Yesterday I played approximately three hours of video games, watched almost three full movies, and ate chinese food for lunch and dinner while my girlfriend was out volunteering with some kids from Harlem. It was glorious, especially because of the final movie in my day. While I started off with some sci-fi vampire action with 30 Days of Night and continued by unintentionally watching most of SWAT on FX, the true highlight a 10 year old Jet Li movie called Sat sau ji wayng, known as the Contract Killer in the US. Wikipedia tells me this is the last Hong Kong-produced movie Jet was in before he crossed over to US fame with roles in Lethal Weapon 4 and Romeo Must Die. Anyway, this movie is awesome partly because of the sick martial arts action, but also because it has the unfortunate English dubbing that martial arts films of the 70s and 80s often have. We're talking translations that lose all depth in meaning of the original dialog and delivery that makes everyone sound like they have jumper cables attached to their nipples. There's also those weird comedic moments that just don't quite resound with Western audiences. Anyway, in this movie Jet Li plays a struggling contract killer. He's struggling because he's too nice and doofy to actually assassinate anyone, but he ends up getting involved with a con artist looking to cash in on a contract, and hilarity ensues. There's also this tall white guy who must be from Eastern Europe who fights using LEDs to blind his opponents. Seriously. You should definitely check it out, Khiet. Now if only I could discover a true cinematic gem like this everyday. I really need to see Hard Boiled.
