Tai Chi Zero is an inventive, often funny, half of one movie that you should definitely run out and see right now. Based incredibly loosely on the life of Yang Luchan, the founder of Yang style taiji, Tao Chi Zero combines steampunk, Westerns, a Scott Pilgrimesque visual theme, animation and intriguing optical titles, and the incredibly adorable Angelababy.
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Told ya.
In this film, Yang is a mystic prodigy with photographic reflexes. He can pretty much duplicate any kung-fu move he sees, but the physical deformity that allows this also causes brain aneurysms. As a member of an anti-Qing rebellion, Yang is a ringer on the battlefield, but is going to die very soon. A field medic tells him that his chi is out of balance and only Chen-style taiji, as practiced in far-off Chen Village, can save him. But thanks to Chinese parochialism, nobody in Chen Village will teach him. They're happy to beat him up using a combination of of fairly realistic movie Chen taiji and wuxia leaping around. It's all pretty fun, especially the graphics around the various moves showing the channels of jing and whatnot.
And poor Yang is not the only outsider to be treated poorly. Angelababy is engaged to the Westernized "Wimpy", who, lacking a Chen surname, was kept from learning kung-fu. So instead he went to London and made himself into a proper gentleman with knowledge of electronics, railway systems, and Victrolas. He wants to modernize the Village with electricity and a rail route, but after a teensy little series of explosions, he's rebuffed by the reactionary village elders. Also, he is inexplicably cheating on Angelababy with the half-Chinese half-British "foreign consultant"!
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Okay, maybe not inexplicably...
They roll up in a big steampunk railroad track-laying iron and threaten Chen Village with imminent squishing. Only then does grandmaster Chen reveal himself, and come up with a plan to manipulate Yang into wrecking the machine and saving the village, while plausibly denying any responsibility for doing so for the village itself. Naturally, this plan kinda sorta fails, someone dies melodramatically, and there are kung-fu fights aplenty—and parodies of the same—to follow. You know that now-boring shot of a massive superpunch being frozen, then images of bones being overlaid on the poor victim's face so you can better see the awesome bone-crunching destruction? Well, it's like that, except that there are watermelons and eggs involved.
Sadly, Tai Chi Zero is only half a movie. The forthcoming Tai Chi Hero is less a sequel than it is the actual conclusion of the film—there are enough teasers at the end, during the closing credits, to keep us highly interested.
The movie doesn't look cheap at all, which is often a problem with films like these. Either one ends up with cheap CGI or cheap practical effects. Tai Chi Zero isn't a big-budget film, but every dollar is on the screen, and weaknesses are cleverly disguised. The music is quite, uh, varied, which I liked though my friend Seth thought it a bit much. At this point, I'm satisfied with any film that doesn't take a single theme and beat it to death by rolling it out in every other theme. And it wasn't constant Chinese harp stuff wither. I did have a little problem with the track-laying iron, which seemed to be just as big or as small as needed for a scene rather than an actual physical object. But Tai Chi Zero is a very good (half) movie that does everything from show off some real taiji applications to lecture Ang Lee* on how to use the multiple-screen effect he tried in Hulk and failed with. Check it out, and then come home and then start counting the days till January and the release of Tai Chi Hero. There will be a wedding! Or wiiiill theeere be?
*I'm suspect that one set of shots was an explicit nod to/correction of Ang Lee, whose first feature, after all was also about taiji. It was called Pushing Hands.
Told ya.
In this film, Yang is a mystic prodigy with photographic reflexes. He can pretty much duplicate any kung-fu move he sees, but the physical deformity that allows this also causes brain aneurysms. As a member of an anti-Qing rebellion, Yang is a ringer on the battlefield, but is going to die very soon. A field medic tells him that his chi is out of balance and only Chen-style taiji, as practiced in far-off Chen Village, can save him. But thanks to Chinese parochialism, nobody in Chen Village will teach him. They're happy to beat him up using a combination of of fairly realistic movie Chen taiji and wuxia leaping around. It's all pretty fun, especially the graphics around the various moves showing the channels of jing and whatnot.
And poor Yang is not the only outsider to be treated poorly. Angelababy is engaged to the Westernized "Wimpy", who, lacking a Chen surname, was kept from learning kung-fu. So instead he went to London and made himself into a proper gentleman with knowledge of electronics, railway systems, and Victrolas. He wants to modernize the Village with electricity and a rail route, but after a teensy little series of explosions, he's rebuffed by the reactionary village elders. Also, he is inexplicably cheating on Angelababy with the half-Chinese half-British "foreign consultant"!
Okay, maybe not inexplicably...
They roll up in a big steampunk railroad track-laying iron and threaten Chen Village with imminent squishing. Only then does grandmaster Chen reveal himself, and come up with a plan to manipulate Yang into wrecking the machine and saving the village, while plausibly denying any responsibility for doing so for the village itself. Naturally, this plan kinda sorta fails, someone dies melodramatically, and there are kung-fu fights aplenty—and parodies of the same—to follow. You know that now-boring shot of a massive superpunch being frozen, then images of bones being overlaid on the poor victim's face so you can better see the awesome bone-crunching destruction? Well, it's like that, except that there are watermelons and eggs involved.
Sadly, Tai Chi Zero is only half a movie. The forthcoming Tai Chi Hero is less a sequel than it is the actual conclusion of the film—there are enough teasers at the end, during the closing credits, to keep us highly interested.
The movie doesn't look cheap at all, which is often a problem with films like these. Either one ends up with cheap CGI or cheap practical effects. Tai Chi Zero isn't a big-budget film, but every dollar is on the screen, and weaknesses are cleverly disguised. The music is quite, uh, varied, which I liked though my friend Seth thought it a bit much. At this point, I'm satisfied with any film that doesn't take a single theme and beat it to death by rolling it out in every other theme. And it wasn't constant Chinese harp stuff wither. I did have a little problem with the track-laying iron, which seemed to be just as big or as small as needed for a scene rather than an actual physical object. But Tai Chi Zero is a very good (half) movie that does everything from show off some real taiji applications to lecture Ang Lee* on how to use the multiple-screen effect he tried in Hulk and failed with. Check it out, and then come home and then start counting the days till January and the release of Tai Chi Hero. There will be a wedding! Or wiiiill theeere be?
*I'm suspect that one set of shots was an explicit nod to/correction of Ang Lee, whose first feature, after all was also about taiji. It was called Pushing Hands.