The "Girls with Guns" genre has been AWOL from local screens for over a decade. Hung believes to revive it will spice up the box office and bring freshness to a local audience bored to be fed tedious comedies, dramas, Sino-Hong Kong co-productions and other tired actioners. True, the recent box office figures indicated that no Chinese film was among the top ten grossing movies in the last few weeks.
Freshness comes also with new blood. Hung’s second best idea to draw more people in theatres was to cast film newcomer, albeit kung fu expert, Jiang Lu Xia. Nationwide Shaolin Quan Wushu champion Jiang has already earned a deserved reputation with her performance in the reality-TV show "The Disciple" and with her Sina-hosted blog packed with demo clips showcasing her skills.
While making new with old and casting newcomers is barely ground-breaking, Hung plans to lure audience in theatres by going back to basics. Fight scenes are barely edited and reportedly shot in long takes. The female lead will perform all the action with no stunt double at all. In brief, we are back to the local old-school way of showing, or exhibiting, action.
Coweb promises to deliver a fair share of action - read female action – while the story is based rather hackneyed. The plot is thus: a mainland Chinese female kung fu teacher moves to Hong Kong after the death of her father and becomes a bodyguard. Her bosses are kidnapped and she’ll do whatever it takes to save them. But her fights are secretly filmed and broadcast on the web for illegal gambling.
In Coweb, Jiang kicks co-stars Sam Lee, Eddie Cheung, Kane Kosugi and Mike Möller in the pants. The film is co-produced by another multi-hyphenate filmmaker, veteran comedy and drama director-writer-producer Joe Ma.
Still in post-production, Coweb could be scheduled for a release late this year.
Stuntman-choreographer-director Hung came out of the editing room to talk to Arnaud Lanuque. |