THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM (2008)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS


Wikipedia quotes a Chinese reviewer who criticized THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM for its "American-Centrism." But to me this seems entirely appropriate. KINGDOM is essentially a love-letter to the major tropes of the Hong Kong kung-fu genre. John Fusco, an Italian-American who trained in the martial arts since age twelve and sparred with KINGDOM star Jet Li, pretty clearly was not seeking to celebrate Chinese culture as it has been lived by the Chinese, but in terms of the stories they put into cinematic form. Thus Fusco and director Rob Minkoff chose to use an American youth as an identifying character, even though the Caucasian character, played by Michael Angarano, is given the name "Jason Tripitakas," a clear reference to a Sanskrit-language term promulgated through Buddhism and given pop-culture relevance through the 16th-century Chinese fantasy-novel JOURNEY TO THE WEST.

There's no question that the filmmakers hoped to involve America's majority Caucasian audience by giving them a Caucasian viewpoint-character. Yet the Jason character isn't just the standard "exotic adventurer." He's defined almost entirely by his love for Hong Kong fantasy-films, though unlike the main character of BULLETPROOF MONK,  Jason has no fighting-skill whatsoever. An encounter with an ancient golden staff, reputedly once the property of Sun Wukong, the protagonist of JOURNEY TO THE WEST, hurls the hapless Jason into the world of medieval China.

Though Fusco's script uses elements of JOURNEY, the script's main focus is to involve Jason in assorted standard situations germane to Hong Kong cinema. The American youth is taken under the wing of "drunken fighter" Lu Yan (Jackie Chan), who immediately recognizes that Jason is destined to use the staff to liberate Sun Wukong, a.k.a. "the Monkey King," so that this quintessential Chinese hero can vanquish the evil Jade Warlord. The simian superhero is one of two roles played by the film's other big-name star, Jet Li, though Li spends much more time in the guise of another of Jason's trainers, "the Silent Monk." Thus Jason gets the benefit-- and the ordeals-- of being trained by two of the archetypes of kung-fu cinema: the disciplined monk and the drunken "wild man" of forest and tavern.

KINGDOM is a thinly plotted action-film, in which both the staff and an immortality-serum function as "objects pursued by both heroes and villains." Jason's quest to finish his quest and get back home obviously becomes secondary to the first team-up of Chinese titans Jackie Chan and Jet Li. As far as delivering on the team-up elements, Fusco gives both actors some pleasant but non-demanding scenes to play off one another, including an inevitable fight-scene before they become allies. No one will ever call this Chan-Li battle one of cinema's great fights, but it's adequate for what it does. Perhaps because Chan and Li are so charismatic, Angarano has little to do beyond being a source of humor. Still, he gets a little romance with a female heroine (named in honor of Cheng Pei Pei's "Golden Swallow") and has a decent fight with one of the Warlord's henchmen, a witch-woman who evinces yet another kung-fu fantasy-trope: that of the supernatural being able to extend her hair like a net of tentacles.

KINGDOM has no interest in the theme of JOURNEY TO THE WEST, with its opposition between the ruthless ambition of the Monkey King and the enlightenment of Buddhist knowledge. It's just a lively, fairly diverting martial-arts films, different from the hundreds once turned out in Hong Kong only by virtue of a bigger budget and internationally known actors.