Blazing quick fight. Pronounced rigidity between custom and modernity. Sound results so intense that a number of foley artists most likely died of exhaustion. A battle to inherit a well-known martial arts academy, galvanized by a mutual obsession over the late grasp’s unbeatable secret method. “100 Yards” is nothing if not a basic martial arts film, and but this bruising story about turn-of-the-century Tianjin — co-directed by Xu Haofeng, who beforehand scripted Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster” — has been shot and staged with such radical class that it appears much less like a throwback than it does the pursuit of a brand new kind. It’s a kind this film is just in a position to obtain at the price of its soul, as Xu and his brother Xu Junfeng battle to maintain any of what makes their preliminary premise so compelling, however the moments when “100 Yards” lands its blows are exhilarating in a approach that makes the film really feel miles faraway from most of its competition.
Speed is the secret from the minute that “100 Yards” begins, and that’s as true of its pacing as it’s of its punches. The yr is 1920, and the town of Tianjin — on the forefront of China’s push towards Westernization within the wake of the Eight-Nation Alliance — is policed by a community of kung fu academies that attend to any civil dysfunction inside 100 yards of their doorways. Xu Haofeng’s script doesn’t belabor the friction between native establishments and international investments (although French bankers play a big issue on this story), but it surely’s clear that Tianjin’s martial arts faculties are struggling to keep up their place in a metropolis that’s being quickly remodeled by weapons, dance halls, and three-piece fits.
That’s very true of the varsity run by the ailing Master Shen (Guo Long), who summons his star pupil and his wayward son to duel for the academy’s future whereas he watches from his deathbed. The apprentice, Qi Quan (Andy On), is seen because the inheritor obvious, partly due to his ability, and partly as a result of Master Shen has by no means wished his son Shen An (Jacky Heung) to spend his life in “the circle,” or maybe by no means believed that his son might survive there. Master Shen has taken nice pains for An to develop into a banker, in order to raised place himself for the world to come back, however An — who solely measures his worth by way of martial arts — is decided to show that he’s a fighter worthy of his father. The last item Master Shen sees earlier than his eyes shut for the final time is Quan knocking An unconscious in about two seconds flat.
An buries his father, turns into a banker, and he and Quan each reside fortunately ever after for the subsequent 100 minutes. Well, a minimum of the primary two of these issues occur, anyway, as An takes a 9-to-5 job working for some Frenchmen who see him as a novelty and drive him to battle throughout work hours for their very own amusement; if martial arts have been seen as vulgar earlier than the academies opened, foreigners have now contorted them into one thing of a celeb spectacle.
Alas, that doesn’t matter to An, who solely cares about difficult Quan to a rematch (possibly with sharper blades this time). And whereas the actual world might need a knack for intruding on such myopic pissing contests, neither this movie nor its characters appear to care. A setup poised to discover the function of martial arts in a modernizing China quickly descends right into a petty squabble that doesn’t seem to have any critical implications for the extra historic issues at hand.
That solipsism doesn’t all the time sq. with the dourness of the film’s lighting, but it surely enhances the snow-globe feeling of its tremendous faux units, and works to the Xu brothers’ benefit every time they lean into the spaghetti Eastern flavors of their story (An Wei’s in any other case shimmering rating is ribboned with harmonica solos that breeze throughout the soundtrack in any respect the suitable instances). To that finish, “100 Yards” thrives throughout its many alternative ambushes and stand-offs. The fights are frequent and unpredictable, whereas their choreography is so quick you could virtually really feel every phantom punch whooshing previous your head.
Rather than emphasizing the impression of every transfer with their edit, the Xu brothers want to face again and admire the motion for its velocity. Every block and kick reveals a lifetime of coaching from the movie’s characters and its solid alike, because the movie’s (typically music-less) fight sequences are damaged into an interconnecting collection of broad photographs that suffuse the movie’s latent emotion by means of stiff however extremely exact strikes that find the setpieces someplace between the Shaw Brothers and Pina Bausch.
The expressiveness of that strategy befits the final bloodlessness of a narrative through which a lot of the deaths are random, and martial arts is maintained because the noblest technique to remedy disputes in a century that’s rising extra callous by the minute; the digital camera swoops across the characters like a falcon every time they aren’t transferring, enhancing the impression of a chaotic world that may solely be settled by the calm of organized fight. At the identical time, nevertheless, that strategy solely serves to underline the aim of each scrap, and so the fights start to lose their sense of private velocity because the movie’s plot begins to fray on the seams (an unraveling that stings worst through the climactic brawl, an epic showdown that feels a bit much less satisfying with each blow to the pinnacle).
It’s particularly irritating that “100 Yards” ought to quantity to a lot lower than the sum of its elements, as its story is dripping with juicy subplots that it by no means bothers to wring dry. The greatest includes an nearly love triangle between An, the ass-kicking schoolteacher he appeared fated to marry (a spellbinding Tang Shiyi as Gui Ying, who anchors the movie’s greatest battle scene), and the gorgeous socialite he’s truly in love with (Bea Hayden Kuo as Xia An, the illegitimate daughter of the most important French banker on the town). Meanwhile, Quan and Gui Ying get locked in a flirtatious tussle as a result of the previous is satisfied that his rival’s childhood crush is aware of the key kind wanted to defeat him.
In broad strokes, these criss-crossing dynamics add some much-needed texture to the movie’s central dilemma: How far ought to the boundaries of Master Shen’s academy lengthen into the actual world, and to what diploma ought to these separate worlds be allowed to intermingle? But the patchiness of Xu’s script prevents these subplots from establishing any significant overlap. If something, they solely additional confuse the movie’s already tenuous grasp on its two essential characters, making it onerous to grasp how An — initially coded as a sniveling nepo child — is supposed to emerge because the hero, or why Quan makes a heel flip in direction of changing into the closest factor this story has to an antagonist.
Hardly a easy matter of proper vs. unsuitable, the battle between An and Quan is in the end much less enthusiastic about “good” and “bad” than it’s in pushing these two very totally different males to reconcile the lives they imagined for themselves with the realities of the world they stand to inherit. “You’re a man, invent your own form,” Quan is scolded as he searches for Master Shen’s secret transfer set as if it have been the misplaced gold of El Dorado. The solely character who credibly does that — and by far the spotlight of the film, nevertheless temporary her look — isn’t a person in any respect, however quite Master Shen’s dashingly stylish second-in-command Chairman Meng (Li Yuan), whose sage-like poise and devastating sense of fashion make her really feel like a imaginative and prescient of the long run that Quan and An battle to see past their squabble with one another.
“100 Yards” embodies that myopia in a approach that always obscures the massive image, however the sheer pleasure of watching its characters battle in opposition to their very own foibles permits this shimmering curio of an motion film to make good on the very last thing Chairman Meng says earlier than leaving it: “Martial arts are still of great use.” When they’re carried out as elegantly as they’re right here, it’s simple to really feel like they all the time will probably be.
Grade: B-
Well GO USA will launch “100 Yards” in theaters on Friday, November 8.
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