Synopsis
A comic western legend.
When circumstances force an outlaw to impersonate a county governor and clean up a corrupt town, the Robin Hood figure finds himself in a showdown with the local godfather.
When circumstances force an outlaw to impersonate a county governor and clean up a corrupt town, the Robin Hood figure finds himself in a showdown with the local godfather.
Rang zidan fei, Let The Bullets Fly, 讓子彈飛, Balas em Fúria, Let the Bullets Fly - Tödliche Kugeln, Mermiler Uçuşuyor, Rang zi dan fei, 양자탄비, Пусть летят пули, Нека куршумите полетят, Niech zatańczą kule, Nhượng Tử Đạn Phi, Furia gloanțelor, さらば復讐の狼たちよ, Άσε τις σφαίρες να πετούν, คนท้าใหญ่
This was a wild ride of a Chinese spaghetti western comedy. Chow Yun Fat is having the time of his life here.
So much of this was going over my head, not only because of the rapid fire pace but it also feels like a movie not made so much for westerners, with a lot of reliance on knowing Chinese culture. Luckily for me, I watched it with someone who was born and raised in China, so she paused it every 10 minutes to explain why this was happening, why it was funny and better translated the dialogue.
So thanks to breaking my one of my toes, I have to sadly cancel all my bank holiday plans, however it does give me time to put a massive dent in the to watch pile.
Now I always found it funny how Metrodome sleeved this so the image on the cover made it look "modern" than it was. Not like Metrodome to at all miss-sell a film....
Crazy roller-coaster of a action smashgrab, which mixes refs of Millers Crossing, Versus, Shoalin Soccer, Spaghetti, Gun fu and possibly the kitchen sink. It is nuts, ridiculously enjoyable, at times totally not that coherent but my god is it a fun ride. The only problem is at 120 mins it is a little…
Jiang Wen's Miller's Crossing.
Not sure if I caught this the first time around or not, but the musical theme to this is a screwball variation on the martial theme from Seven Samurai, which is entirely appropriate.
A wild and hilarious cartoon that somehow leaves you feeling like you've witnessed a tragedy.
The joyously over the top formal excess won me over immediately, but Jiang also manages to give his movie the weight of parable, one that suggests a weariness with thugs, politicians, wise men - in fact, with just about everyone that traffics in hypocrisy and corruption. Jiang is also brilliant in the lead role as an enigmatic Robin Hood figure who is forced to outwit a gangster played with eccentric menace by Chow Yun-Fat.
This Filmspotting Contemporary Chinese Cinema Marathon is off to a great start.
Let the bullets fly a while.
I cannot remember the last time I bought a Blu-Ray or DVD without having seen the film before it. This was an instance of that, the cover caught my attention at my local book/video store, the information on the back of the case seemed to sell an intriguing movie, and yes, a peculiar and good movie is what I got out of Let the Bullets Fly. I took this as a mixture of Burn After Reading and Bacurau. I compare it to the latter because I do admit that as a dumb American, a decent amount of the humor of the film I understood that I did not get, being heavily reliant on an…
You want to stand tall, or do you want to make money?
I want to make money standing tall.
Went in not knowing much at all about what Let the Bullets Fly would bring, and did not expect just how comedic of a western it would be. First, I must say, words can't describe just how amazing Chow Yun-fat is in this. Literally crushes every scene he is in as the comedic villain of this story. Once I got on the films comedic wavelength I started enjoying it much more.
Let the Bullets Fly is about a group of bandits, led by Jiang Wen, that start impersonating a towns governor after killing him on the road to said town. Once…
A dark and seditious riff on Yojimbo from Jiang Wen; Only this time, instead of two families fighting over a town, it's a bandit posing as a governor (Jiang Wen) and a wealthy baron acting as the governor (Chow Yun-Fat). Running between them isn't the protagonist but a sycophantic career counselor, played with simpering wile by Ge You.
Meanwhile it's Wen's political anger that takes centre stage, the title meaning something a long the lines of "If a revolution starts from a single bullet, then...let the bullets fly!" While the film cleverly impostors itself as a black comedy, it is in fact a cry for battle, a call to arms for the common people to stand up and do something…
Sort of like a Chinese Yojimbo + Inglorious Basterds with possibly the most amount of quick cuts ever put to film. The rapid-fire pace of the editing and dialogue along with the inherent extra language barrier that comes with foreign language comedy made this film a bit hard to fully grasp. The plot is easy to follow, but a lot of the cultural and historical context of the jokes and scenarios is just completely lost on me.
I really like Jiang Wen from what little I've seen, both as a director and leading man. You can tell all the actors were having a blast with this film and it makes the more bombastic moments of action really stick out. I wasn't expecting this film to be such a Looney Tunes-esque cartoon, but I think the film would have been quite boring if it wasn't.
'Chow Yun-Fat has been in better films' is an objectively true statement, I'm pretty sure everyone would agree, however, I'm also pretty sure he's never been having more fun than he is here, and other, better films take nothing away from Jiang Wen's period dramedy epic, a sprawling darkly comic tale of bandits and corruption and redemption that walks a tightrope between goofy violence and cartoon physics with genuine pathos and tragic sentiment really well, and, despite dragging a little in the last twenty minutes or so, feels remarkably brisk for a movie that's over two hours.
The witty dialogue flies at you fast and furious in this black comedy / action movie. I don't believe I've ever seen anything quite like it. The principal cast is excellent in it, but Wen Jiang steals the show for me.