different Policemen are drawn together by their return. Detective Chen Jin (Nicholas Tse), a CID officer mourning the death of his fiancée, an innocent victim of the robbery, Inspector Fang (Shawn Yue) a gung ho detective who was humiliated by the gang, and Wei (Jaycee Chan) an idealistic young Police officer whose brother disappeared while undercover with the ‘Ronin’ team, and is thought by senior officers to have crossed the line and become one of them.

The three bond after a bone crunching fight at a local tea house, and join forces...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

Andrez Bergen rounds up both the animated and live-action news from Japan...

This month, Impact’s Tokyo bureau honcho, Andrez Bergen, sets out to provide the hottest news from a country reeling in the midst of one very humid, sweltering and relentless summer - but when there’s action anime aplenty, and some insane movies involving katana blades, who really cares..? Read on, McDuff-san!

THE SKY CRAWLERS:
A NEW MOVIE FROM MAMORU OSHII
“Somewhere, in a country similar to ours, there are children who do not become adults...” Thus teases Production I.G in their recently unveiled press for a new anime flick, dubbed The Sky Crawlers, from the exceptional Japanese auteur Mamoru Oshii - to be released in 2008.

Oshii has an ongoing soft spot for the team at I.G, which is based in Tokyo, as he told me a couple of years back. “It’s like my home,” he said at the time. “It’s like Manchester for Manchester United, and Hamburg for HSV (the soccer teams). They know the pitch in whatever condition and situations.” Internationally renowned for his ground-breaking 1995 anime feature Ghost in the Shell (which heavily influenced the Wachowski brothers and Luc Besson), Oshii has since set the benchmark for the fusion of 2D with 3D computer graphics, particular in past...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

Mamoru Oshii writes this twisted anime adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood.

I have to admit that, in spite of having written about anime for many years, I had never heard of Jin Roh until Andrez brought it to my attention. Based on the manga Ken-Roh Densetsu written by perennial renaissance man, Mamoru Oshii and subsequently adapted into two live action features (The Red Spectacles and Stray Dogs) and several radio serials, Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade is the third feature length outing for the franchise but actually serves as a prequel for the two live action movies that came before it.

Produced by Production IG in 1999, the film marked the last fully hand-drawn project to be undertaken by the studio before the introduction of digital animation following Fuji Film’s decision to discontinue manufacture of the high quality cel sheets previously used in anime. Mamoru Oshii had originally hoped to direct the project himself several years earlier but was, at the time, working on the seminal Ghost in the Shell feature and chose instead to nominate Hiroyuki Okiura, previously the animation supervisor on Ghost in the Shell, for the role of director.

Oshii’s decision would appear to have been a sound one as Hiroyuki has crafted an interesting and thoughtful entry...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

Covered this month:
DVDs: The Breed, Deadwood: Season 3 Boxset, Jindabyne
Books: Al Pacino: The Authorized Biography, Empire Movie Miscellany, The Screenwriter's Handbook
Games: Ninja Gaiden Sigma

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

From Sherwood to Hollywood and from the Irish battlefield to outer space, the versatile actor/choreographer/action-man Mark Ryan tells us about the ‘buzz’ surrounding this summer’s Transformers.

The last time we caught up with Mark Ryan he was fresh off a muddy irish field full of axe and sword-wielding hordes and the legendary Clanranald where he’d been helping make the battle sequences in King Arthur look brutal, dirty and crisp celtic candy for the eye. Still well remembered for his role as Nasir in the classic ITV Robin of Sherwood series, Ryan is the type of guy who keeps popping up in high profile projects, but not always where you expect. Years on stage, originating the role of Magaldi in the West End’s Evita? Check.

Fight choreographer in King Arthur? Double check. Penning a DC comic? Absolutely! Cameo as a prison captain in The Prestige. Totally! But as a hulking great robot from another planet in the year’s most anticipated blockbuster? Well, actually, yes... when the normally silent Bumblebee has something to buzz about, that would be Mark’s vocal chords and the funny thing is, he was the prototype voice for all the mechanical cast. So how did the Yorkshireman end up saving the known universe? It all came about when the Transformers team needed someone to talk the walk... for ALL the characters.

“The casting...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

Chan and Tucker are back on the case. Will Paris survive the experience and does the franchise still pack a punch?

Buddy movies have a long and proud tradition: Take two people with utterly different approaches to doing a similar job, throw them together and watch them spark off each other until the climax of the film when they find a way to work together and save the day. The original Rush Hour movie did not divert to any large extent from that tried and tested formula, but what it did have was the impressive Jackie Chan and the loud Chris Tucker. Tucker may arguably divide audiences with his in-your-face performances, but Chan is usually a sure-fire bet for any movie.

And so another franchise was born (indeed Chan has done well with these and the Shanghai series of films). This month a second sequel to the original Rush Hour, thoughtfully entitled Rush Hour 3, comes skidding, thumping and kicking onto screens.

In the heart of Paris lies a deadly secret. Half a world away in Los Angeles, Ambassador Han is about to disclose it. In his possession is explosive new evidence about the inner workings of the Triads - the most powerful and notorious crime syndicate in the world. The Ambassador has discovered the identity of Shy Shen, the very...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

We continue to look at the legacy of the studio responsible for so much eastern action. This month Gordon ‘Scratch’ Lee and examines three very different but classic films from the Shaw Library...

Last issue we looked at the history of the mighty Shaw Brothers studio, nestled at lot 200, Clearwater Bay Road in Hong Kong’s New Territories, and the cinematic legacy the studio created. This month we continue our look as Gordon ‘Scratch’ Lee, examines three very different but classic films from the Shaw Library...

Ten Tigers of Kwuandong
A group of fighters join the Ching army as mercenaries and wreak havoc through the land, killing gambling and drinking. On their travels, they are challenged by a local Kung Fu Master called Fang-Shao-Hu. The brave man is beaten and killed by the fighters, but his son follows the killers but is unable to take his revenge. He seeks help from the Resistance group ‘Ten Tigers’.

The leader of the Tigers, Le hen Chow, is played by Ti Lung (Kung Fu Instructor, The New One Armed Swordsman, The Blood Brothers, Deadly Duo, and many more). He is responsible for the safety of the Anti-Ching Leader Chi Mein Yi. The Ten Tigers have on their side five of the Venoms (a famous Taiwanese Opera team trained to a high level of martial arts). One specializes in kicking (Iron leg) another Iron Armour, another...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]

...and John Mosby, John Bierly and Mike Leeder look at the villains of the cinema and TV screens.

In previous issues of Impact, we’ve addressed what it is to be a ‘hero’ in modern action entertainment, but if the man in the white hat has all the best victories, then the devil still has the best tunes and witty one-liners. Killer-quills John Mosby, Mike Leeder and John Bierly compare nefarious notes...

John Mosby: Let’s start down the path to the dark side by discussing our favourite villains...

Mike Leeder: Well, I’d have to say for the ‘West’ Darth Vader would still rank very heavily up there for me. He was the first big bad that really stuck in my consciousness when I was a kid, he had the cool scary helmet, the James Earl Jones voice, the calculator on the chest, the cool spaceship, a red light sabre, and the mystical force behind him - he could even kill people without touching them. He would rank very highly but I would like to say only for the Star Wars: A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back chapters, he wimped out in Return of the Jedi. But Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man as the sadistic, calm, collected former Nazi with a penchant for dentistry ranks up above him. I...

[To read this article in full you must buy the September 2007 edition of Impact]