Seriously,
why didn’t Tenjin Pharmaceuticals just stick to making impotency pills?
Instead, they decided to develop a super-soldier drug, because apparently, they
have never seen any of the Universal
Soldier or Bourne movies. The
Japanese firm kept it a secret from their American-educated, Chinese lawyer Du
Qiu, but they frame him for murder anyway when he tries to resign as corporate
council. Fortunately, the mouthpiece kept in shape, because he is in for a lot
of running and fighting in John Woo’s Manhunt
(trailer
here),
which screens during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.
Considering
how many cases Du Qiu won for Tanjin, you would think he would be more fluent
in Japanese, but whatever. At least he is an old movie buff, a fact that helped
endear him to Rain, a moody and sensitive assassin some months earlier. That
chance encounter will be important later. First, Du Qiu chooses the wrong woman
to go home with after Tanjin’s gala party announcing Chairman’s Yoshihiro Sakai’s
official designation of his son Hiroshi as his successor.
Rather
inconveniently, Du Qiu comes to next to the dead body of Kiko Tanaka. Even more
discouraging, the initial investigating officer is the blatantly corrupt Mamoru
Ito, who forces Du Qiu to escape by shooting a darned unlucky colleague.
However, it turns out Du Qiu really has a knack for being a fugitive.
Nevertheless, the honest but cynical Det. Satoshi Yamura deliberately lets him
slip away many times, because the plot points are just as obvious to him as
they are to us. Thanks to all the blind eyes Yamura and his new partner Hyakuta
turn, Du Qiu starts to get some answers from Mayumi, the grieving fiancée of
Tenjin’s former research director. At this point, Rain and her ambiguous
partner Dawn re-enter the picture, to fulfill the contract on his head.
Manhunt is based on Jukô
Nishimura novel that presumably made a lot more sense when it was adapted in
1976 with Ken Takakura. Certainly, the earlier film must have had more linguistic
cohesion, whereas long stretches of Woo’s version feature Japanese and Chinese
characters speaking English with odd syntax, in disembodied sounding voices. There
is not much logic to the narrative either. Basically, Tenjin commits random acts
of evil, which has to be bad for their bottom line—after all they have to keep
two La Femme Nikita-style contract-killers
on permanent retainer.
Yes,
the screenplay is a mess, but it is still jolly fun to watch Masaharu Fukuyama
snarl and brood as the world-weary Det. Yamura. He also develops some rather
engaging chemistry with Nanami Sakuraba’s Hyakuuta, who happens to resemble his
dearly departed wife, because everyone has to have a tragic backstory in this
film. Korean superstar Ha Ji-won and Angeles Woo (daughter of the director)
vamp it up nicely as Rain and Dawn. However, as Du Qiu, Zhang Hanyu always
looks bored, even when he is running for his life and slipping out for an
assignation with the soon-to-be late Tanaka (played by Tao Okamoto from The Wolverine and Batman v. Superman).
Frankly,
Manhunt does not have the style or
the high gloss of Woo’s best work. However, there is no denying the final
action climax is a satisfying maelstrom of blazing guns, smashing batons, and drug-crazed
test subjects. This is a minor Woo film, but it is still an idiosyncratic
guilty pleasure. Recommended for anyone in the mood for cartoon violence with
no real nutritional value, Manhunt screens
tomorrow (4/13), as part of this year’s SFFILM.
