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Stanislav L. Bereznyuk
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 00:33:38 +1100
From: James & Ariella <ja...@geelong.hotkey.net.au>
Reply-To: jet...@onelist.com
To: Jet Lee Mailing List <jet...@onelist.com>
Subject: [jetlee] Fired up over a bad Jet - Time article
From: "James & Ariella" <ja...@geelong.hotkey.net.au>
FIRED UP OVER A BAD JET
Kung-fu star Jet Li's first role as villain has put him on the "it" list.
But will it launch a Hollywood career?
By Richard James Havis
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EVEN HIS FANS TEND to forget: Kung-fu hero Jet Li Lianjie first made an
impression in the United States more than two decades ago. The year was 1974
and Li was a mere 11-year-old. But, as a member of a visiting wushu (martial
arts) team from Beijing, he was already showing off his fighting skills to
an appreciative White House audience that included then-President Richard
Nixon.
In the intervening years, 35-year-old Li's fortunes have waxed and waned. He
became five-time all-China wushu champion, served as national coach and went
on to play the hero in a slew of Hong Kong kung-fu movies, some more
successful than others. Right now, his star is surely on the rise. His role
as gangster Wah Sing Ku in Lethal Weapon 4, the latest in the popular action
series, is winning him international fans as never before. Li's menacing
triad boss is one of the coolest villains this season.
In the Lethal formula of things, its police heroes (Mel Gibson and Danny
Glover) typically overwhelm the bad guys in a flurry of wisecracks and
violent derringdo. Who remembers the South African thugs from Lethal Weapon
2? Pitted against one of America's best-loved police partnerships, Li
nevertheless manages to steal the show (even if he comes to a nasty end). As
the cops scramble across Los Angeles on the trail of "snakeheads," Chinese
gangsters smuggling illegal immigrants into the country, Wah turns up at
every corner to stop the pair - with his fists and feet. "He never uses a
gun, just kung-fu. He's a very smart guy," says Li of his character.
Not enough to rate more than sixth billing in the movie. Or even an
appearance in publicity posters (production company Warner Bros. only added
Li's face and name to the material after admirers kicked up a fuss before
opening day). Li professes not to mind. "Although I am well-known in Asia,
I'm a [relative] newcomer in the U.S.," he says. The Lethal exposure is
changing that. Once known only to followers of Hong Kong film, Li is now
potential leading-man material.
His fans, new and old, took over the official Lethal Weapon 4 web-site,
posting opinions on matters ranging from Li's hairstyle to whether he should
use sun-block to prevent wrinkles. After that, talk-show appearances were
inevitable. Li showed repartee was possible despite limited English. When
Jay Leno asked for a few kung-fu pointers on The Tonight Show, Li remarked
on the host's age - and began a slow-motion Tai-chi demonstration. The
martial art is often used for gentle physical exercise by the elderly.
Studio bosses moved quickly to catch the wave. Warner Bros. has made Li the
lead in his next movie, Romeo Must Die, a modernized gangland version of the
Shakespeare tragedy (it reportedly offered him $3 million). Li is typically
self-effacing about the studio's readiness to gamble on his ability to
become a star in Tinsel Town: "Let's hope they are right," he says. "We'll
have to wait and see."
Ironically, the film that forced Li into the consciousness of U.S. audiences
is the aberration in a usually top-notch action series. To meet its summer
release date, Lethal Weapon 4 was written on the hoof by three
scriptwriters, each working on a separate story. A fourth writer then wove
them together to create . . . a muddle. What has proved more annoying to
Asian observers, though, is the film's stereotyping. Viewers are hard put to
find Chinese who are neither Charlie Chan-style villains, nor foolish
waiters nor helpless victims - except for Li's Wah, of course. Perhaps the
only vaguely positive characters are a group of illegal immigrants whose
plight is compared to that of African slaves in the last century. Li, the
prominent Asian in the movie, dodges the thorny subject of race with the
nifty footwork he displays in fist-fights. "I am just an actor, and I follow
the script," he says. "Anyway, I don't think Hollywood directors would
deliberately make a film to insult Asians."
Still, a running gag about "flied lice" is an anachronism in these
supposedly more enlightened times. In defense, director Richard Donner says
the joke originated from a Chinese-American member of the cast. "I didn't
think there was anything offensive to the Asian world. If they were
offended, I'm sorry," says Donner. References to "flied lice" have not
bothered Hong Kong-based entertainment journalist Winnie Chung: "The jokes
have been around for so long." But she adds: "Mel Gibson's character was
certainly condescending in places."
How did Li manage through all that? Simple: He battled. Where other Hong
Kong actors in U.S. productions have had to stress realism over the stylized
combat they excel in, Li resisted. When time came to nail down the details,
he sought creative independence. He also wanted his own Hong Kong specialist
to direct those sequences. "I was very lucky," says Li. "Before production
began, I told the director that I wanted to control my action scenes in the
film."
Li got his way, but with a couple of caveats. First, he jokes, "I couldn't
hit Mel [Gibson]." More seriously, producers insisted that the action
choreography be grittier than in his Hong Kong work. Li's past movies tended
to feature exaggerated moves that show off his skill and grace. For the U.S.
debut, Li had to concentrate that wushu power to its basic essence. What
audiences get - and what seems to have knocked them out - is speed. "He's so
fast, you can't see him move - it's incredible," says co-star Rene Russo.
