chow yun-fat ©P¼íµo
The Story of Woo Viet
also known as: The Story of Wu Yuet
year of release: 1981
Principal cast.
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Woo Viet:
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Chow Yun-Fat
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Lap Quan:
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Cora Miao
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Shum Ching:
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Cherie Chung
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Additional info.
version reviewed: VCD (Pearl City F-8001)
Ratings.
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audio:
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7 of 10
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video:
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7 of 10
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subtitles:
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none
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story:
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7 of 10
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performances:
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8 of 10
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CYF:
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8 of 10
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This is a film which should make you uncomfortable. It was meant to do so.
The Story of Woo Viet is an important film in a number of ways. It was the first
serious film in which Chow Yun-Fat was given a chance to show he was a serious actor, and
was a milestone in Ann Hui On-Wah's career as a director. Cora Miao, often cast in the same
sorts of TV soaps and junk-movies as CYF had to endure in his early days, gives a very tight
performance and shows that she, too has more in her than just a serene expression. A
young Cherie Chung is also featured in a role that is a perfect foil for her innocent
appearance.
Other than that, this is film which does not flinch in portraying the dirt and despair of
the Vietnamese refugee fleeing a country torn by conflicts both within and without. While
this is not a "true story" in that it is not the biography of any particular individual,
it is true in the sense that it gives the viewer a look into the very personal faces of
those lost in the melee of impersonal political struggles, and at how inhumane people can
be to one another, sometimes for profit, sometimes for lust and sometimes simply because
there is no other alternative.
Chow Yun-Fat portrays Woo Viet (also transliterated in some versions as Wu Yuet or similar), a
young Vietnamese man who is fresh from a seven-year turn fighting against the Viet Cong.
Leaving behind his collapsing country, he flees Saigon for Hong Kong, a first stop on his
way to his ultimate goal of the United States. While in the army he has learned to be wary,
nervous, and to kill without mercy; a gentle man, he only wants to put all of the dirt and
misery behind him and begin a new life elsewhere.
His only friend in Hong Kong is a young woman named Lap Quan (Cora Miao), a social worker who
is introverted and lives a very meagre existance in her one-room flat. Pen-friends for years,
Lap Quan has never met Woo Viet in person but seems to have fallen in love with him via
their many letters; her enthusiasm alternates with a kind of diffidence which masks her
true feelings upon Woo Viet's arrival at the refugee shunting station in Hong Kong.
Trouble begins almost immediately after Woo Viet's arrival; 'special agents' of the Viet
Cong had killed a number of people aboard the boat which had brought him to HK, and after
he witnesses a murder in the refugee camp he is a target for extermination as well.
Quickly reverting to his war-time ways, Woo lies in wait for the attack and coolly kills
the would-be assassin with a roofing nail into his skull. Escaping the camp before he can be
detected by the other special agents, Woo hides in Lap Quan's flat, starting at every sound
and living like a frightened animal. Realizing that he cannot stay in Hong Kong for the
time required to get his papers legally, Woo asks Lap Quan to assist him in leaving HK.
Going to a former client of her social services agency who has connections for this sort
of thing, she asks for a phoney passport for Woo. Her surprised client comments that she
had requested he no longer associate with that kind of person and refuses to be her
go-between but gives her the name and address of someone who can help her. Thus Lap
Quan gives up yet another part of herself to Woo; along with her money and her heart,
she sacrifices even her principles to help him.
Woo visits the passport forger and is told that it will cost HK$100,000; when Woo
protests the amount, he is told to "get the money from your girlfriend". Woo bows his
head in shame at this idea, but within days he has entered the 'program' run by the
forger's organization to teach him the rudiments of Japanese should his fake Japanese
passport be questioned in the US.
While doing this, Woo meets a fellow Vietnamese refugee Shum Ching (Cherie Chung), a
pretty if vacuous girl who is also seeking a new life in the US. Helping her with
her transformation from a drifting part-time streetwalker into a young Japanese
lady, Woo falls for Ching and they plan a life together in the US, their rudimentary
dreams only taking them as far as some Chinatown in an unnamed city. After an accidental
meeting between Ching and Lap Quan, when questioned later by Ching, Woo dismisses
the idea Quan is his girlfriend as if the idea were absurd. The fruits of Lap Quan's
labor are bitter, perhaps made so not only by Woo's willful ignorance of her feelings
but by Lap Quan's introverted, undemonstrative nature. With a final packet of cash as
her goodbye gift, she leaves Woo and Shum Ching to go forward together, looking back
only once as if to get a final glimpse of the future she had planned receding into
nothingness.
Woo and Shum Ching embark upon their journey, but trouble begins during their stopover
in the Manila airport. Either too naive or too desperate to really question the men who had promised
to deliver them to a new world, it soon becomes apparent there is a new, deeper and darker
level to the greed of the passport forgers than just fleecing refugees for anything they
might own. After distracting Woo, Ching is kidnapped and taken to parts unknown. Woo
again falls into his wartime patterns, reacting to the crisis in the only way he knows
how. Holding one of the forgers' agents hostage, he demands to be taken into Manila and
reunited with Ching but his plan collapses and he is left alone in a strange country,
a man without papers and nothing left to him but his wits.
Meanwhile Shum Ching is taken to her new quarters in a crowded, stifling brothel, not
far from where Woo Viet has taken a new job but still safely hidden in the warren-like
slums of Manila. Both are degraded in their own fashion, Shum Ching withdrawing into
a shell from which only the occasional tear escapes; Woo Viet settles into a sterile
existance as a counterman in a streetside food shop, a victim of his love for
and dependence on Ching as much as anything else.
