Rating:  

Starring: Masanobu Ando, You Benchang, Liu Xiaoye, Ashton Xu, Kitty Zhang, Mi Dan, Senggerenquin, Xie Ning.
___________________________

Director: Wuershan
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Release Date: March 18, 2011
Home Video Release Date: September 27, 2011
Box Office: $48 Thousand
___________________________

First Cut Studios, Taihe Film Investment Co. LTD., Union Voole Technology, Fox International Pictures and China Lion Film Distribution.

Written by: Wuershan, Zhang Jiajia, Ma Luoshan, Tang Que; adapted from a short story by An Changhe.

The story, intentionally nonsensical, goes along a little something like this. Divided into three stories, this triptych tells stories of “Desire”, “Vengeance”, and “Greed”. In “Desire”, a butcher is smitten with a lovely young woman, named Madam Mei, only to encounter another man attempting to woo her heart, the loathsome Big Beard.

In the story of “Vengeance”, a chef is made aware that his archenemy will be attending his restaurant and if anything goes wrong during the multi-course meal the chef must prepare for his nemesis and likely, the chef will be killed. This nemesis, known as Eunuch Liu, has killed members of the chef’s family and the chef seeks vengeance in an elaborate plan involving a mute imposter.

Finally, when we reach the story of “Greed”, a legendary swordsman seeks the use of a guy known as Fat Tang to help him take the molten slag of previous swordsman’s blades and create one superblade of sorts, which he will use in combat to be an even greater warrior than his famed father.

Sounds simple enough right? Yeah, well, no. The thread that binds these tales together is present but the crazed film school flourishes that Wuershan takes are exhausting. Within the same stories, we move from color to black and white, archival footage resides alongside modernized footage, live-action bleeds into animation and back again, various fighting styles are thrown in to the mix, slapstick comedy plays next to traditional comedy, there are what appears to be countless Chinese references I failed to get, and when the film breaks into a hip-hop music video with a brothel owner screaming into and dominating the camera, I threw up my hands.

And even if you can enjoy some of the crazed ideas Wuershan throws at you, the film is edited so haphazardly that it is next to impossible to assimilate what you are watching. As colorful and vibrant as the film is to look at in a high definition Blu-Ray presentation, it is equally as maddening and disconcerting to sit through.

The film is tagged with a credit, “Presented by Doug Liman”. Liman, as you may know, is the successful director of films The Bourne Identity, Swingers, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. While Liman has earned some criticism for being a little too happy on the editing trigger with his films, he has never even come close to delivering a film as indecipherable as this one.

Should I See It?

If you seek out the latest in Chinese cinema, then this film represents a recent entry.

Fans of films that zip and zing around feverishly without any true context whatsoever will likely love this film immensely.

There’s fearlessness in filmmaking and creativity in filmmaking but wanton recklessness is flat out annoying. There is nothing which sticks around long enough to make any kind nof impact and the film is not nearly as cool and novel as it thinks it is.

Then with that said, if somehow you stumble upon this, please oh please explain it to me.