“Gallants” is a welcome choice for open-air cinema, as there are ingredients of entertainment for everyone in the family: kung-fu tournaments, quirky characters, traditional tea-house and old-fashioned Chinese grass-root family settings, and universal philosophical teachings regarding loyalty and friendship. For people who are familiar with the genre of Chinese martial-art movies, there are sentimental touches reminding them of past times. The heroes in a number of kung-fu classics (Leung Siu-loong / Chen Koon-tai) are re-appearing here, possibly for the last time, as men with serious damage in the leg or in the arm. One of the famous stars (Chen Wai-men) from the golden era of kung-fu delivers his pithy belief, facing out to the audience: “In martial arts, the young are to be feared”.
Despite evidences that this age is not quite the same as past time, some old-time characters and relics come back to life in this film. The plot is simple enough. A young employee from a real-estate firm in the city goes to a suburban town, and accidentally awakens a kung-fu master from a 30-year coma, who then trains and inspires his disciples to take part in the coming tournaments. At the end of the film, problems may not be properly solved, but friendship is consolidated, and everybody joins in a hearty meal, especially savouring a seasoned duck stored away for as long as the coma of the master! Really, that’s good fun especially for the audiences who remember what the taste of a seasoned duck is like! The past indeed dies hard; in fact, thanks to the magic of the movies, the past lives on.
As the last part of the program for Theatre Under the Sky, “Gallants” is meaningful in an unexpected way. The younger portion of the audience and the parents who brought children left steadily towards the end of the film. The cheers and the hand-claps for the musicians performed earlier on had not totally been forgotten yet, while the seats were emptying fast. Those who stayed for the whole show from seven to eleven plus were themselves “gallants,” as heroic as the characters on screen sharing food and memories from a page in the magnificent culture of Chinese history.
Review by: May C Ha
