The Setting Sun [1992] - Dir. Rou Tomono (Nikkatsu Studios)

[Yihetuan]

I'm taking extreme liberties here including this historical drama as a martial arts film but it does feature Yuen Biao in several fight scenes employing kung fu. Actually those brief scenes starring Yuen Biao are one of the few highlights that I enjoyed sitting through this 2 and half hour mess. It's a joint Chinese-Taiwanese-Japanese multi-national production made during Nikkatsu's 80th Anniversary but for all of its lavish set designs, expansive cinematography and Western star power (with Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland), it's a overly long, prosaic and at times silly film.

Yuen Biao plays an opium dealing Shanghai mob boss on a collision course with a Japanese soldier and his rebel love interest played by Diane Lane during the Manchukuo puppet government. Other than Yuen Biao, I was excited to see Diane Lane but she was a huge disappointment. She plays a Eurasian cabaret singer who secretly heads a rebel movement to topple the government but she mostly speaks unaccented Midwest English with occasional phonetic Mandarin and this makes her dialog scenes very awkward. In addition, her acting is wooden and stiff here and the spicy sex scenes that are hinted at in the trailer are muted and tame. Overall, a very disappointing film.

[ShawAngela]

Not really a pure martial arts movie, but I don't know where to talk about this movie...

I watched The setting sun 1992 a few days ago and I enjoyed it a lot.
Everything is great in it : the music (but the famous French composer Maurice Jarre), the plot and the actors ! And the sceneries as well.
That's strange that the Mandarin title translates as 'Shanghai big boss Du Yue Sheng" if I'm not mistaken, which should implies that the movie focuses on Yuen Biao's character Du Yue Sheng, but Yuen Biao has only a few scenes and doesn't fight enough in my opinion. Actually, the movie focuses more on the Japanese character and his love story with Diane Lane than on Yuen Biao's character, but even if I'm a little bit disappointed with that (I bought the dvd only for Yuen Biao !), I still enjoyed the movie. But I was a little bit disappointed by the end.

In addition to that, I wonder if the movie was longer than the 2hours I watched, because there are some scnes shown in the ending credits that weren't shown during the movie.

[One Armed Boxer]

6 hours ago, ShawAngela said:

Not really a pure martial arts movie, but I don't know where to talk about this movie...

This thread! 

6 hours ago, ShawAngela said:

In addition to that, I wonder if the movie was longer than the 2hours I watched, because there are some scnes shown in the ending credits that weren't shown during the movie.

It is. It sounds like you watched the 119 minute U.S. cut that's missing over 30 minutes of footage from the original version, which runs for 152 mins.

It was made to mark Nikkatsu studios 80th anniversary, and I briefly discussed it in my recent feature on Yuen Biao's output in the 90's.

[ShawAngela]

3 hours ago, One Armed Boxer said:

This thread! 

It is. It sounds like you watched the 119 minute U.S. cut that's missing over 30 minutes of footage from the original version, which runs for 152 mins.

It was made to mark Nikkatsu studios 80th anniversary, and I briefly discussed it in my recent feature on Yuen Biao's output in the 90's.

😱😱

Thanks for the precision.