By Jake Jamieson

I don’t consider myself a film expert. I haven’t been to film school. I haven’t apprenticed with some Eastern European cinema master. I’m just a guy who worked in a video store for eight years. And after eight years spent watching movies all day, then bringing home as many free films as I could at night, I’ll bet my lifetime viewing average is well over two movies a day. What that means is that while I haven’t necessarily seen it all, I’ve seen a hell of a lot of it. I’ve become a disciple of American film.

I went through a blockbuster action-adventure phase, where I wasn’t interested in a movie if it didn’t include at least a half-million dollars’ worth of explosions. I went through an indie-or-nothing phase, where I didn’t care what a filmmaker had to say unless he had to sell a kidney to say it. I’ve seen and loved the depth and breadth of American film genres, from sci-fi to Western, from romance to gore fest. I love American movies, and there are flicks made here every year that get my blood pumping, make my hair stand on end, or force me to wipe away a tear before anyone sees it.

But after years of devotion, I have a problem. No matter how good an American film may be, I can usually tell you how it will end within the first 15 minutes. A few minor calculations, a quick check of the filmmaker’s decisions early on, and I will single out who’s going to cause problems, who’s going to fall in love and who’s not going to make it to the third act. I don’t know exactly how irritating this is, but I’m sure my wife would be happy to share.

So, after all of this predictability, how I do to cleanse the American film from my palate? I turn to foreign films. At first I played it safe, sticking to flicks from English speaking countries—in fact, Britain’s Shaun of the Dead was my Best Movie of 2004. This summer I turned my gaze to the Orient and found movies that knocked my socks off because they use a different language.

“But Jake,” you’ll say, “Of course Asian movies are in a different language, they’re from Asia.” Yes. But that’s not what I mean. What I’m talking about is the cinematic language, the decisions the actors and directors make, the stories they draw from, and the fact that everything’s in an exotic context. While it can be disorienting at first, if you have patience it can be an exhilarating experience for the jaded Hollywood film watcher.

It seems like there are only a couple kinds of Asian flicks that have gotten any press in the past few years, but not everything produced there is kung fu and wu xia (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Here, I’ve rounded up a list of my current Asian favorites.

****

Akira Kurosawa does Shakespeare

Talk about going old school. Akira Kurosawa is already a legend, so I don’t need to prattle on about how he made great movies for over 50 years and set a new standard for filmmaking. You probably even know that his 1961 classic Yojimbo was remade by Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood into A Fistful of Dollars, and that George Lucas owes a huge debt to Kurosawa after liberally borrowing ideas and techniques from The Hidden Fortress and The Seven Samurai to make Star Wars.

The films listed above are all amazing, and I recommend you go out and rent them immediately, along with his Rashomon. But two Kurosawa movies I mention here, Throne of Blood and Ran, are amazing interpretations of Shakespeare's classic King Lear, and reveal Kurosawa's interesting Eastern take on the biggest name in Western literature. I can already hear you saying, “Shakespeare? He bores me in English, how am I supposed to watch his stories in Japanese?” But to rid the American film aftertaste, this is a good first step. You’ve got familiar (since you already know the story, right? I won't summarize here) stories filmed with different sensibilities. If that’s not a great way to dip a toe in the koi pond, I don’t know what is.

Throne of Blood
Japan
1957, Toho
Adaptation of: Shakespeare’s King Lear

Ran
Japan
1985, Greenwich Film Productions/Herald Ace/ Nippon Herald
Adaptation of: Shakespeare’s King Lear

****

Oldboy
Korea
2003, Egg Films/Show East
Park Chanwook, director

Oldboy was set up for me to dislike from the beginning because the movie had been over-saturated with praise. I’d been hearing about Oldboy for the better part of a year by the time I saw it. It made just about every “Top Movies of 2004” list at CHUD (Cinematic Happenings Under Development), the movie site I obsessive-compulsively check every day. I even had the misfortune of stumbling across some Message Board Troll posting the surprise ending. After all that, I decided to watch it anyway, and I’m glad I did.

Oh Dae-su is kidnapped and held hostage for 15 years. He never sees his captors. He spends his time watching television, working out and making a list of all the people he might have hurt in his life to understand why he’s been locked up. He is then released with a fresh suit of clothes and a wallet full of money, and he spends the rest of the movie trying to find the family he lost and the reason he kidnapped.

This movie definitely isn’t for everyone, but it’s great if you want a solid detective story/emotional thriller with a bit of “the old Ultraviolence” thrown in. After the movie I kept thinking that Park Chanwook directs as if here were David Cronenberg’s and Alfred Hitchcock’s baby, the one they raised it in Korea, of course.

