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Kick,
Punch, It's All in the Mind JACKASS
NUMBER TWO: Directed by Jeff Tremaine. Produced by Jeff
Tremaine, Spike Jonze and Johnny Knoxville. With Johnny Knoxville, Bam
Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Ryan Dunn, Wee Man, Preston Lacy, Dave
England and Ehren McGhehey. Paramount Pictures, 2006. R. 95 minutes.
44411 JET
LI'S FEARLESS: Directed by Ronny Yu. Screenplay by Chris
Chow and Christine To. Cinematography, Poon Hang Sand. Starring Jet
Li, Nakamura Shidou, Sun Li, Dong Yong, Nathan Jones, Collin Chou and
Harada Masato. Rogue Pictures, 2006. PG-13. 103 minutes. 44111
There's not a lot of gray area where Jackass is concerned. You either find humor in a bunch of twentysomething dudes finding ways to abuse each other, skateboarding in costumes and launching themselves off piers, or you don't. The peculiar invention of director Jeff Tremaine, Spike Jonze (Adaptation) and "freelance writer/stunt dummy" Johnny Knoxville, Jackass began life as an MTV series. In 2002, freed from the limits of basic cable, it took to the big screen, where skate prankster Bam Margera delighted in making his mom swear (it took an alligator in her kitchen, but it happened) and happy-go-lucky daredevil Knoxville tried to return a rental car after putting it through a demolition derby. It's same shit, different day with Number Two: dick jokes, nasty farts, a thousand ways to earn some vicious bruises (the suburban running of the bulls is painfully priceless). But it's still funny — laugh 'til you cry funny, the kind of funny where it's impossible to pick the singularly funniest sequence in the gross, stupid, mischievous, hysterical bunch. Why? Because of the cast, basically, a fact which is exceptionally clear during a wobbly terrorist skit that becomes exponentially funnier when we cut away from a poorly costumed guy in a cab to the pranksters who are watching him on camera, laughing so hard they can barely breathe. It's funny because they're having fun, and because they just seem so goshdarn likable (except maybe the slightly scary Steve-O). Knoxville's got the slacker charm and the weakest survival instinct (not to mention bad taste in feature films; Dukes of Hazzard, anyone?); Chris Pontius ups the humor ante with wacky outfits; Margera gleefully pranks his parents over and over again. And though by the end Margera's moaning about how he really hopes they don't make a Jackass 3, he also sums up the Jackass credo nicely in an exchange with his mother. When she asks why he'd scar up his "pretty" rear with a homemade branding iron, Margera exclaims, "Because it's funny!" And it's on film, which makes it even better: We get to watch. And laugh ourselves sick.
Though he gets hit about as often as the Jackass guys, Jet Li doesn't offer much by way of humor in the rather earnest Jet Li's Fearless. It's reportedly the action star's final martial arts epic, but Fearless is neither particularly epic nor on par with other recent martial arts-centric films. The story is based on the life of Huo Yuanjia, who rose to fame as a fighter in China in the early 1900s. Huo (Li) grows from a slight, asthmatic boy whose father refuses to train him into a strapping, cheerful young man determined to be the hero of Tianjin. The film skips what's often the most interesting part in such a journey — Huo's training — and catapults straight into Huo's young adulthood, where a misguided killing leads to more horrible deaths. Distraught, Huo is literally adrift; he mopes in a boat long enough to grow a bushy beard before washing up on the shores of a lovely farming community that happens to be home to a beautiful blind girl, Moon (Sun Li). Huo learns to temper his fighting style and returns to Tianjin, forming the Jingwu Sports Federation and attracting the attention of the foreign powers in China, who want the idealistic fighter taken down. It's all very lush and pretty, but too familiarly so. Fight sequences fall prey to overstylization: They speed up and slow down at the director's whim, emphasizing what he wants us to see but simultaneously destroying the fluid beauty that makes such scenes so appealing — especially when they star someone as graceful as Jet Li. It's never clear how Huo developed his fighting style or how he changes it, except that he's learned to place honor above victory. Li is a charming onscreen presence, totally at home in his role, but somehow that's not enough to warm up Fearless.
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