Wushu is not a fighting style, in the sense that karate is. The term
embraces the gamut of Chinese martial arts, including the Hung, Tai-chi and
Monkey systems. And like Bruce Lee, the Beijing-born Li mixes a variety of
styles. The actor wields traditional swords and spears with dazzling
dexterity, too, and he has applied his mastery to great effect in movies,
where the weapon might be an innocuous umbrella.
Li's training started at the age of seven. He had been a sickly toddler. To
improve his health, his father sent him to learn martial arts from a master
of the mantis-boxing style. The prescription worked. Within a year, Li was
enrolled with the Beijing Martial Art Troupe. An athletic flair, discipline
and plenty of perseverance kept him on top as national wushu champion until
1979. Perhaps encouraged by the success of Hong Kong martial arts movies,
China's film industry ventured again into the genre in 1982. And who better
to star in the initial picture than Li? Fresh-faced and sporting a more
defined physique than in later films, Li impressed in his debut as a Shaolin
monk.
Shaolin Temple had none of the special-effects and fast cuts of later
movies. But that only highlighted Li's wushu prowess. (He plays a young man
who enters the monastery to acquire the fighting skills that would help him
avenge his father's murder.) The film was a hit across Asia. The attraction,
however, was as much location as action. Shot at the ancient Shaolin
Monastery in the Song mountains of Henan province, the film offered regional
audiences then-rare glimpses of China. Within the country, it inspired a
fleeting martial-arts craze. Some young fans were ready to abandon their
studies to become wushu warriors. According to a report in the Guangming
Daily, six students from Xian tried to make their way to the temple, but
were persuaded to turn back when they got off a train to ask for directions.
Li followed up with a couple of other Shaolin movies, but none matched that
first success. Fed-up, he moved to America in 1988 on a two-year exit visa
with Temple co-star Huang Qiuyan. They married, had two children, and ran
martial-arts classes while waiting for his break in Hollywood (the couple
have since divorced). Although he managed to get a Green Card, Li never
quite mastered English and the few pictures he made flopped. This Jet was
not going anywhere.
As with John Woo, it was Hong Kong's master of the cinematic spectacle, Tsui
Hark, who got Li on the fast track. The director urged him to return to
play the Cantonese folk-hero Wong Fei-hung in a new project called Once Upon
A Time In China. The character had been immortalized on film 98 times during
the 1950s and 1960s, notably by actor Kwan Tak-hing. In fact, Kwan became
synonymous with the hero. Tsui needed something to make his version stand
out, and Li's palpable kung-fu skills seemed the answer.
Wong holds a special place in the martial arts mythology of southern China.
The real Wong was born in 1847. But little is known about him except that he
was a brilliant martial-arts teacher and bone-setter who was revered during
his lifetime. Kwan's films made Wong sifu, or Master Wong, a hero in every
sense of the word. Writes critic Yu Mo-wan in The Prodigious Cinema of Wong
Fei-hung: "The character epitomized many of the traditional Confucian
virtues, including Propriety, Righteousness, Charitable Love, and Peace."
It was a tough act to follow. Tsui and Li decided the only way to make a
mark was to make a point. The late 1800s was a chaotic period in Chinese
history, when the Qing dynasty was under siege from increasingly rapacious
foreign powers. Their Master Wong was to explore the confusion, look at the
nature of colonialism and take in questions such as "Are Western values good
or bad?" In short, the very traditional kung-fu master became a commentator
on the changes occurring in Deng Xiaoping's modern China. Audiences loved
it, and two other Once Upon A Time movies followed in quick succession. The
popular series made Li something of a superstar in Hong Kong.
All fables come to end. And the Once Upon a Time collaboration with Tsui
fell apart in 1992, reportedly over money matters. Li did not return to the
series until last year, when he appeared in the sixth installment. In the
meantime, he formed his own company and produced a couple of box-office hits
in which he also starred - as an even feistier Chinese folk-hero, Fong
Sai-yuk. It remains his favorite role to date. Like Li's first movie
character, Fong is a disciple of the Shaolin school.
Modern roles have proved much harder to come to grips with. Li's forte was
the period drama, and the contemporary hero didn't quite suit his style. To
allow a suitably explosive display of pugilistic power, plot changes have
had to be shoehorned into contemporary storylines - for example, having the
villain's gun jam up in My Father Is A Hero. The movies still featured
impressive action sequences, but Li's appeal was dimmed in the modern
setting.
Not so in Lethal Weapon 4. Li's stylishly malevolent Wah has put him on the
likely-to-succeed list. Can Jet Li transform himself from supporting actor
to leading man? Producer Joel Silver thinks Li's upcoming Romeo role - as a
triad leader who falls for a Mafia don's daughter - might put Li on a new
trajectory. "If we're smart about it, it will be a rocket ship for him," he
says.
If his career takes flight, Jet Li won't be totally deserting Hong Kong. "I
believe I can open new channels of communication [between Hollywood and the
territory]," he says. Like the kung-fu teacher he has played so
successfully, Li is proud to be Chinese, but realizes he could learn a thing
or two from the West. Li is still Master Wong at heart.
James Brennan
The List Owner