Downtown Torpedoes (1997)
Downtown Torpedoes (1997)
Starring: Jordan Chan, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung, Ken Lee, Alex Fong
Director: Teddy Chan
Action Director: Stephen Tung Wei
Today the only film award that I really care about is the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Action Design. Oh sure, when I was a kid, I really liked to watch the Oscars, even if it was only to see who got the award for Best Visual Effects. But I still enjoyed the whole package and watched the Oscars religiously for a number of years, until I really stopped caring.
When I got really into Hong Kong cinema, I found it remarkable that they had an award for Best Action Design, because it showed just how seriously Hong Kong filmmakers and film critics took fight choreography in their films. I’ve sometimes wondered what it would be like if Hollywood did the same thing and had a similar award. Can you imagine that? If Hollywood had had a Best Action Design Oscar, maybe some Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and Chuck Norris films could’ve gotten Oscar nominations. Doesn’t that just give you the goosebumps. If I’m not mistaken, there was a time in the 1930s when there was a Best Dance Choreography Oscar or something like that. It’s kind of a shame that THAT award doesn’t still exist, because it would mean that You Got Served could’ve gotten an Oscar nomination.
The truth is that martial arts cinema in the United States has almost always been a genre for action junkies and “guys who like movies”, as TNT would put it. It isn’t an integral part of mainstream movie-watching like it is overseas. Recent blockbusters have changed that a lot, but we’re still a long way off to seeing Sammo Hung or Yuen Woo-Ping get an Oscar nomination.
So where am I going with all this? Well, I keep close tabs on the nominees and winner of the Best Action Design award each year and make an effort to see as many of the films on the list as possible. I’ve seen a good number of them so far, but there are still a lot of movies that got nominated during the past 26 years that I haven’t seen yet. I recently watched this film, Downtown Torpedoes, as part of an effort to see more films whose action sequences were recognized by Hong Kong critics. It was a decent timewaster, but nothing special, and certainly not worthy of winning the award over an above-average Jackie Chan film and a superior Jet Li film that competed against it that year.
The movie starts off with a pair of high-tech thieves, Cash (Jordan Chan, Bio-Zombie) and Jackal (Takeshi Kaneshiro, House of Flying Daggers), working out of Frankfurt, Germany. There current job is to break into two subway offices and steal information from the computers. They do so by using high tech celular phones which they use to turn off security cameras and open doors. They’re successful, although their joy is short lived since they are soon apprehended by the Hong Kong Security Branch.
The Security Branch chief, Stanley, has a job for the team, which includes Titan and Sam (Charlie Yeung, Bangkok Dangerous), the latter of whom is the group’s mysterious leader. Stanley has found out that MI-5, notably the head of the Hong Kong branch, has come into possession of some counterfeit plates that were confiscated in Iran. Stanley suspects that the MI-5 chief is going to use them for his own gain, and thus wants to enlist the help of our team to get the plates out of MI-5 headquarters in Hong Kong before they are stolen. Just to “encourage” our heroes, Stanley has their accounts frozen.
With no other alternative, they take the assignment. They bring in Phoenix, a deaf-mute computer hacker prodigy girl, to help them with what appears to be an…*cough*…impossible mission. They visit the building a few times to get an idea of the security they’re up against and, most importantly, hide a mini-camera in the MI-5 chief’s glasses so they can get a good look of the upper floors. They eventually break into the building and steal the plates–cue slickly-filmed fight scene.
Our heroes escape with the plates. During the getaway, which involves an underwater trade off, Titan trades the plates with Stanley for what looks like some money. The money turns out to be a bomb, which explodes, killing Phoenix. Soon, MI-5 are on our heroes’ trail, while our heroes are trying to find out why Stanley betrayed him. Visiting his house, they find evidence that he was to undergo a face change at a local clinic. Arriving at the clinic, they find the doctor and his staff dead, in addition to Stanley. They are attacked by the assassin–cue a nifty fight on the fire escape.
It turns out that Stanley was in league with a gang of counterfeiters, who decided to rub him off in order to get rid of any possible evidence of their involvement in the matter. Our heroes eventually discover a website made up of crossword puzzles that the counterfeiters use to send messages to each other. They track the counterfeiters down to the airport, where a gunfight breaks out. Titan is wounded during the skirmish, but our heroes are able to get the plates back….or so they think.
