With a Terminator-like demeanour, but a tortured soul beneath, Dacascos' Freeman is a wafer-thin comic entity only kept engaging thanks to the actor's physicality, bringing forth inventive and impressive martial arts and gun-fu back in the days when the only person coming close to playing with this kind of stuff was someone like Woo. The balletic gunplay and hyper-stylisation is pure John Woo, rising above all to deliver a surprisingly intoxicating rideĬrying Freeman would prove one of those very rare, relatively prominent lead vehicles for vastly underrated action man Mark Dacascos, who was gifted a long overdue Big Screen Hollywood bow in John Wick: Parabellum, but actually only really ever did a couple of noteworthy pieces across the last three decades of his career - both, perhaps surprisingly, for Christophe Gans (Dacascos' Mani is the unsung hero of the also vastly underrated genre-blending masterwork that is Brotherhood of the Wolf). It's silly and convoluted, unforgivably overcooked, and boasting a childlike romanticism, but still somehow manages to remain stylish and atmospheric enough to make for just about one of the best pre-2000 comic book adaptations, and one hell of a directorial debut. Indeed, even the script would have been right up Woo's street - when almost supernaturally gifted one-man-army assassin Yo fails to kill a witness to his latest slaughter, and indeed instead falls in love with her, he must defy the clandestine organisation he works for to protect her life, whilst reclaiming his own, all in the midst of a gang war between the Triads and the Yakuza in San Francisco. The balletic gunplay and hyper-stylisation is pure Woo, rising above all to deliver a surprisingly intoxicating ride.
#Crying freeman full
Christophe "Brotherhood of the Wolf" Gans' striking directorial debut is a perfect example of effective style over substance.Īdapted from the Manga series of the same name, Crying Freeman felt ripped straight from the comic's pages - and was indeed strikingly faithful to its source - with Gans going full French John Woo in his overblown slo-mo, gravity-and-logic-defying action sequences, all turned in on a minimal budget, largely relying on star Mark Dacascos' impressive Capoeira-informed martial arts prowess to carry the flimsy fable replete with its overdubbed, undercooked acting.
0 kommentar(er)
