Ah Boys to Men 3: Frogmen (2015)

Plot summary (story synopsis): In an alternate timeline (seriously, this is explained in a voiceover in the movie), the army conscripts in the movie Ah Boys to Men are sent to the Singapore navy's elite Naval Diving Unit (NDU, US Navy SEALs equivalent) instead of the army.

There, they have to survive the tough training, personal conflicts, family problems back home, and finally the dreaded 5-day Hell Week qualification.

***

Writer/director Jack Neo's popular folksy, low-brow, social-commentary, comedy-sketch-based, melodramatic, tell-don't-show, lovable-local-stereotypes, crowd-pleasing style is well known. You either love it or you don't. I won't waste your time criticizing his style in Frogmen except to point out that it is toned down (and therefore less annoying) compared to Ah Boys to Men. Yes, that includes Ken Chow's (Joshua Tan) mother, played by Irene Ang.

What I will do instead is look at Frogmen from a storytelling viewpoint. One fatal flaw in the conception of Frogmen, is the wholesale transfer of the average army conscripts into the elite NDU. It doesn't work.

The "lovable" every-man gang of misfits made sense as generic army conscripts. However it is difficult to believe that such screw-ups are accepted into an elite navy unit. This completely destroys your voluntary suspension of disbelief. Even worse, it gives a false view of the type of men who do join the NDU.

From a dramatic viewpoint, you lose the chance to see the military training of highly-motivated volunteers, instead of your reluctant conscript (if Ken Chow is a skiver, why would he volunteer for a siong special forces unit?). So Frogmen becomes a rehash of the first movie.

Jack Neo should have taken a chance and written in entirely new characters for Frogmen. Instead, he took the easy and safe route by re-using the proven, popular cast from the first movie. (There is one new character in Hei Long (Wesley Wong), a gangster who was brought up in Hong Kong.)

Having made this artistic choice, Jack Neo fails to exploit the audience's familiarity with the characters. Screen time is saved by not having to introduce the characters to the audience. But Jack Neo squanders the saved time by not using it to develop the characters much, except for feeble attempts with Ken Chow, Lobang (Wang Wei Liang) and Hei Long - all in his standard Korean drama style.

Rich-kid Ken Chow's sub plot seems out of place. Lobang's family problems are melodramatic. Hei Long's street gang and parent problems are ridiculous. Aloysius (Maxi Lim) has a satisfying confrontation with bully Hei Long, but the groundwork for it was not properly prepared (Aloysius's surprising reaction is not foreshadowed) and the confrontation therefore feels contrived.

Aside from having misfits enter the NDU, Frogmen further compounds this technical error by having their entire group of 80 men survive and graduate Hell Week. A quick Google search shows that the real pass rate is 30 percent. So instead of showing how tough and elite the NDU is, Jack Neo undersells its selectiveness. It's another missed dramatic opportunity - such a low pass rate would dominate the thoughts and actions of all the men.

Frogmen also doesn't show much about NDU training aside from a first-aid CPR session and a boat-capsize drill. The rest is mainly physical training. While you might not want to publicize any secret techniques, Frogmen doesn't even show the conscripts undergoing scuba diving training (a diving exercise is shown, one that doesn't use scuba equipment). Instead, we only see them as already fully-capable divers at their underwater graduation ceremony. Weapons training? Zero. Communications, navigation, tactics, demolition, escape and evasion, hand-to-hand combat, sky diving, rappelling? Nope.

Bonus gripe: In the action-packed flash-forward at the start of the movie, the terrorists that hijacked a commercial ship and took its crew hostage, are an unnamed group of "international terrorists" whose leader is an American. Nice cop-out to political correctness, Jack.

Triumph in the Skies (2015)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Triumph in the Skies follows the romantic misadventures of three pilots.

Entrepreneur/pilot Branson (Louis Koo) has just taken over Skylette Airlines. (Unbelievably) he has the time to fly one of its regular commercial routes, where he bumps into old flame Cassie (Charmaine Sheh) who is a flight attendant on his flight. They continue to bump into each other on subsequent flights and they rekindle their old romance. But will Cassie be able to trust him after he had dumped her in the past?

Meanwhile, Branson tasks his trusted pilot friend, Captain Samuel Tong (Francis Ng), to be the technical consultant for a music video advertising Skylette. The music video stars pop-star TM (real-life pop-star and experienced actress Sammi Cheng). The odd couple find themselves slowly falling for each other.

There's also former Skylette pilot Captain Jayden Koo (Julian Cheung), who now flies private business jets. He meets the lively, care-free, slutty Kika (Amber Kuo) who is hiding a dark secret.

***

Triumph in the Skies is a visually gorgeous but lightweight romance/drama. It's a good way to pass your time but it carries little emotional punch. It's like watching a series of beautiful music videos with adult-oriented pop songs.

It's based on a TVB Hong Kong TV series, which I haven't watched, so I won't be drawing any comparisons with the TV series.

In the movie, nothing much happens. Unlike real show-don't-tell movies like Lost in Translation, Triumph's laid-back style isn't engaging because it's mainly repetition. The three couples go through the same motions over and over again, so we don't learn anything new with each interaction.

The movie is basically an anthology of three short films, only loosely linked together by the Skylette Airline backstory. So you have one third the screen time for each couple, compared to a normal feature. Add the repetitive interactions and you inevitably get a shallow understanding of the characters.

Still, it's one of the most beautiful movies I've seen in a while. Jason Kwan's (The Last Tycoon) cinematography is world-class. A mixture of prime-lens blurred-out-backgrounds, saturated colors and even old-school tobacco graduated filters for the outdoor scenery. Jackie Chan needs to grab this guy for his next movie. The songs aren't too bad either and the six leads look good on screen. If that's good enough for you (and it is for me), by all means go enjoy yourself.

