This
teacher will totally school you. She changed professions relatively recently,
but her previous skill set is as sharp as it ever was. Three of her former
colleagues will learn that the hard way in Jeremy Weiss’s wildly entertaining
short film, The Teacher, which screens during this year’s Dances With Films, in Hollywood, USA.
Just
like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, the Teacher’s old boss, “The
Contractor,” is not inclined to accept her resignation gracefully. Instead of
whisking her off to an Adriatic seaside Potemkin Village, the Contractor has
two of his best assassins to ambush her on the streets of Qindao. One is a
German hulk and the other is refined Japanese ronin. Both men are extremely
lethal, but they have still probably met their match. After all, the film is
titled The Teacher, not The German or The Swordsman.
Regardless, it is relentless fun watching her fend them off.
Even
though there are three credited screenwriters, David Carter, Chris J. Ford, and
Keith Kuramoto, the narrative is not all that complicated. Of course, the whole
point of the film is the adrenaline-charged, pedal-to-the-metal fight scenes,
so it is really just as well they refrain from giving us any derivative plot
complications that might distract us from the real business at hand. Weiss and
stunt coordinator Jaden He (the Swordsman) stage a number of really cool
martial arts face-offs.
In
a mere fifteen minutes, Sarah Chang (who also did stunt work on Bleeding Steel and Wolf Warrior 2) conclusively proves she has the chops and
the presence to be a major international action star. She comes across as
rather sweet and vulnerable, but then she counter-attacks like nobody’s
business. Plus, Jaden He and Kevin Lee make worthy adversaries, who make the
ebb and flow of their fight scenes look convincing.