The Young Master (1980)

PG-13.  I mean, sure, it's for violence and swearing.  I can't deny that it's not for violence and swearing.  But my kids decide to walk into the room, I'm foing to feel way more uncomfrotable with the nude group shower or the kid who is peeing into a river.  Also, the inclusion of a sex worker as a bit was mildly uncomfortable as well.

DIRECTOR:  Jackie Chan

Oh man, it's been a minute since I've written anything for this blog.  There was just a tear there where I didn't really have the opportunity to watch movies.  I mean, I kind of planned it that way.  I had a disc of the stage production of Spirited Away which was with an alternative cast that I wanted to watch.  Couple with that the fact that I'm watching Daredevil: Born Again and Andor and there's going to be stretches where I don't write about anything.  But I got a really good Jackie Chan kung-fu movie and that goes a long way to making me want to write.  I will admit, it doesn't help that I'm feeling more sleepy than I'd like to admit.  But here we go!

I thought that I was on the last disc of my Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar Criterion box set.  I knew that there were six movies in there.  I knew that the first two discs had two movies each.  I knew that there were four discs.  My brain?  Two movies per disc plus a special features disc.  Nope.  That last two movies get their own discs.  In my head, that's because they're better movies.  And if The Young Master is any indication, there might be something valid with that read of the movie. It's not that The Young Master is some kind of life-changing film.  No, there's still plenty that is kind of dumb and oddly structured about this movie.  But what The Young Master does that is pretty darned phenomenal is nail Jackie Chan's exact sense of humor and tone that would make him famous later.  That's a bit of an oversimplification because The Young Master is definitely the product of this cultural era of kung fu movie.

That being said, there's enough different about The Young Master to make it watchable.  Honestly, I was getting a little bored of the story of Jackie Chan, the guy who wants to learn kung-fu only to get good at it by the end.  There's something incredibly exciting knowing that Jackie Chan can do the tricks at any moment from the first scene in the movie.  From a writer's perspective, this is probably a pretty frustrating take.  After all, we want our characters to be dynamic and grow throughout a narrative.  But from a choreography perspective, Jackie Chan is allowed to do the thing that he does best: choreograph some absolutely incredible and pretty hilarious fight scenes.  I mean, this is both a good and a bad, but the last twenty minutes of the movie is almost exclusively a fight sequence.  A twenty minute fight sequence might absolutely define what makes this movie what it is.

That's kind of what I'm learning about Jackie Chan, by the way.  I think I've already made this comparison in one of the other movies, but Jackie Chan is Gene Kelly for fight sequences.  Both Gene Kelly and Jackie Chan have this fun sense of showmanship.  Both are immediately charismatic and know how to make the most of out a moment.  But both feel like they are there to show off the technical saaviness of their respective crafts.  As much as I'm lauding (and, partially, lamenting) a twenty-minute fight sequence.  It's just the dream ballet from stuff like Singin' in the Rain or An American in Paris.  Yet, seeing just the technical proficiency isn't enough.  It's why I never really jumped on board the Phantom Menace train for the rad lightsaber fights.  Maybe, when making a movie that relies so heavily on the technical prowess of the choreography, there needs to be some self-awareness that understands that the format needs to laugh at itself a bit.  On the last Jackie Chan movie I watched, ​Fearless Hyena II, Jackie Chan was miserable.  Yeah, he also phoned in the choreography because he was being forced to make the movie by the Triads, so I don't know if this example is going to hold as much water as I want it to.  But as good as the fighting was in that movie, golly was it a slog to get through.  Instead, we have this movie that seems to take a point of pride when it comes to choregraphing everything and --which is super important --the fighting is funny?

Now, is this to say that serious Kung Fu isn't great?  Nah, I mean, I already wrote about the entire Bruce Lee​ box on my Collections page.  And, as much as I'm praising The Young Master so far, I will take The 36th Chamber of Shaolin any day over anything I've seen in the Jackie Chan box.  But if you don't necessarily have an amazing story, Chan understands that you have to upsell the character and the tone.  The tone of the movie is fairly light.  I mean, this is a crap comparison, but this feels more in line with his work in Rush Hour or Shanghai Noon than it does with his other work.  Instantly, Chan's character in this movie is charming.  That charm provides a shorthand into the world of the movie.  As much as there are some very thinly drawn characters surrounding Chan's character (whom I refuse to call "Dragon" because I don't remember anyone actually calling him that), they almost don't matter because we instantly identify that Chan's character is a lovable protagonist.  Here's the reality of my hypocrisy.  If Chan wasn't so darned talented at everything he does, this would drive me insane.  Charm shouldn't replace both character and plot. But when handled by someone like Chan, I genuninely don't care. 

And here's the deal:  this is a me thing.  I hate the little voice in my head that screams "Martin Scorsese probably respects the heck out a young Jackie Chan.  Golly, this is going to get pretentious, but The Young Master might be pique Jackie Chan because it feels like he's doing it for the love of the game.  There's some real old school kung-fu filmmaking going on here.  The zooms on this movie are violent.  The scenes last incredibly long.  But Chan, as director, is making something that just feels fun.  I talked about the importance of tone when I started this whole thing.  Chan goes into this movie knowing that he has to balance his tone and the rest has to be borderline guerilla filmmaking.  Are there some overly silly things in this movie that might not work?  Sure.  But that kind of adds to the charm of the piece as a whole.  And, yeah, there's potty humor.  Jackie Chan gets his bare bum pinched.  Okay.  Fine.  Also, he almost drinks pee from down a stream.  But do you understand how elevated the humor in this one feels compared to the last few Chan films I've watched.  He gets that certain base humor is always going to be funny, but he's not putting a ton of weight on those jokes either.  Instead, there are things that are naturally crafted that are hilarious.  That final fight, when our tensions are all built up?  Having the bad guy of the movie act as the ref for the fight is borderline priceless.  Sure, the bit goes on and on, but it works.  Honest to pete, there are moments in that fight that made me giggle on the treadmill a lot like how I laughed at Rush Hour the first time I saw it.

But all of the stuff I wrote is way too forgiving of some of the lazy storytelling that we fall into again.  I can praise the fact that Jackie Chan embraced an imperfect premise and made the best of it.  But on the other side of that, there are a lot of moments where the movie doesn't feel cohesive.  Like many of the other movies in this box, these movies almost feel like a collection of scenes and bits as opposed to a coherent story.  The big bad guy of the movie?  (Not the one who acts like a ref.  The convict.)  What's his deal?  We know that he's a convict getting transported and that he's incredible at Kung Fu.  But he has almost no tie to the story.  There's a loose explanation that the evil school freed him for...reasons?  Like, regularly, throughout the movie, I kept wondering "Is this the plot?"  At first, I thought that this movie was about redeeming oneself in the school after losing a big match.  Then I thought it was about getting a brother back.  Then I thought it was about escaping a constable.  Then I thought it was about the convinct that I knew nothing about .  Finally, I had no idea what it was technically about.  Now, you could argue that these are all beats in a movie.  And to a certain extent, that's true.  But none of these scenes seem to have continuity or consequence.  When we see the school after Chan returns, it's almost startling.  "Oh yeah.  These guys."  Like, no part really stood out as "This is the movie."  

But again, I've been preaching the movie.  The Young Master (despite having a terrible name for this movie) is possibly the best movie in the box set.  Again, I have one more movie in the set, so it's not over for me.  But it is definitely a solid film.