Nick Fury Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D

Curiouser and Furiouser

Nick Fury Agent 
Of S.H.I.E.L.D
USA 1998
Directed by Rod Hardy
20th Century Fox
88 Films DVD Region 2

Okay... so anybody buying this 88 Films iteration of the 1998 TV movie of Nick Fury Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D may do well to adjust their set. Quite literally. I thought at first that 88 Films had just presented it in an open matte transfer but, nope, they squished it. Resetting your TV set to a 1.33:1 (or 4:3) aspect ratio should do the trick for you.

Now then. TV and movie adaptations featuring the Nick Fury character have always been problematic, mostly because of the time factor and the misunderstanding of producers to not set the original Marvel stories they are telling in their original time zones. So, this is a nod to the original Nick Fury, back when he was a white man and ran S.H.I.E.L.D in the Marvel comics of the same name... except, because of the contemporary setting of when these things are made, that’s as much of a problem for this 1998 version of the character as it was when he changed skin colour and was played by Samuel L. Jackson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films... time is a big problem...

So Nick Fury was, in the Second World War, Sergeant Fury of Sgt. Fury And His Howling Commandoes comics... alongside characters such as Dum Dum Dougan. The MCU movies at least had Dougan and a few of his buddies fighting in that conflict in Captain America - The First Avenger (reviewed here) but, they didn’t have the guts or, at least, a credible reason... for having Sam Jackson join that particular adventure. Similarly this 1998 version also has Dougan but, again, no back story which makes any sense...

You see, when Jim Steranko evolved the characters because Marvel wanted a secret agent comic book in 1968, to tie in with the popularity of spy movies and TV shows at the time, Fury was promoted to being the top Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D but, of course, when the recent MCU movies and even this TV movie were made, unless they set all of these films in the 1960s (which is what they damn well should have done... idiots!), then Fury can no longer have that back story (although, come on people, if they could find and excuse for Bucky to survive the intervening decades then surely they could have done something for Jackson's excellent iteration of the character).  And everybody knows that Captain America fought in WW2 along with the original Human Torch and Namor, The Sub Mariner but... yeah, don’t get me started on these intelligence challenged reboots! And don’t be giving me... Ultimates... either. As far as I’m concerned, Ultimates stands for ultimate cop-out.

Anyway, the point is, in order for this TV movie/pilot to work correctly, by this point, Nick Fury as played by David Hasselhoff (looking and acting way more like Fury than Jackson does, to be fair... although I think Jackson mostly does a good job in his ones), should be in his seventies. So, yeah, the World War II back story got dumped again. 

What we have is an action yarn which, for a 1998 TV movie feels like... a 1980s TV movie to be fair. Hasselhoff is surprisingly good as Fury but also leans into the heightened comic book delivery of the character to be fair... as do many of the other actors in this and not for the better. For instance, Sandra Hess as Baron Von Strucker’s daughter is horribly over the top and also injects her character with the exact same, highly sexualised response to killing people that Famke Janssen did in Goldeneye (reviewed by me here). And it’s no accident obviously because, some of her dialogue towards the end of this comes almost straight out of Sean Bean’s mouth in that same movie. 

Yeah... the script writers didn’t do a good job here but at least it’s peppered with some outdated but amusingly silly dialogue such as “H.Y.D.R.A’s been jerking our chain six ways to Sunday!” to match the constant... erm... expressionistic performances on show here. 

And by contrast, actors who tone it down just a little, such as Neil Roberts as an early version of the character later played by Robert Redford in the MCU films, come off as somehow less charismatic because of the over-the-top nature of the surrounding performances. 

So it’s Nick Fury pulled out of enforced retirement to rejoin S.H.I.E.L.D in their latest battle with H.Y.D.R.A and all the shenanigans that implies. Including virus laden missiles aimed at the Twin Towers in the US and an LDM (aka Lifesize Decoy Model) turning up in a totally expected piece of deus ex machina... but at a time it couldn’t possibly have been brought into play. Yeah... not even going there, don’t get me started. Sometimes comic book inventions like this need to be left alone, as they perhaps should have been in the later TV show Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D (reviewed by me here).

It’s action packed, corny and, although quite dated by today’s standards... well, let’s just say that I’m surprised this wasn’t successful enough to usher in the TV show they were obviously hoping for. It’s not that bad... at least it surely wouldn’t have been then.  Of course it’s a lot less timeless than many, much older films and shows but... for the dull and dingy 1990s, this one should have performed better, I feel. 

