Directed by Suiqiang Huo
Starring Qiu Yuen, Philip Ng, Jiahe Ji
This is the rare case where my memory of a film, “edited” into snatches of images by whatever neurological sorcery, just about matches the film itself. When you hit play on Second Life, also known as Son of a Punch, you’d better not take a second to close an app on your phone or fiddle with a bag of – what do the kids like these days? – Fritos. It doesn’t even clear one minute, including studio logos, before something insane happens. A gang boss busts in on a police funeral and starts talking when all of a sudden he’s silenced forever by the flying kick of the widow, Lao Liang. Pregnant and now imprisoned, Liang establishes herself as top dog by defeating the treacherous Sister Hong in a fast, prop-heavy battle scored with music out of an old King Hu epic. The lighthearted tone and broad comedy are established here, as well as a relentless pace. The moment Hong is put down, she becomes a lifelong ally and friend, jumping to Liang’s aid when her water breaks only moments later. And in the next few moments, we jump ahead thirty years and meet Gui, an enforcer for gang boss Chang Meng who shoots up the ranks after protecting him from a dozen guys in a shirtless blaze.
Gui is played by Philip Ng, who played the crazed, unstoppable villain in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In the very same year. He makes use of his physical talents when his wide-eyed, boyish charm doesn’t always sell “hardened gangster,” culminating in a phone booth brawl likely inspired by Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Notably, Liang had earlier pulled the “rapidly catch falling objects on a tray” move from Spider-Man, and the film’s ease with borrowed ideas contributes to its quick feeling. Not cheap necessarily, though the hyper-real clarity and almost stinging light sources effect a Walmart quality. I think it just confuses comedy for speed, nailing the rapid-fire rhythm but even for sequences without jokes. Shots don’t breathe, and neither do scenes themselves, with cutaways on the punctuation of sentences, delivered so fast I couldn’t tell if the movie was dubbed.
After Gui is blinded by the rival gangster he beat up in the phone booth, he’s roped into Chang Meng’s plot to avenge his father, the guy who was flying-kicked in the opening seconds of the movie. Liang’s been released from prison, and is seeking out the son who was taken away from her. She’s also now played by Yuen Qiu, probably best known for Kung Fu Hustle. The image of her with colorful curlers in her hair and a cigarette in her frown, eyes sizing up doomed opponents, is surely among the most iconic in Eastern cinema. And while Second Life is similarly over-the-top as the Stephen Chow classic, Liang as a Yuen Qiu character is tempered by melancholy for her lost son and the wisdom of being a practitioner of Chinese herbal medicine. One thing hasn’t changed, though, and that’s Yuen Qiu as a formidable martial artist. She doesn’t move like any 73 year old I’ve ever seen, snapping her punches and kicks with choreography that matches the film’s breakneck pace.
Her performance is enhanced by purposely unconvincing wirework and slow-motion and, in one early instance, on-screen graphics, making her generally straight-faced turn even more comic in contrast. The shenanigans truly begin, however, once blind Gui goes undercover as her long-lost son, who was reportedly plagued by medical issues in the orphanage, like the loss of eyesight. In another characterizing benchmark for the film, the ensuing “reunion” is surprisingly low-key. Liang is happy to have her son back, but there’s no big show of emotion. She puts him to work at the herbal medicine clinic, developing a strange rapport with this snide gangster who’s surreptitiously waiting for an opening to kill her. And they sleep in the same bed for some reason. I guess it’s because this is one of those weird comedies about a mother and son, where a lot of the humor derives from infantilization and embarrassment. “Mo-om!”
Unlike Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, though, Second Life is bolstered by genuinely fun action scenes with very game participants. With Ng’s Daredevil routine and Qiu’s old-lady kung fu, we’re also treated to a cadre of international assassins, including a big British bruiser, a Japanese sailor-suit-with-samurai-sword girl, and an acrobatic Black guy with red shades. They all feel like shorthand action movie clichés, slotting perfectly into the film’s heightened reality. I ended up watching this movie for the lead henchman, played by Yaxi Liu, who floored me in The Forbidden City. Her femme fatale here is more difficult to classify, flitting between psychotic killer and efficient combatant – with hidden blades in her high heels – and even cheery, Chinese Chloë Grace Moretz. All around, it’s another impressive performance from an exciting new talent, though I was disappointed by her relative lack of high-pitched squawks.
The active camera is consistent throughout, struggling to keep up with the fast-moving faces and sometimes leaning at canted angles with fish-eye lenses, like we’re in the City of Lost Children, but the upbeat mood sours in the third act. Second Life seems to follow the vague outline of a romcom, with a separation and reconciliation, its low points darkened further by maybe atonal medical revelations. It’s around the endgame that the story cashes in on dramatic setups which may or may not have been fully extant; maybe they were simply hard to notice under all the chaos. And by that time, it’s too late to turn back anyhow, on the cusp of a ten-minute action climax. All of this adds up to a diverting good time, and a strange but oddly fitting tribute to a true legend.
Wait, isn’t that ending kinda fucked-up?
With Eyes East 