Blood Brothers has John Woo as a producer but first-time director Alexi Tan insists that it is his film.

words yvonne teh

Be it geographically or professionally, Alexi Tan has come a long way. The Philippines-born – and British/American-educated – Taiwan national began his career as a stills photographer before moving on to directing TV advertisements, music videos and short films (including one starring Jay Chou that brought him to the attention of producer Terence Chang). Now, his first foray into feature filmmaking sees him helming and co-scripting Blood Brothers, the $78 million Taiwan-China-Hong Kong co-production which stars Asian-American actor Daniel Wu, Taiwan’s Chang Chen, Shu Qi and Tony Yang, and Mainland China’s Liu Ye.

Tan is quick to point out that despite this Mandarin-language work’s English title mimicking that of the martial arts epic directed by Chang Cheh in 1973, it is not a remake of that Shaw Brothers movie. Even though the modern Blood Brothers marks the cinematic return to Asia as its producer (with long-time collaborator Terence Chang) of John Woo, who was assistant director on Cheh’s film.

Neither, Tan avers, is his action-packed effort about three poor villagers who go to Shanghai in search of greater opportunities influenced by Boxer from Shantung (1972), an action classic about a poor villager who goes to Shanghai in search of a better life. That film starred kung fu movie legend Chen Kuan Tai (who went on to a lead role in The Blood Brothers a year later) and also listed Woo as assistant director. But as Tan says, “I’ve never seen Boxer from Shantung.”

At the same time though, he does make it clear that he’s quite the movie buff and that this work, whose audience he sees as being “Chinese people – be it Chinese people in Toronto or Alaska or wherever”, is indeed “a fusion of my cinematic influences and a smorgasbord of films that I love”. It’s just that instead of the Shaw Brothers, his heroes have been cowboys – notably those who people Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns – and characters from the movies of a certain John Woo.

Thus it’s true enough that “the film is actually partly inspired by John’s old films”, especially A Better Tomorrow (1986), one of whose main characters has given his name to Chang Chen’s Mark in this new movie. Tan also mentions Bullet in the Head (1990), Woo’s work about three buddies heading to Vietnam in search of a better tomorrow but for the most part encountering hell rather than paradise. He admits, “I took those characters but then I evolved it even further.” Meanwhile, Leone’s influence is keenly evident in the music inspired by Ennio Morricone, the Italian director’s long-time collaborator, and the “very classic camera movements” which were a hallmark of Leone’s works.

Those touches notwithstanding, however, the debutant director is adamant that he is his own man and that Blood Brothers really is his film. When asked how much control he had casting and choosing crew members, for instance, he asserts, “Contrary to perhaps any assumptions, the cast are all people I liked and wanted to work with. None of them were forced on me.” Moreover, while some people might assume that action choreographer Philip Kwok – one of whose most celebrated on-screen appearances was in John Woo’s last Hong Kong movie Hard Boiled in 1992 – was a Woo appointee, Tan insists that the inclusion of “a great old master” was his choice to make.

In fact, Tan states flatly, “I’m obsessive with whom I work. I just sort of feel that film is so personal.” And elaborates that film “takes so much of your life that the way I see it, if I’m going to get dictated to, I might as well go back to commercials. I’ve enough experience of clients telling me what they want to do with their product. I don’t need to go into a bigger situation and still be told what to do.” So the bottom line as far as Blood Brothers goes is that “as much as it was a collaborative effort with John Woo, it’s still my film. At the end of the day, I’m the one they’re going to face and not Terence and John.”

Blood Brothers will open in local theatres on August 23.