Movie Review: Kung Fu Cyborg/機器俠

I saw this film last Saturday and have waited until now to post this entry because I wanted to be sure I still felt the same things now that I did when I first viewed it. More or less, I do.This started off as my shortest movie review ever. But I couldn't decide on the two-word version or the three-word version:

1) "F@#$ SARFT."

2) "F@#$ Jeff Lau."I've really got to learn the Mandarin for " Har har har! This is the best film sinceFit Lover. Pass me another cigarette..."

Like Give Love, All About Love, and similar movies in recent years, Kung Fu Cyborg sucks so much 'China market' c*ck that I'm surprised the producers don't have Rod Stewart-like urban legends about them.

The jokes are utterly pedantic, pedestrian, and predictable. Hong Kong movies are often the same way, but they usually have at least a hint of wit or sophistication, two things that are apparently so bourgeoisthat the Chinese audience either doesn't want them or can't process them.

Wong Jing is no great provoker of thoughts, but by comparison he is Orson Welles. When I watch his movies, I don't feel insulted or demeaned for having thrown away HK$50 on 90 minutes worth of aggravation and the feeling that I'm nowhere near dumb enough to enjoy a film the way it was intended to be.

Hong Kong films made for the 'China market' are almost alwaysso dumbed-down they make me sick.These movies stronglyencourage me to reinforce my own stereotypes about China and Chinese moviegoers. They make it seem as though the average moviegoer 'up above' is awhole lot like Wang Baoqiang (王宝强), just not as smart as his characters usually are."Really? I can buy the Three Gorges Dam?"'China-friendly' movies seem to be tailored for an audience without much education, much less film literacy. It's like watching a movie made for the kids that ride the short bus to school, or the bus for pre-teens.Kung Fu Cyborg is so thoroughly stupid that I had to keep reminding myself that the Movie Night gang was having dinner after this abomination, so I couldn't leave.

Itlooks, feels, and moves as if it was not only written for a 12 year old, but written (and directed) by a 12 year old.

With a head injury.But being China-friendly, there is the occasional use of profanity, which is a hallmark of working-class authenticity and virtue (like spitting) and therefore acceptable.

The film also has a nice healthy dollop of righteous cops and people who sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

Which is not a bad thing in and of itself.

But when the film makes these examples visually or through plot development, then proceeds to deploy dialogue stating the ideological nature of the act we've just seen, such that Rocket Scientist Wang and his comrades cannot escape being brained by the 10 lb. didactic hammer (and sickle), well, I find that a bit tedious and irritating. Before my personal information gets splashed across the Web in some jingoistic money shot, let me qualify this diatribe.

China is not completely to blame.

And when I say China, I am not talking about the Chinese people as much as I am the government in general and SARFT in particular.The other part of this problem is that Hong Kong filmmakers know the Chinese audience is not very discerning. Their reaction to this is laziness.

They are not even tryingto make a film that contains anything that would simply be lost on the dullards who will fork over their hard-earned RMB for this celluloid snot rocket.

Kung Fu Cyborg is literally and figuratively cheap. It's like a shoddy knockoff of Transformers.  It's also a bad imitation of a real, good movie. It's the Shenzen LV bag of movies.

Jeff Lau can make, and has made, good films. A Chinese Odyssey is a classic on both sides of Lo Wu (even if A Chinese Tall Story is not). But he achieved that success and status by effort and diligence.

Apparently, he (along with lots of other HK directors/producers/actors) feels that films for China need not be so well-made, or are not worth the effort.

He's coasting so badly here that its hard to find the words or emotions to describe the enormity of the insult that this film is to anyone who either

A) remembers his better work

or

B) Isn't in a coma.

I think that's probably what bothers me most about this film. I don't much care for laziness. And this film reeks of sloth.

Frankly, I don't care for a lot of Mainland film either for the reasons stated above.

But I do like some of them. The Equation of Love and Death was a good film, and I enjoyed it. Same for If You Are the One. But those directors were trying. They expended energyand effort.

They didn't insult their audience(s) by saying "Ahhh, this is good enough for those morons..."

Under normal circumstances, I try to know as little as possible about a film before I watch it. I feel it allows me a better experience in the theatre. Sadly, I don't think I can do that any more.

From now on, I am going to have to check who made the film and whom they made it for. I go to the movies to enjoy myself, and I did not enjoy Kung Fu Cyborg.

Kung Fu Cyborg and every other Hong Kong film that panders to the 'China market' do more than insult the Hong Kong audience.They fling large handfuls of their own excrement at us, laugh mockingly and give us the finger through the window of the KCR  as it heads towards Shenzen and their new 'China wife.'