The Iceman Cometh 急冻奇侠

1989 · KonCATIII

Fong Sau Ching is the Chief Royal Guard during the Ming Dynasty, whose job is to protect the Emperor at all costs, including with his own life. One day, Ching discovers that one of his men, Fung San, is a sadistic rapist with a penchant for murdering his victims by breaking their limbs. After Fung San attacks the Princess and several other women, Ching is tasked by the Emperor with hunting down and killing him in order to restore his own honor. However, things take an unexpected turn when the two men come face-to-face for a duel to the death, only to become literally frozen in time by a mystical device known as the "Wheel of Life and Death." 300 years later, in modern Hong Kong, Ching and Fung San are accidentally thawed out. Unfamiliar with his surroundings, Ching struggles to adapt to his strange new environment and soon finds himself at the mercy of an obnoxious call girl named Polly while attempting to continue to search for Fung San, but little does he know that Fung San is adapting quite nicely to both the weapons and crime ridden modern world and is beginning to resume his murderous ways. Featuring an awesome, action-packed final face-off that ranks amongst the most over the top in Hong Kong cinema, Clarence Fok's (The Naked Killer) THE ICEMAN COMETH skillfully combines daring action set pieces with fantasy and horror elements, all wrapped in a comedic "fish out of water" scenario. Packed with memorable and death defying stunt work, including a fight on top of a jeep hanging from a construction crane, and starring Hong Kong action superstar Yeun Biao (Righting Wrongs), legendary stuntman Yeun Wah (Rendezvous With Death) and acclaimed actress Maggie Cheug (In The Mood For Love) The Iceman Cometh (1989) aka Time Warriors (Jidong Qixia) Rating: ★★★★ Hong Kong. 1989. Crew Director – Huo Yao-Liang, Screenplay – Johnny Mai Dang-Xiong & Stephen Xiao Ruo-Yuan, Producer – Ruo-Yuan, Photography – Pan Heng-Shen, Music – Chen Yong-Liang, Art Direction – Fang Ying. Production Company – Johnny Mak Productions/Golden Harvest. Cast Yuan Biao (Fong Sau Ching), Maggie Cheung (Polla), Yuan Hua (Fung Shan) Plot China, during the Ming Dynasty. The palace guard Fung Shan tires of duty and goes on a spree of murder and mayhem. When he rapes one of the princesses of the realm, his former colleague Fong Sau Ching swears to bring him to trial. Ching pursues Fung Shan into the mountains where Fung manages to activate The Wheel, a mystic Buddhist artifact that places them in suspended animation just as they fall into an icy glacier. Unfrozen in present-day Hong Kong, they make their way into the streets of a bewildering 20th Century where Fung Shan quickly turns to a life of crime and the naive Ching is fooled into becoming the slave of an opportunistic hooker. Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema was the most inventive form of fantasy filmmaking in the world. This wonderfully entertaining effort plays like a comic martial arts variation on Highlander (1986). Any connection with the revived Neanderthal film Iceman (1984) or The Iceman Cometh (1939), Eugene O’Neill’s famed play of the same title about characters meeting in a flophouse should be construed as probably intentional. Director Huo Yao-Liang offers up a lightning paced array of acrobatics and martial arts displays – dazzling backflips, mid-air aerobics, swordfights, gun battles, fight scenes hanging from Jeeps suspended in mid-air, even slow-motion shots showing people catching bullets, all executed with a breathless precision that leaves any near Western equivalent for dead. In one astounding sequence, Yuan Hua disables an opponent by flicking bullets at him with the impact of a gun; not merely content with that director Huo Yao-Liang has the downed man pulling one of the bullets out of his shattered leg to put back in the gun and continue shooting at Yuan after he runs out of ammunition. What is also refreshing in comparison to its Western parallels is the lack of macho posing and the neo-fascist underpinnings that fill the films of American martial artists like Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal. Swordsmen in the present day – (l to r) Yuan Biao vs Yuan Hua The film is equally enjoyable for the broad humour it raises in its cultural clashes – with Yuan Biao believing toilet water is for drinking, lighting log fires in the kitchen to cook and the like. The cast give excellent performances, particularly noticeable being the fact that they seem to all be doing their own stunts. The most charming of the performers though is Maggie Cheung – the bored expression on her face as she is forced to endure an S&M scene or the moment she thrusts her shoe out to the police officer who promised to lick her toes when she claimed Yuan Biao was 300 years old is absolutely wonderful. There is a cheerful absurdism to the film – one that can happily produce a potion of losing martial arts abilities out of nowhere at a moment’s notice. In fact. the bad subtitling – dynamite for dynamo, lotion for p