A number of twists and turns make their way into the story from this point on. Most people compare this film to Mission Impossible, which there are a number of similarities to. Director Teddy Chan comes across as a reasonably talented action film director and likes his international intrigue. The plot moves around at a nice clip and the film never wears out its welcome with its surprisingly brief running time. The acting and characterization is negligible, as one would expect for a film like this. Where this film shines above the great 1980s Hong Kong action films is the absence of blocks of unwanted comedy in between the action sequences.
Downtown Torpedoes has become something of a poster child for the type of action film that Hong Kong would start producing following the wire-fu boom of the early 1990s. It’s glossy, full of attractive actors (save Jordan Chan), has slick action, international locales, etc. Once Hong Kong realized how much the international market was important to them, they started making a lot of Hollywood-esque action films like this that traded in the great stunts, exaggerated action, and bone-crunching martial arts for something that foreign audiences could digest a little easier. Not only that, but a number of the great actors were starting to get on in years, not to mention lose some of their abilities due to sustained injuries. Thus, a lot of pretty-boy actors started taking up the slack, but as a result, choreographers had dumb down the action and use more wires, quick cuts, and stunt doubles to sell the fight sequences.
That’s exactly how this film feels, like a watered-down action film that would make one pine for the old days when Hong Kong filmmakers would make an action sequence that you wouldn’t soon forget because you would wince so much during it. I can’t say that I didn’t like it, but it didn’t wow me as much as I thought it should have. You see, this film won the Best Action Design award in 1998, beating out Jackie Chan’s Mr. Nice Guy and Sammo Hung’s Once Upon a Time in China and America, a film I really liked. Thus, I came into this film with a lot of high expectations, action-wise, and came out with a decent film that I won’t remember that much in a few months.
I’d like to blame action director Stephen Tung Wei, for doing a solid, but forgettable job on the action. Tung Wei is a relatively talented action director who’s been in the game since the late 1970s. He practically invented the whole “bullet ballet” alongside John Woo, having been the action director on A Better Tomorrow. Tung Wei has always been a versatile guy, working on heroic bloodshed films, wire-fu films, horror films, modern action movies, etc. From 1995 on, he would get numerous nominations for the various films he worked, and would even win about four times. It was starting with this film on that he would really make a name for himself, as this marked the first time he won the Best Action Design award. Stephen Tung is now one of the most celebrated action directors in the business.
I think that Stephen Tung Wei is, to be perfectly honest, an overrated action director. He does his best work when he’s doing gun-fu (A Better Tomorrow and Pom Pom and Hot Hot spring immediately to mind), but everything else he does is above average at best. He’s solid, but has rarely done any martial arts sequences that I would call exceptional. His work is slick and well-filmed, but nothing he’s done by himself, will compete with the greatest fights of all time. I liked the Jet Li-Donnie Yen fight Hero, but we owe that as much to Tony Ching Siu Tung as we do to Stephen Tung Wei. The final fight to The Blade (1995) wasn’t bad, but Stephen Tung was working alongside Meng Hoi and Yuen Bun in that one.
The action in this film is fun and entertaining, but it’s rather generic when compared to the best that Hong Kong has to offer. Part of that can be put on the shoulders of the actors, who are really not trained martial artists. Stephen Tung Wei gets some decent mileage out of them, but Jordan Chan and Takeshi Kaneshiro (and probably their respective stuntmen) are not Jackie, Jet and Donnie. There are two fights worth mentioning; the rest of the action is chases and shoot-outs. Few people can do a shoot-out as good as Tung Wei, but if you watch this film expecting some good hand-to-hand, I don’t think these fights could knock the socks off a schoolgirl, even if the socks were pulled down to her toes.
Teddy Chan and Stephen Tung Wei would end up teaming up again two years later for Purple Storm, a film that is considered to be one of the best examples of the Hollywood-style Hong Kong action movie. Some reviewers have called it a better Michael Bay movie than any movie Michael Bay has ever done, so take that as you will. Stephen Tung Wei would also get the Hong Kong film award for Best Action Design for that film, as he would again (alongside Jackie Chan) for Accidental Spy, which Teddy Chan also directed. I guess you can say that the two make a great time. The two are working together on Bodyguards and Assassins, which stars Donnie Yen and is due to come out this year.
Hong Kong cinephiles need to watch this film, but mainly as Exhibit A in the deterioration of the Hong Kong action film starting in the late 1990s. I don’t imagine this film, as well regarded as it may be, will have the long-term reputation that other films will have, the same way Hollywood blockbusters will eventually be forgotten by everyone except us film geeks.
Score: 3 out of 5 animals 
Themocracy
[...] 19, 2009 Downtown Torpedoes (1997) - Few people can do a shoot-out as good as Tung Wei, but if you watch this film expecting some [...]