Aside from the visuals, what struck me was how at ease director Wilson Yip (Ip Man) and writer/director Matt Chow were with the England setting of the movie. Instead of showing cliched English landmarks (one exception being the White Cliffs of Dover); they chose quirky, bohemian, hipster locations.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I think that shows an insider's cosmopolitan familiarity with England. Sure, they probably used local English location scouts, but the decision to avoid tourist staples must have come from them. They aren't The Jeffersons, needing to show off Chinese wealth ("look ma, we're shooting a movie in front of Buckingham Palace!"). They are comfortable in their own skin, not needing any external validation or token White actors (cough, Jackie Chan, cough). Just like Taiwan's "Cafe. Waiting. Love," this makes me feel that Triumph shows how much some Hong Kong filmmakers grok Western/global culture, consider it their own. They aren't swa koos.

No matter how rich or well-traveled Jackie Chan is, he'll always be a working class hero, his movies lacking the effortless yuppie sensibility of movies such as this.

Dragon Blade (2015)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Huo An (Jackie Chan) is the leader of the Silk Road Protection Squad, keeping the peace along the fabled Silk Road trade route in ancient China.

He and his men are framed for gold smuggling and are banished to hard labor, repairing the remote Wild Geese Gate walled city in the middle of the desert. Wild Geese Gate is attacked by a large detachment of renegade Roman legionnaires, led by Lucius (John Cusack). The Romans are low on food and water and need medicine for their sickly young prince Publius (Jozef Waite).

Lucius attempts to take Wild Geese Gate by force but a huge sandstorm interrupts his duel with Huo An. Huo An offers Lucius and his men a truce and shelter inside Wild Geese Gate. The next day brings new orders - Wild Geese Gate is to be finished within 15 days or else everyone will be executed.

Lucius helps them meet the deadline with his knowledge of Roman engineering, while Huo An binds the prison hard-labor gang from 36 nations, into a single motivated team. 

Their victory is short-lived because Publius's evil brother Tiberius (Adrien Brody) catches up with Lucius, bringing 100 thousand Roman soldiers with him. 

***

Dragon Blade is darker than the normal Jackie Chan movie (closer to Police Story than Who Am I?) but has his normal multiracial muhibbah shtick (I'd swear he was brought up in Malaysia).

Jackie Chan's trademark comedic kung fu and acrobatics are minimal, mostly seen in the fight at the start of the movie with Cold Moon (Peng Lin) where he accidentally grabs her bewbs. 

What you do get lots of is goodie-two-shoes Huo An rallying the troops, turning foes into friends, and sacrificing himself for the sake of others. Which doesn't have to be too bad, only Jackie Chan pours on his normal treacly moralizing on top of it.

So yeah, standard Hong Kong melodrama, Jackie version.

The two Hollywood stars are pulled down to Jackie Chan's level. John Cusack gets the corniest lines and almost manages to sell them. Adrien Brody gets better lines but turns in an awful performance. It's not something you would expect from an Academy Award winner. 

On the positive side of the ledger, Jackie Chan swordfights John Cusack and Adrien Brody, but not at the same time. Okay, you've seen Adrien Brody fight Predators but have you seen Cusack do any hand-to-hand?

Come on, just for the curiosity factor, you know you want to watch this one. Decades from now, you will be able to tell your grandchildren - I was there when Adrien Brody and John Cusack destroyed their career.

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Chamber maid Jupiter Jone's (Mila Kunis) ordinary life is thrown into chaos when space aliens come to kill her. Hired gun Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) saves her and continues to protect her as she journeys to claim her inheritance as owner of Earth, fighting off her evil relatives Balem (Eddie Redmayne) and Titus (Douglas Booth) along the way.

***

Jupiter Ascending is an odd mix of gorgeous visuals (production design, lighting and special effects are pretty), conventional space opera (decadent, incestuous galactic empire royalty) and kiddie cartoon. With Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum in the lead roles, I was expecting the filmmakers to target the same audience as Hunger Games and Divergent. I gave the Hollywood MBAs too much credit. 

Yes, the movie's main failing is that its story is written for 12-year-olds. It's a mismatch. Older teens will not be impressed while kids will not be interested in the Jupiter-Caine romance. Hardcore Star Wars fans (Star Wars is space opera) will look down on its consistently kiddie feel.

Think I'm exaggerating? Sean Bean doesn't die in this movie (he plays Stinger, Caine's friend). This conclusively proves that this is a kiddie movie.

It's possible for a kiddie movie to interest adults too. Just look at Frozen. But Jupiter Ascending has the cliched plot of a Saturday morning cartoon episode. No original ideas, no satire or jokes for the adults.

There are bits of Terminator (you almost expect Caine to tell Jupiter, Come with me if you want to live), Men in Black (aliens secretly on Earth), V (aliens harvesting humans), Brazil (bureaucracy) and maybe Stargate. But these don't come off as fun tributes, just lazy copycatting.

And ugh, there's the politics too. Jupiter Jones is an illegal immigrant. Way to bang the amnesty drum, guys.

Written and directed by the Wachowski siblings (who used to be brothers but are now brother and sister), this is in no way close to the quality of their The Matrix. The action sequences here are muddled and too long. The first gun fight involving Caine is confused - it's hard to know who is doing what to whom.

Some of the other fights are better (there's a beautiful aerial dogfight over Chicago) but still lack impact.

Like Michael Mann's Blackhat, Jupiter Ascending is a reminder that all directors are fallible. I wish I didn't care so much about movies.