TIFF Report: JADE WARRIOR Review

There are two elements which can make an art-wuxia film so engaging. The first is that martial arts are as much of a performance art as they are combat, most especially at the cinema. Using martial arts as a vehicle for both love ritual and an expression of hate certainly elevates it above your average fisticuffs. Second, the elegance of the fighters in combat is contrasted with their helplessness in something as complex as love. King Hu understood this. Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou most recently have understood this as well. So, also does Finnish director Antti-Jussi Annila. Unfortunately the key difference between the masters wuxia epics and Jade Warrior is that they can advance the story and emotions through the fight sequences, and that they actually, well, have more than just a couple fight sequences! Jade Warrior is has the brains but not the brawn. It is nearly all tease. In a martial arts film, that is cruel.

Taking its thematic story from the national poem of Finland, the 22000 verse Kalevala, which I am told contains some of the saddest stories ever told and blending with elements of Chinese and Tibetan mythology, Jade Warrior mixes the past legend of two friends and warriors caught in a love triangle with a woman warrior that has no solution. They are all engaged in war, not with another army, but a demon, the son of Nocktess, who is Hate, Greed, Lust, Blindness and Fear. Notably, nearly all these elements come into play when there is a love triangle regardless of time period. This conceit gives the film a real intelligence. Jade Warrior is really an extended meditation on the nature of love and self-sacrifice. In scandanavian cinema this is usually told with two lonely urban people bumping together in a crowded city, but here it is clothed in an a (slightly half-hearted) genre picture. The films structure, which combines the story of the lovers and the war in China in 2000 B.C. with a contemporary story set in Finland in 2006 may be reminiscent of the Highlander, or The Fountain (judging from that films trailer anyway), or even Hellraiser. But Jade warrior is a very different animal: laid back and deliberate in pace not going for cheap thrills and setting up and setting up and setting up. It stumbles ,fatally I believe, by setting expectations with the opening scenes as being a genre picture, but it never actually becomes one. It does lay out a wonderful premise and set up, but the follow through is lacking in visceral content. I could convince myself that perhaps I am a victim of my own expectations (an issue I had with Myung-se Lee's The Duelist, which, admittedly, has grown a lot on me since the initial viewing) but I think knowing the ending will remove any desire to see the film again.

But I digress. The story involves a Pandora’s box about to be opened, The Sampo, and the modern-day smith who has the capacity to open it. The box will either bring eternal happiness or hell on earth. The smith has the ability to open it, and sets out to do so, as his girlfriend has just broken off their relationship, and presumably this will take his mind off his depression. When he begins to go through the forging process with the help of a Finnish scholar, his girlfriend is compelled to come back towards his rural smithy. This is all inter-cut with the love story of a loner warrior falling in love with a beautiful woman in a Chinese village at the edge of the swamp where the war against the demon is taking place. Naturally, these stories begin to dovetail together revealing the extent of various curses and prophecies put in place in ancient times. Will history repeat itself?

The acting, cinematography and effects (one involving an insect and an eye is particularly memorable) fight-choreography (what little there is) are all top shelf. Unfortunately the script is a victim of its own intelligence and fails to actually inject any heart (probably also due to so little time spent) with the two leads who have the talent to make their characters believable, but lack the right chemistry to believe in their eternal love. And, why only three fight sequences? Two of these hint at greater things to come, but never arrive. The final battle which is good, but more is more mental than physical. Perhaps this is because it is the first collaboration of its kind, the full potential of this story was lost in translation (The director admitted during the Q&A to not speaking any Mandarin, and thus he had to direct over half of the films dialogue through an interpreter). I've no doubt that the second time around there is the potential for greatness here. I've no doubt that the second time around there is the potential for greatness here. Jade Warrior suffers the pangs of not only a first feature, but a first time cultural collaboration, and ultimately is just a tease.