Dreadnaught – Review
Yuen Woo-Ping was still a new dust in the wind in terms of being a director and this time he teamed up with Yuen Biao and Leung Kar Yan for one of Yuen Biao's first starring vehicles, Dreadnaught. The film is also known as the last time that Kwan Tak-Hing would play legendary character Wong Fei Hung, a role he played for four decades ( and you thought Roger Moore playing James Bond a mere seven times was a long time). Dreadnaught is a wide mixture of genres with martial arts (of course), comedy, drama and even some horror aspects. It's a film that continued to showcase Yuen Biao as a freak of nature and Yuen Woo-Ping continued to show why he would later become one of the best action directors of all time.
Dreadnaught begins with a criminal named White Tiger and his wife being surrounded by locals. They engage in a fight and the wife gets killed leading White Tiger thick on revenge against pretty much anyone he sets his eyes on. He finds a theatre group to hide amongst and he attempts to kill a man named Mousy (Yuen Biao) but is unsuccessful. Mousy is a cowardly man who hates being a part of any action whatsoever, just wanting to get by life without being scolded. The other major plot involves Wong Fei Hung and his school being rivaled against another and Fei Hung's attempts to make peace with them. Leung Foon (Bryan Leung) is involved and later tries to get Mousy to become Fei Hung's student.
The action scenes are scattered throughout (there's even a long sequence of lion dancing!) but most of the action is nothing memorable If even worthwhile. The only action that is worth seeing is the short but sweet laundry sequence by Yuen Biao doing laundry "the family way" after being scolded by his sister to do it as such and the final fight between Mousy and White Tiger is also a pretty cool fight scene. For a 90 minute film, it felt like it was a lot longer because the story was all over the place. It felt like screenwriter Wong Jing and director Yuen Woo Ping didn't really know what to make of the plot. Obviously, most people go into a martial arts film to see the action but with a plot that isn't handled very well, it's hard to stay focused on the task at hand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_k1Lf4_olw
While Dreadnaught isn't a bad film when it's all said and done, it's not one of Yuen Woo Ping's or Yuen Biao's best. Yuen Biao does a good job acting like a wimp for most of the film and his character does grow a little bit from being a coward to a somewhat confident coward but other than that, there really isn't anything here that will make you want to watch this film over and over again. If you are fans of Yuen Woo Ping and/or Yuen Biao, I can recommend this but other than that, this is a film that you can drag out not watching on.
It's a shame ... Fan Bingbing
Fan Bing-Bing
Height: 5' 6" (1.68 m)
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