A Fist Within Four Walls (2016)

[Drunk Monk]

Just found this on Amazon Prime. It's a TVB martial arts soap opera. S1 runs 28 43m eps.  Here's the thing, one of the main characters is played an old friend, Phillip Ng. I did a cover story on him a while back when he was in that rather disappointing Bruce Lee historical rewrite Birth of the Dragon. He's been working steadily in TV and films. Yeah, he plays the villain.  All my friends play villains.

Phil is cool tho.  He lives in HK and I wonder how he's doing.  We chat online now and again.  I should check in with him, tell him I'm finally watching his show. He has a new movie, Undercover Punch and Gun, that's just coming out now or just came out. I'm better friends with his dad actually as he still lives in the U.S. and we cross paths in the wulin now and again.  Phil's livin the dream.  He's worked with Jacky, Sammo, Yuen Biao.  He's in the upcoming Donnie Yen remake of Enter the Fat Dragon.  I fantasize about going back to HK and having him take me around to meet all his cool friends.  

E1 was great.  Lots of solid fightin action. It's based on Bajiquan, which is a style I actually practice.  Well, I practice one form from the style, an odd folk form, the one form I kept from my years under Shaolin Monk Shi Yanfei.  Baji is a system on to its own with dozens of forms.  Nevertheless, I love that form and recite it almost every week.  I try to keep one form from every master that I've studied under for a prolonged period, although my Xingyi counts for both Tony Chen and He Tao (I wasn't under He Tao for very long and didn't retain any of the forms he taught me).  But back to e1, it's overdone melodrama as many of these Hong Kong martial arts soap operas are, however the action redeems it.  I'm always praising the Hollywood choreo like Into the Badlands, Preacher, Wu Assassins, etc., but HK action puts it all to shame.  They make it look so effortless. Unfortunately E1 was all set up and the real story doesn't kick in until E2, 15 years later.

E2 has more of an HK comedic bent, silly slapstick, sassy women, sleazy triad bosses, goofy love story arcs, I was just about to give up until the very end when Phillip makes his first appearance and kicks everyone's ass.  

26 eps to go.  I may just fast forward to the fight scenes.  And Phil's scenes.

[Drunk Monk]

Just got a call from Phillip's dad, Sam.  He's picking me up at FLL.  There's a JetBlue function that is promised to let me view Amazon Prime, so maybe I'll catch a few more eps on the way.

[Greg]

It's like flying first class, except with your knees pressed against your chest.

[Drunk Monk]

Phil's character took a clever unexpected turn in S3 and now I'm fully engaged.  The show has this annoying comic relief chick, a matron of a hair salon, a stereotypical sassy, greedy, shifty low-level boss, but with a good heart under it all.  They seem to do one solid fight per episode, reminiscent of the Badlands formula.  

But now I'm going to take a break and watch one of the in-flight movies.  Maybe two.

[Drunk Monk]

JetBlue wifi isn't strong enough for uninterrupted streaming of e4 so i gave up.  

[Drunk Monk]

Finished e4. The blood is too purplish.  Lots of obligatory blood spitting.  

Amazon Prime has this thing where it shifts to the next ep as soon as the credits role, but there's ng and bts stuff during the credits, so i must remember to be quick and shut that auto function off.

[Drunk Monk]

I dropped out of this show for a while because Phil's dad totally spoiled the show for me when I was in Florida last year, revealing a major twist with the arc of Phil's character.  I told Phil and he said, 'yeah, he does that.'  dammit.  But I spent like an hour plus trying to find something to watch and figured I'd pick this up again.  

So e7 started out with goofy comedic hijinks where the prissy sheltered gangster boss's daughter tried to teach some elementary kids and they pranked her repeatedly getting her to eat bugs and pour piss on herself.  Then it took a super dark turn with the brutal rape and murder of the innocent damsel in distress, and in the revenge fight, a major reveal on one of the characters who has been another comedic relief so far, but it turns out she's some crazy assassin in denial (and I think the lost sister) and she can really act, delivering some solid tearjerking scenes.  So harsh, such a brutal tone shift for the show.  

If you want to get a taste of this show, just watch ep7.

The next ep got even darker.  Not sure if we'll get back to any goofiness for a while.  But they probably will.  Kung Fu soap operas can be that way.