Oh Dae-su pushes the limits of what I’m comfortable with in a main character—he eats a live animal, gets in a hammer fight and does a few other unspeakable things. Even with his antihero status, however, as I watched I could understand the lengths Oh Dae-su went to. I empathized with the character even as he did the most outlandish things, and this made the movie all the more exciting.

Interesting to note is that Oldboy is the middle part of a “trilogy” of movies, sandwiched between Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, which will be coming to the U.S. on DVD in November, and Lady Vengeance, which will see a limited U.S. theatrical release in February 2006. Don’t worry … you don’t have to see the others to understand what happens in Oldboy—the trilogy is held together only by its theme of revenge. If you like Oldboy the others are worth seeing.

As I’ve said, Oldboy isn’t for everyone. But if you’ve got the stomach, I think you’ll end up looking like I did as the credits rolled—mouth hanging wide, blinking and stunned. Also, make sure to watch the dubbed version with the subtitles going … it’s interesting to see how different they are, and it gives you a better idea of what’s really being said.

****

Infernal Affairs
China
2002, Basic Pictures/Media Asia Films
Wai Keung Lau (as Andrew Lau) and Siu Fai Mak, directors

I first heard of Infernal Affairs when people started talking about the inevitable Hollywood remake. Martin Scorsese is tackling it and it will star Tinsel Town juggernauts Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, as well as Jack Nicholson. That was enough to get my attention. But what really grabbed me was the plot, which was clever enough to pique my interest yet moody and stylish enough to keep me involved.

The Plot: is pretty simple—a criminal organization plants a mole in the Hong Kong police department at the same time the cops put an undercover agent in the crime ring. The two moles discover each other at the same time, and the rest of the movie is spent as each tries to uncover the other without revealing himself.

I’m a sucker for themes, and this one explores themes like you read about. The protagonists are mirror images, and they play with the Yin/Yang idea a lot. Mirrors factor in heavily, and the leads are as opposite in temperament as they are in loyalty. Both are tormented by their divided loyalties, and each struggles to maintain his sense of integrity while being torn apart by a crap situation. The choices made by each over the course of the movie reflect how a person can be changed by his or her surroundings without even realizing it.

Then there’s the ending, which I won’t ruin, but struck me as extremely brave and very exciting—just the kind of thing you *don’t* get in a Jerry Bruckheimer explosion-a-minute action extravaganza, but it was fitting. If you like thrillers or cat-and-mouse movies, police procedurals or movies in general, get this DVD and watch it as soon as you can.

****

Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior (Thailand)
2003, Basic Pictures/Media Asia Films
Prachya Pinkaew, director

I don’t think I’d ever even seen a Thai film before this. Ong-Bak was another movie I heard a lot about before I ever saw it. That’s partially because I’m a film geek and partially because these flicks come out in Asia way before they arrive here (legally).

Compared to the other movies I’ve mentioned, the plot here is paper-thin. Of course, that may be because A., I’m not a Buddhist, and B., this movie is really just a vehicle to see Tony Jaa, the film’s star, perform superhuman feats. The ostensible plot is that when the head of Ong-Bak, a statue sacred to a small village, is stolen, young Ting has to go to the big city to find it.

That’s it. But along the way, we get to see Tony Jaa do things as Ting I didn’t think were possible outside of the Matrix. Ting runs on people’s heads. Ting catches on fire and kicks someone. Ting does a running split and slides under a moving car (I, too, cringed during that scene). The big hook for this movie is that no tricks or wires were used during the filming—it’s pure Jaa.

Things get punched. People jump through objects they shouldn’t be able to jump through. Ting gets sucked into the sort of ring fighting that reminded me of JCVD (that’s John Claude Van Damme, not a biblical STD) trying to get to the 'Kumite' in Bloodsport. The story drives the movie, but it’s really just a reason to watch Tony Jaa be awesome. And awesome he is.

Ong-Bak isn’t a date movie. It’s not a deep thinker. But if you want to watch someone perform physical acts that put the Cirque du Soleil to shame, this is your huckleberry.

****

Thus ends our Asian cinema roundup. I’m not trying to convince you to give up on American movies. But if you need something to wash the taste of 2 Fast 2 Furious or Honey out of your mouth, or if you want to explore how other cultures tell stories, try these fresh films. You’ll hone your movie watching skills in a whole new context, plus, when Hollywood remakes these films to star Keanu Reeves or Rob Schneider, you’ll be able to impress your friends by saying you saw the original.

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