The Rebel – DVD Review
When I got the assignment to review The Rebel, the new import action movie by distributors Dragon Dynasty, I admit I slightly winced at the distributor’s name. I thought to myself, “What… is Panda Express Films already taken?” The Rebel is another movie that certainly has Asian people jump kicking one another, but this time, they’re Vietnamese.
I, myself of Chinese/Vietnamese descent, decided it would be nice to watch the movie with my family. After all, they speak Vietnamese and they also enjoy watching a guy jump kicking another guy, as all of us Asians must, by law. During the course of this exercise, I would realize that everyone involved in this production has an American first name, I’d learn the answer to “what ever happened to Dustin Tri Nguyen?” (from TV’s 21 Jump Street ) and also that an extended member of my family once owned slaves.
The Rebel is set in 1922 during the French Colonial ruling of Vietnam. This may come at a surprise to most people that the French had anything to do with Vietnam at all, but it is historically accurate, and it is also the reason why baguettes from Vietnamese sandwich shops are so damn good. The film begins with a group of Vietnamese elite agents charged with quelling the rebel terrorists, laying down the exposition as I just did. This is all important to the story, but I can’t say that I wasn’t ticking off the time until we could see some ass kicking. I didn’t need to worry because in a matter of moments, everybody was kung fu fighting, and those cats were fast as lightning.
Le Van Cuong (Johnny Tri Nguyen) is an agent with a perfect track record, who during an asassination attempt on a French official, had to kill a young boy. This of course leads him to rethink his life of violence that he is oh so good at. During the attack, Le and his partner Sy (Dustin Tri Nguyen) captures Vo Thanh Thuy (pop star Veronica Ngo) who is the daughter of the rebel leaders. The killing of the young boy haunts Le and he decided to help free Vo ( or maybe he only did it for the poon tang ) Her patriotic spirt of fighting for their people’s freedom from his former employers inspires him to become a freedom fighter, and causes him to have deep feelings for her as well. This is mostly because she is pretty hot. If she wasn’t they problably would have just remained good friends. They become fugitives, all the while being tracked by his former friend Sy who knows they will lead him to her father and leader of the resistance.
This plot sounds familier to you? It should, I think this movie is made every three minutes all over Asia. There is a scene where Le and Vo are trapped in an iron mine that is manned by slave workers. The workers starving, dehydraded and dressed in nothing but rags, fall over only to be whipped by the cruel foreman. This is when my mom piped up and said a distant Aunt of mine was married to a Frenchman who owned an iron mine. I paused the DVD turned to my mother and asked in horror, “Did she owned slaves?” My mother replied, “Oh yes, people would kidnap children and sell them to the mines. The movie got the suffering right.” I did find out that our family hates her at least and this made me feel better.
The Rebel is a fun action movie and it does try at having some substance. There were a few leaps in logic left even my mom going, “Huh?” ( and mind you, this is a lady that belives monkey gods are real ) The action is heart pounding and as thrilling as you would want in a martial arts film, though by the end it does get a bit repeditive. I haven’t heard that Vietnam was a hot bed of artisic cinema, so I expected the film to look like my family home movies ( and not just because there are lots of asian people in it ) but to my surprise and delight the film was really quite beautiful. There are some really painterly composed shots that you rarely see in these action movies.
Director Charlie Nguyen did an astounding job keeping the camera interesting by using light and color (gotta wonder if Charlie knows that his first name is a racial slur for Vietnamese people ). In the final analysis, If you like these kinds of martial arts movies, then The Rebel is worth trying out.
The Rebel is available now on DVD from Dragon Dynasty