[Drunk Monk]

Not sure if we'll get back to any goofiness for a while.  But they probably will.  Kung Fu soap operas can be that way.

Well, that was quick.  I was bemoaning the fact that today was the scheduled premiere of Mulan and here's a goofy Mulan ep for e9.  The story descends into underground fights and the heroes, Boxer & Tooth Man, must face the Magnolia sisters, two masked women fighters who wear matching red cheongsams.  Magnolia is a translation of Mulan and there's a Mulan reference.  The hairdresser, who has been crushing on Tooth Man, somehow swaps places with one of the sisters, and fights to save Tooth Man, who's been injured by his Kung Fu uncle for taking the fight and cannot fight at full capacity.  But instead of fighting, she spends the match groping Tooth Man. Classic goofy humor with videogame/pro-wrasslin undertones.

Phil spends a lot of time with his shirt off and damn, he's ripped and cut.  He fights a lot too in this ep, and outclasses the other actors in the fight scenes by a longshot. 

A new villainness is introduced, a hottie in shimmering cheongsams, who has mad dice cup skillz.  She's in league with the gay villain from earlier who is back to avenge the death of his crude, muscley brother earlier in the show.

[Drunk Monk]

It just occurred to me that none of you have much of an idea of what this show looks like.  Here's a trailer, but it doesn't really capture it, plus there's some spoilers in it, including a few scenes I wish I hadn't seen.



I'm on ep13 now and there are 28 eps.  We're letting go of Amazon Prime soon so I won't get to the end before I have to switch over to some other platform.  It's on YouTube but in Cambodian....

---

Maybe I can find something with English subs.

[Drunk Monk]

We're letting go of Amazon Prime soon so I won't get to the end before I have to switch over to some other platform. 

I stand corrected.  A dear master friend gave me some Amazon $ for my birthday and we put it towards renewing AP.  So now there's no rush.  

That being said, e14 sucked.  It was the lovey dovey romance ep (this is a soap opera after all).  Only one fight and it was a flirt fight, which can be fun sometimes but this time was poorly choreographed.  

I started watching this for Phil, but three stars have caught my attention: Nancy Wu who I disliked as a character at first because she was so caricature, but then delivers some textured dramatic scenes in the corners, Carlo Ng, the effeminant villain, who is also quite caricature but takes fay villiany to new levels strictly on his eyebrowless lipstick wearing performance, and Grace Wong, who was raised in NY so probably speaks gooder English and is a former beauty queen. She's killin it as the femme fatale.  

Here's a weird promo vid for Grace

---

Here's one for Nancy which has almost nothing to do with her role (she has yet to don this catsuit)

---

Can't find one for Carlo.

---

Here's Phil.  Damn I wish this really was the soundtrack.  The actual soundtrack is wailing 80sesque guitar riffs that suck.

---

Oooh.  I found Carlo

[Drunk Monk]

We're letting go of Amazon Prime soon so I won't get to the end before I have to switch over to some other platform. 

I stand corrected.  A dear master friend gave me some Amazon $ for my birthday and we put it towards renewing AP.  So now there's no rush.  

I stand corrected again.  We gotta use that money for stuff other than AP so we're looking at letting go of it this weekend.  So I'll be in binge mode.  Just finished e15.  13 more to go.  Shouldn't be too hard.  It's not like I've got a lot else to do...

[Greg]

Yikes. How does one live without Amazon Prime? Granted, I mostly have it for the fast shipping and only rarely dip my toe into their online offerings. I figure I save a lot of money doing that.

But now that they are firing strike leaders, I'm going to have to rethink. Although I was planning on avoiding them for the next couple of weeks regardless.

[Drunk Monk]

Yeah, AmazPri's politics suck for a lot of reasons.  One more reason to let go.  Plus there's been a lot of issues with their deliveries lately.

[Drunk Monk]

the binge...

e18 killed off some major characters to make room for what i'm assuming will be the final story arc.   'the order', an assassin cult, has been introduced, and it's clearly what the show has been working towards since the start. 

e19 had one of the big reveals that they've been building up to for the whole season.  it was sappy but in my current state of mind got me very misty-eyed. dumb ol' kung fu soap opera. 

got about 8 more hours of viewing time over the next two days...but what else am i gonna do?

[Greg]

Write your novel?