Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow
It’s slow to get rolling, and I came thisclose to turning it off, because a couple of the initial fight sequences looked fake on the level of high-school-play slap choreography. But the payoff is very much worth it, for two reasons. First, the main plot and the subplots fit together in spite of the initial straining to get them all rolling; sometimes, Hong Kong kung-fu is a main plot with the “comedic” elements shoehorned in, seemingly at random and fairly obviously to kill time between fight sets, but here, the slapsticky bits play into the plotting, and guns you see in the first-act farce pieces do go off in the third act. The very broad which-way-did-he-go-George-ing still isn’t terribly funny, but it’s at least functional. Second, the main plot has several heroes and nemeses, not just one of each or two heroes and a villain, so the last half hour is a series of nearly uninterrupted face-offs, so you get some variety in the fighting styles. When the regional champion showed up, I thought, “Great, now we get lots of exposition and glaring to slow things down,” but dude got straight to his fight-picking point, plus he’s a fantastic fighter, to the point where it sounded like even the Foley team got their backs into it more once he was in play.
This is top-notch Jackie Chan, more balletic than you might be used to, with the added bonuses of 1) Manson-lamps Roy Horan as a Russian mercenary going bugfuck with a long-blade and seventies hair, and 2) a fight between a cat and a cobra. And I do not mean “between a Cat’s-Paw-school fighter and a Snake-Fist fighter.” I mean between an actual cat and an actual cobra. The cat…is doing wire-work. With the snake wrapped around it. It is awesome.
Minor disappointments include cat continuity (three differently patterned orange tabbies and an Abyssinian in the same role as the cat) and the fact that the guy I thought was Yi Cheng from The Victim was actually not. But see above re: cat vs. cobra, and I love me some Yi Cheng, but Hsia Hsu does not mess around.
On a side note, the IMDb is really frustrating to work with when it comes to martial-arts movies from this era. I know it’s tough when the movies were released under a different name in each country, plus the actor credits get complicated depending on whether the name is Anglicized, but if the DVD doesn’t have a bio chapter on it, I’m often totally at sea on who’s who. The subtitles had Hsia Hsu as “Shu Chin”; IMDb has him as “Su Chen.” No picture. I have to assume it’s the same guy, but what does my round-eye ass know. Anyone have a better resource for this stuff?
Tags: movies
One of my cousins has a website that reviews Asian cinema. I don’t know how current it is, but it might be a place to start.
http://www.illuminatedlantern.com
I like using the LoveHKFilm site for info on Hong Kong movies. I didn’t see the person you mentioned on there, but they have a review for the movie.
I must tell you that the phrase “cat continuity” fiss me with unholy glee. Also,I am so netflixing this.
BTW-which cat got the big fight scene?
The Abyssinian. Aw.
My dad, sister and I have a thing for old Jackie Chan movies, but I can’t say that I’ve seen this one. My hubby and I are definitely putting this on the list.
Also, “cat continuity”? Heeeeeeee!
For a moment, I thought you were going to be writing about Snake in the MONKEY’S Shadow, which has no Jackie Chan and is also completely horrible. If you watch it with film students, be sure to play the “Not Even A Freshman Would Make THAT Mistake” game. Bonus points for a ten minute scene of a very small chained monkey playing gotcha with a cobra. Not as cool as CAT COMBAT, but the ridiculous freeze-frame-with-orchestral-sting at the end makes it all worthwhile.
That reminds me, need to watch the $2 pawn shop Jet Li DVD with back-cover copy about fighting monsters in a giant chicken suit or something.
nem0: 1) SitES has some pretty hilare freeze-frame flashbacks of the cat’s paw. Not the fight; just the paw. 2) I just put SitMS on my Netflix list so thanks for the save.
I’d had a run of meh kung-fu and only broke the streak with this one; Netflix isn’t sending any more for a while but “Jackie Chan’s Project A” is next, and I expect good things.
Project A is a winner. I mean, Jackie Chan plus Sammo Hung? How could you go wrong?
Then again, Sammo Hung teamed up with Jet Li in Lord of the Wu-Tang (or Kung-fu Cult Master, or Evil Cult, depending on where you look), which is indescribably ludicrous. There’s this guy tied to a rock who does kung-fu, and there’s vampires, and Chinese pop music during epic battles, and light-saber chain swords and… well, it’s worth watching once. Stock up on booze and invite like-minded friends.
Poor domestic-animal continuity is the same reason I will NEVER say The Third Man is the greatest movie ever, no matter what the critics and film institutes say. When Doughy McTrenchcoat interviews that effeminate man with the chihuahua, it changes into one with totally different markings. Boo!
So did you nearly pee your pants laughing the first time Jackie Chan spoke? (In the version I have, Jackie’s dialogue was overdubbed IN AN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT!!! BWAAAHAAAHAAA!!!!!) The guy with the bowl of rice was just amazing!
(I’m no help in your search for info though, sorry.)
I switched it to Cantonese with subtitles; I actually find it less distracting than the dub at times.
For those in the UK with Sky, this movie is now on Bravo 2.
Try the Hong Kong Movie Database.
so I went to Netflix and typed in Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow… and there are 2 movies!!! the first one (1978) shows that Jackie Chan is in it, so I went with that one, but there is also a 2003 version. I don’t know if it’s the same movie (remake) or if it’s a totally different snake/eagle.
I watched part of this last night, and Jackie Chan’s break-dance-kata alone is worth the price of admission. (If Jim Carrey’s Mask was real and I found that sucker and put it on, I’d totally turn into Jackie Chan and be backflipping on and off stuff all day.)