words yvonne teh

When Hong Kong film doyen Peter Chan Ho-Sun was a boy of 11, he went to see a kung fu epic starring Shaw Brothers superstars Ti Lung and David Chiang at a local cinema. That 1973 Chang Cheh classic – known as The Blood Brothers in English (and Ci Ma in Chinese) – left such an impact that, more than three decades later, he says, “I remember it vividly – it was an afternoon. I remember which seat I sat on in the London Theatre, which is right around the corner here [from my office]. I even remember – I don’t know how come I remember this so well – I even remember I arrived late!”

After that boy grew into a man and starting making movies of his own, he got to thinking that he would like to remake The Blood Brothers. Or, as he puts it, “I thought of making The Warlords, the original remake of Ci Ma, for 15 to 20 years.” It was a long gestation but the intention didn’t translate into serious action until about four years ago. Recalling the impetus behind his fateful decision, the director best known for his romantic dramas and comedies, says, “I remember one night sitting with Andy (Lau) at my place and we were talking about remaking One-Armed Swordsman. But then both of us said that our favourite Chang Cheh movie wasn’t One-Armed Swordsman – we agreed it was Ci Ma.”
One major reason Peter Chan was so captivated by The Blood Brothers all those years ago was that it was the first film he had seen in which one of his favourite actors played a bad guy. The shock was all the greater because up until then, “all we were seeing were villainous-looking people playing villains!” And the more he thought about it, the more he realized it wasn’t only a bold move to cast a heroic-looking man as the villain but one which created a situation of many “different shades of grey” and a considerable moral range to explore on film.

But when he latterly revisited Chang Cheh’s film, he says, “I found that the movie was quite... simple. It was too simple for today.” Also, the movie’s moral ambiguity may have shocked a pre-teen Peter Chan but, as far as the vastly more experienced adult was concerned, “I’m too old to actually do a movie about different shades of grey that is that simple. So I started digging into history and into the background of the period of the Taiping Revolution where 70 million people were killed in a matter of 14 years.” Out of that research, analysis and planning has come The Warlords, a thoroughly ambitious historical action epic with a US$40 million budget and sufficient moral complexity to satisfy its director cum co-producer.

Talking to Chan before his latest – and biggest ever – film’s theatrical release, I can sense the tension as he waits to see how his movie will fare at the box office. He is clearly aware he is breaking many rules of cinema and even going against several socio-cultural conventions with the first action work he has helmed, and which he has aimed squarely at a Mainland Chinese market where he considers the future of Hong Kong cinema to lie.

For one thing, as he baldly asserts, “This is not a typical Chinese international movie! Do you think we can actually go international without people flying on a swing, on a sling, without people doing extraordinary stuff? Chinese in international movies are usually portrayed as freaks! Basically, we’ve been doing freak shows, that’s what we’ve been doing.”

He points out that with Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro as its stars, “The Warlords has an international cast. This movie has international financing. This has everything that it needs to be international, except that the faces are Chinese.” Speaking as someone who has directed a Hollywood movie starring Kate Capshaw and Tom Selleck (The Love Letter (1999)), Chan goes on to suggest, “If these faces were Mel Gibson or Brad Pitt, this would be Braveheart, this would be Gladiator, this is like any American movie, right? But American audiences have never seen the Chinese do such a thing. American audiences even to this day have never allowed or accepted an Asian film to play on that level.”

Over on this side of the world, Chan worried that The Warlords would not pass the Mainland Chinese censors. “China censorship,” he says, “is all about black and white. There can’t be people in the grey areas or different shades of grey, which is exactly what this film is about.” Yet, he also says, “We know for a fact that censorship is going to be more relaxed in the next few years. There is no way a country can be economically reformed for so long and culturally and socially not reformed in due time. So it’s only a matter of time.” Nonetheless, Chan does realise, “For a film like this to pass the censors is already a significant change by China’s censorship.”

With that battle won, next Chan hopes that Chinese audiences will be able to accept his casting of Jet Li and Andy Lau as Pang Qing-Yun and Zhao Er-Hu respectively. It’s not just that, although Lau is two years older than Li, Zhao addresses Pang as ‘elder brother’. Additionally, audiences familiar with the two stars’ previous movies will tend to more readily associate many of Pang’s character traits with Lau rather than Li. But precisely because Chan felt that Lau would be repeating himself if he were to take on the part of Pang, he offered that role, which requires a lot of dramatic emoting and not just spectacular fighting, instead to Li. And in the process, ensured that “Jet Li is not doing Jet Li” and this film is “a Jet Li movie that really is not a Jet Li movie” in the eyes of many!

Chan’s going against type extends as well to some of his crew. Consequently, “I think this was probably a nightmare for Ching Siu Tung!” he says, laughing. In fingering the The Warlords’ action director, Chan explains, “Previously all Chinese film required the operatic and dance-like action that he excels in. That really is his forte. And suddenly you don’t want things to look beautiful, beautifully designed…”

Instead, the emphasis in this film was on a “very brutal and real look and feel. The action has got to look totally undesigned even though it’s designed. You have got to take all the edges off. Got to take off all the techniques that Chinese are so
good at. You suddenly take all that away and what you’re left with is... a Chinese without the edge to do the things Chinese do best!”

Against the odds, however, Ching rose to the challenge and the result, Chan says, is an action style never achieved before by anybody. And one that helps ensure that The Warlords is a real period film, “completely authentic”, which he hopes will shock, awe, astound and, ultimately, move its audiences.

The Warlords is now showing in local cinemas.