And that’s me about done with Nick Fury - Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D I think. To put it in perspective, it’s not great and I don’t think I’d particularly recommend it to anyone one but, at the same time, I realise that it’s a hell of a lot less dull and certainly more entertaining than the modern Nick Fury TV show Secret Invasion (reviewed by me here)... so make of that what you will.

The Lady Assassin

Split Ending

The Lady Assassin
aka Qing gong qi shi lu
Directed by Chun-Ku Lu
Hong Kong 1983 
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures/88 Films
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers regarding the whole, chaotic affair. 

The Lady Assassin is yet another brilliant release of a Shaw Brothers movie, this one from the early 80s. Now, it’s not for me to complain too much but the translation I got from Google of the original title (yeah, which I don’t trust too much, it has to be said), gives the title as The Qing Dynasty Revelation and, I have to say, this makes much more sense considering the content of the film. 

That content reflecting that there isn’t really a lady assassin character in the film at all, at least not in a top line position. There is a lady who enters the film 23 minutes in who is certainly the one the English packaging of the movie is focusing on but I think assassin is a bit of a stretch (although she is, indeed, a killing machine) and this film is definitely an ensemble piece in terms of the huge cast of characters and actors (indeed, read the synopsis on the packaging and you’ll find no mention of a lady assassin at all, bar the title, which is pretty much reflected in the film itself). And don’t ask me who plays that particular character because the different characters and actors leaves listings like those found on the IMDB kinda redundant and useless. I can tell you that Tony Liu, Leanne Lau, Mok Siu-Chung and Wei-Wei Huang are all in it but, if any of these are the so called title character then, well, the movie is certainly not giving up any of its secrets to the internet IMDB, that’s for sure. 

Also, in one scene, a kung fu master who is brought in to the narrative at a very late stage reveals himself to be, when he shows his real face briefly... as opposed to his young face... well, it looks like Pai Mei but, since his character is killed near the end, I’m guessing he’s just being used to invoke the spirit of such character types as Pai Mei, rather than being the actual one. 

None of this really matters though because this is a bit of an epic movie as regards to both the convoluted plot, based on an apparently infamous part of Chinese history... and also the expected, incredible kung fu wirework which goes into many brilliantly choreographed fight scenes. So we have a bodyguard who can run across the top of water to meet his opponents... with his body and soul being presumably nimble and light enough to pull off such ridiculous moments with no lack of credibility. Or what about a moment when two acrobatic young lady fighters both land on horizontal blades of their opponents swords, upside down and balancing on the point of their own blades as they float there for a moment. 

Another great moment is when, mid fight, a guy catches a rock kicked at his head and immediately uses it to block a sword. Said sword crumbles the rock to ash and he uses the dust to temporarily blind his enemy. And so on and so forth. 

Typically for the Shaw Brothers, because this is based on a particular set of incidents from Chinese history, don’t always expect the heroes to win or stay alive for any length of time. And certainly, while there are definitely heroic characters to follow, they are all from slightly lower classes than the various royalty who seem to switch sides and make empty promises at the drop of a head. It’s those opposing, royal characters who seem to be switching between good guy and bad guy mode constantly until, in the end, you realise that nobody in the nobility is good. They’re all just as bad as each other and it’s the little people who tend to pay for their crimes, whether they are kung fu experts or not. Hmm... this reminds me of UK and US politics right now. 

If you are a fan of the wildly ridiculous being injected into your action films, however, then you’ve come to the right place. When one villain gets his head chopped off mid fight, his body goes on and then is replaced by the real villain, the head suddenly revealed to be a mannequin dummy kind of head. This baffles but, luckily, a character said that he was using the ‘magic of disappearance’ technique... oh, well that’s alright then. This particular villain, after pelting his heroic enemies with ninja throwing stars, then uses a giant sized throwing star, acting as a kind of boomerang frisbee weapon, to cause more chaos. 

Like many Shaw Brothers movies, this film ends in the middle of some action, specifically when the woman I suspect of being the title character finally goes on what Beatrix Kiddo would call "a roaring rampage of revenge" (she’s about the only one left at this point). She finally catches up with the main villain and her sword splits his body vertically through. As the two sides of his body fall apart in the foreground, the shot is frozen and the usual Shaw Brothers end messages appear... a literal split ending, for sure. 

And that’s me done with The Lady Assassin. While the content of the film was not quite what I was expecting, it was still absolutely brilliant and I’m looking forward to watching the other 130 or so Shaw Brothers Blu Rays I have lined up for this blog at some point. Good stuff.