Los
Angeles has a long history of riots, going back to at least the Nineteenth Century.
Who better to helm this pre-Exclusionary Act melodrama, culminating in the 1871
mass Chinese lynchings than British-HK director Po-Chih Leong. Arguably, his
knack for straddling cultures makes him a logical choice, but casting South
Korean Clara Lee in the lead is bound to rile the authenticity police. Given
the subject matter, the cosmetics of it are admittedly a little awkward, but
there is no getting around the fact she is the best thing going for Leong’s The Jade Pendant (trailer here), which releases
today on DVD.
Fleeing
an abusive arranged marriage, Ying Ying Leung and her best friend Lily agree to
a five-year term of indentured service, in return to passage to San Francisco.
They believe they will be working in a flower shop, but of course it is a
brothel. Leung is renamed Peony, but Lily conveniently stays Lily. However,
unlike the other girls there, Leung can read and write both English and
apparently Mandarin. She can understand her contract and assert her rights. She
never agreed to be a prostitute, but she still owes fives years of service, so Madame
Pong, much to her own surprise, assigns her housekeeping duties. Needless to say,
this does not sit well with Yu Hing, the big Tong boss, who wants Peony for
himself.
Eventually,
Peony will start romancing Tom Wong, a prodigal prospector, who has had better
luck slinging chop suey. They even start building a life together in Los
Angeles after Madame Pong grants Peony her independence, as a means of
asserting her own. Yet, they cannot abandon Lily, who bears the brunt of Yu
Hing’s abuse. Nor is he willing to let Peony go, especially since she reminds
him of his late wife, who committed suicide to escape him.
As
the titular accessory-wearing Peony, Clara Lee is mostly a satisfyingly dynamic
and charismatic Western heroine. Still, it is frustrating to see her suffering
from Alex Rodriguez Syndrome, in which her martial arts are at their highest
when the stakes are negligible, but during times of crisis, she can hardly
punch straight. She has okay chemistry with Taiwanese Godfrey Gao’s Wong, but
her best scenes are played with Madame Pong, played with tart dignity by Tsai
Chin. They have an intriguing relationship that wears well over the course of
the film. As Yu, Tzi Ma chews the scenery with fair degree of relish, but it is
difficult to buy his ultra-bad martial arts sequences.
As
you might have deduced, Jade Pendant has
serious consistency issues, careening from a scruffy Kung Fu throw-down to an
awkward issue-driven film at the drop of a ten-gallon hat. Arguably, co-screenwriters
David Assael and Scott Rosenfelt simplify the racial politics of the riots,
painting them as white versus Asian, overlooking Hispanic participation in the killings.
Frankly, the whole ugly incident vindicates San Francisco’s Inspector “Dirty”
Harry Callahan, because the eight men convicted for manslaughter had their
sentences over-turned on technicalities.