The only spark Woo seems to show is when any woman slightly resembling Shum Ching
walks by the shop, triggering his hunter's instincts only to be let down over and
over. One evening while in a sordid show bar with Ah Sarm, a fellow refugee from Hong Kong,
Woo finally glimpses Shum Ching, painted and dressed in shabby finery, being led into
a back room to ply her trade with a local thug. Ah Sarm, sensing the murderous rage
which is about to come pouring forth from the normally taciturn Woo, phones his boss
Chung, a Chinatown underworld leader, and cautions him that trouble is imminent.
Bursting in on Shum Ching in the prostitute's quarters attached to the show bar,
the first meeting between the separated couple is fraught with both happiness and
despair; a huge range of emotions crosses Woo's face - disgust at the conditions
in which he finds his woman, anger at her captors and even a few hints of disappointment
in Shum Ching. (One is reminded of a scene from "Dead End", starring Humphrey Bogart;
when he learns that his former girlfriend has become a prostitute after
losing her job during the Depression, in a fit of anguish he rails at her, "Why didn't you
starve first?")
Before Woo can carry out the violence which seems inevitable, Boss Chung arrives and
intervenes. A shrewd man, he assesses the situation almost instantly. He has Shum
Ching led away and orders Woo Viet to come with him. Escorting Woo to a villa,
palatial by the standards of the place, he offers Woo a home there with Shum Ching,
as well as employment working for him - and holds out a promise of new identity papers for
both Woo and Shum Ching and, eventually, passage to the US.
The price of this generosity is blood, gallons of it. As Woo passes into this
new phase as a hired assassin, layers of him are abraded away; the
sensitivity of a young idealist, the humanity of a basically good soul are curdled like
new milk in the sun. He becomes more of a force than a person, an embodiment of a
simple set of goals: to do whatever it takes to escape with Shum Ching and to allow
himself to think of what has happened to both of them as little as possible.
In his regular letters to Lap Quan back in Hong Kong, Woo Viet is open about his circumstances; he
spares her no detail about what he does and why (and for whom) he does it. He assures
Lap Quan that he is fine, that killing is easier in the Philippines than in Vietnam,
that all he wants to do is make enough money to buy Shum Ching from the brothel and
again take up the threadbare dream of living in some Chinatown or another in the USA.
While Woo and Ah Sarm risk their lives in carrying out Boss Chung's assignments,
Shum Ching is secretly being extorted by Chung as well. The young woman is brought
to Chung and told of Woo's sacrifices for her. It is all her fault, Chung tells her,
that Woo has become a murderer; if not for her, men would not be killed, Woo would
not be forced to kill just to pay for her passage to America. Taking Shum Ching's
body is not enough, Chung is not content until he has stolen every shred of her
self-respect as well, and thus Chung's rape of the tormented girl is complete.
After a kidnapping which results in the death of a policeman, Chung feels that Woo
and Ah Sarm are now liabilities instead of assets, and he sets them up for "one last
job", after which Woo and Shum Ching will have their papers and be free to leave
Manila. Again, trusting too much out of a desperation to believe, Woo Viet allows
himself to drop his guard and does not recognize the trap until it is almost too
late. Even though Woo escapes the trap, Ah Sarm is killed and, in a final bit
of irony, Woo Viet unintentionally throws Shum Ching between himself and the blow
that was meant for his own destruction; before he can even say goodbye, she is dead.
Though Woo kills Boss Chung, he is left with nothing. He has no identity, no future,
no shred of innocence left. Even to Lap Quan he begins to lie, telling her that he
and Shum Ching are leaving the Philippines to begin a new life in a small house of
their own, he will work and she will cook Vietnamese food and they will adopt a
refugee child. He composes this tissue of lies to Lap Quan even as he holds
Shum Ching's body in his arms for the last time before he lets her slip into
her improptu grave in the sea.
A bleak and unforgiving film, it would be unwatchable if not for the very humanistic
performances by the principal cast. Though Cherie Chung is not given much of an
opportunity to develop the character of Shum Ching, there are a few scenes in which
she does well, in particular the scene after her first encounter with Boss Chung.
As she and Woo Viet sit on their bed discussing the future, Shum Ching suddenly
throws herself on him, as if to cover him with her body and protect him from the
evil which surrounds them. By small acts like these we come to know that Shum
Ching does feel love, of at least a certain kind, for Woo Viet; captive most of the
time in her own protective shell, Shum Ching is at times almost a cipher but, considering
the circumstances of the character, that is probably exactly as Cherie Chung should have
played it.
Chow Yun-Fat as Woo Viet is given the kind of role which to date had been denied him
in films, that of a real human being, a fully realized character. Though he had won
accolades throughout Asia for his portrayal of Hui Man-Keung in the TVB epic serial
"The Bund", the film roles
he had been given from his contract holder Goldig Films had veered between lurid
melodramas and turgid cop action flicks. The Story of Woo Viet was a groundbreaker
for CYF, even if it did not lead immediately to more film roles of equal quality.
For those who are sensitive to such things, be aware that there are some brutal
scenes in this film, including the execution of a kidnapped child. There is some
brief female nudity and the scenes in the showbar depict the exploitation of both
women and people with physical deformities.
Another in a series of re-released by Pearl City, this VCD features a good, if a
little soft, print but it does not have subtitles. Currently the Pearl City
release is the only one in print, but tapes of the subtitled version can occasionally
be found in Chinatown rental shops. While I hate to even mention any product put out
by Arena, The Story of Woo Viet can be found - in a terrible print - in many
mainstream video stores under the lurid title God of Killers.
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