Peking Opera Blues (1986)
literal translation: Knife, Horse, Dawn (name of Peking Opera character)
cast: Brigitte Lin, Sally Yeh, Cherie Chung, Wu Ma, Mark Cheng, Cheung Gwok-keung,
Paul Chun Pui, Guk Fung, and Kenneth Tsang Kong

Awhile back a reviewer for a website on Hong Kong film made a comment that at the very least every Tsui Hark film was a different experience. With the exception of his on going "Once Upon a Time in China" series I couldn't agree more.

But wait, what if you could have all of those experiences rolled into one?

In the middle '80s, after (now famous) director John Woo was starting to feel his career going down the tubes; being a has-been of comedy and martial arts pictures he had only but one way to turn. The bottle is mightier than the pen. Woo's career was going nowhere...until he got into a drunken conversation with drinking buddy and soon-to-be producer Tsui Hark.

The two wanted to put together an action feature that would fill the void Hong Kong cinema seemed to be missing at the time: themes of brotherhood and loyalty. Hark dabbled with the idea only using female characters. Woo wasn't having it and instead Tsui Hark went off to direct "Peking Opera Blues."

John Woo (with producer Tsui Hark) would of course go on to make the legendary "heroic bloodshed" film "A Better Tomorrow."

"Peking Opera Blues" takes place two years after the 1911 (first) Democratic Revolution in China. A general's daughter (Lin), a thief (Chung), and a daughter of a Peking Opera house (Yeh) combine forces to try and root out corruption in China's government. Ironically, Brigitte Lin's character is working against her own father, even though she has a strong love for him. Tsui Hark seems to be flipping the values of Chinese culture upside down: a stable government before family. This theme seems to electrify how bad government had degenerated to during the times.

The thief winds up with the general's daughter after she hides in the trunk of her car to escape a pervert. Later the two team with the Peking Opera school daughter after meeting a comrade (Cheng) at a show and being pursued by "the ticking office" (a reference made to local officials looking for rebels).

Together, the four, plus a wounded government solider (Cheung), leap into action in one of Hong Kong's finest films. What is so interesting about the viewing experience of Tsui Hark's "Peking Opera Blues" is that it literally combines every popular genre and packs it into one 1:45 film and never skips on the pitch nor stops short of its goal. It has action, comedy, drama, martial arts, and Hark even throws in a torture scene with Brigitte Lin (maybe so he can really claim "every genre" aspect).

What makes a film like "Peking Opera Blues" function so well is that it takes the elements of popular genre and blends them into the script that could have been dull but is not. A few years later Sammo Hung would try this style with "Pedicab Driver" a good film (excellent for martial arts fans) but a movie that couldn't tell you what direction it's heading in to save its neck.

"Peking Opera Blues" always seems to know what it is striving for and what it wants to get done before the credits role and the magnificent theme song play.

In our country we say, "it ain't over till the fat lady sings." Tsui Hark says with "Peking Opera Blues" "it ain't over till we've seen all there is to see and do it right."