Is the Next CROUCHING TIGER a Wolf?

Mark Dacascos Howls In BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF
by By Dr. Craig D. Reid

As Hong Kong stylized action still enjoys its lavish love affair with Hollywood, more studios are searching for the next CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. And of all the films that might fill that spot, it could be the French horror movie BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF, which features American action star Mark Dacascos with outrageous fight choreography created by the legitimately legendary Hong Kong action director Philip Kwok.

The term "legitimate" is essential here, because some Hollywood contenders are falsely advertising that their films are using a "legendary Hong Kong action director" in a futile attempt to parallel Yuen Woo Ping's success in THE MATRIX. Those of you who watched the trailer for last year's THE MUSKETEER and painstakingly suffered through a low rate film that highlighted Hong Kong action totally out of context with the world it was portrayed in, know what I'm getting at. In as much as THE MUSKETEER'S fight choreographer Hung Yan Yan has done some interesting, but far from original choreography in his years, he is far from being a legend in the Hong Kong film industry.

Thanks to a whirlwind of homegrown hits, French cinema upped its domestic market share by more than a third to 40% in 2001 where WOLF was the fifth highest grossing film in France last year way ahead of American affairs such as SHREK and JURASSIC PARK III. So in hopes of finding the next CROUCHING TIGER, Universal Pictures will distribute WOLF in America with an initial limited theatrical release followed by a wider release later, and similar to CROUCHING TIGER has opted to present it in its original language with English subtitles.

The $29 million budgeted WOLF offers a unique blend of Hollywood's Jim Henson's creature effects, with character performances embedded with the behavioral subtleties and nuances of French cinema and features the nihilistic, battle-scarred ambience so evident in the old Shaw Brother period piece martial art films of the late '70s and early '80s.

However, unlike the gravity defying, balletic action created by Yuen Woo Ping for CROUCHING TIGER, WOLF features a less dance like and more brutal action approach as presented by Kwok (aka Guo Zui) which better matches the film's subject; a horrible monster terrorizing the peasants of Southern France.

Speaking by phone from the set of Michelle Yeoh's latest action film being shot in Beijing, THE TOUCH, the Mandarin speaking Kwok told me that Hong Kong stylized action often times can look out of place in Western film and TV, especially in period piece films, as evident in MUSKETEER.

So with WOLF, the fights were less over the top and didn't use as much wire gags and our approach to the fights were more savage and brutally violent which we hope blends in with the film's horrific nature," Kwok assuredly shared.

Born in Taiwan, Kwok has starred in over 40 films and is most notably known in the West as the Lizard fighter in the Chang Cheh classic FIVE DEADLY VENOMS (1978) and as the eye-patched hitman, Mad Dog, in John Woo's HARD-BOILED (1992). He debuted as a fight choreographer in Chang Cheh's DEADLY ARMY (1983) and since then has done the fights for films like NINJA IN THE DEADLY TRAP (1985), ZEN OF SWORD(1992) and the Bond film TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997).

Kwok added, "I actually relied a lot on the sole American actor in the film, Mark Dacascos, to remove the 'kung-fuey' look of the fight movements and give it more of an earthy look."

Directed by Christophe Gans, WOLF is set in 1765 during King Louis XV's reign and based on the legend of the Beast of Gevaudan, a psychotic creature that prowled the countryside at night devouring women and children. Desperate to end the growing unrest of the populace, the King sends in renowned scientist Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) and his Iroquois blood brother Mani (Dacascos) to investigate the brutal killings. When they fail to find the monster and kill it, usurped by a lieutenant who kills a wolf and falsely claims that the murders will now stop, a trip by de Fronsac and Mani, who befriends the wolves of the forest to help unearth the Beast's lair in the snow covered mountainside, soon reveals all is not as it seems.

I first met Dacascos when I was a fight directing apprentice on CBS's MARTIAL LAW. His fighting performance on that episode not only proved to be the best one-on-one action fight scene with Sammo Hung on the show, but the director of that episode, Stanley Tong, was so impressed with his display, it earned him a leading role on Stanley Tong's soon to be released, Hong Kong actioner SHANGHAI STRIKE FORCE. Meeting up with Dacascos in Pasadena, we sat down to talk a bit about his background in martial arts, philosophy and how those things all tied in with his role in WOLF.

So how did an American, self-admitted, typecast, B-movie action star, land a role in a French A-movie horror film working with one of Hong Kong's top action directors?

Dacascos gleefully shares, "I worked with Christophe Gans on a film called CRYING FREEMAN (1995) and we enjoyed working with each other. He told me he was writing this character Mani with me in mind and so before I even read the script, I told him I'd do it. The challenge was immediate because FREEMAN was a huge success in France. He knew I was born in Hawaii, liked surfing and loved animals and was aware of my life's personal philosophy and so he tailored the character based on these attributes and made the connection between Mark and Mani."

Dacascos points out that his philosophy has arisen from his background in martial arts as well as from his familial background, extensive travelling and growing up all over the world.

He continues, "I had a grandmother who was Buddhist, another that was Catholic. And talk about an identity crisis. My mother is half Irish and half Japanese and my father is Chinese, Spanish and Filipino with a Greek last name. From age 9 to fourteen I lived in Hamburg, Germany which was very caucasian. So I not only looked different, but it was a different language, culture, climate, everything. But that was what was so wonderful about it. I learned to speak German and discover a new culture. And that all really prepared me for Mani in France stemming from Mark in Germany via a native from Hawaii."

Dacascos began martial art training at four with his father Al Dacascos and mum Malia Bernal who are both accomplished martial artists, and he came into acting after making his mark as a kung-fu specialist winning the European championships at age eighteen.

"My father taught me wun hop kuen do, the combination fist star style which is based on his own base style of kaju kempo back in Hawaii which uses karate, jiu-jitsu, kempo and Chinese boxing and Western boxing. He also trained in judo and boxing and wanted to find something that was practical for street self- defence. So from kaju kempo he branched that out into wun hop kuen do, which has more Chinese and Filipino influence. I have pictures of myself at 4 training and in my first tournament at 7. Then I was in Taiwan at seventeen in 1981 training Northern Shaolin with Muo-Hui Shen then some wu shu with a teacher named Jiang Hao-Quan, who is from Shanghai but now lives in Monterey Park (10 miles East of LA). And I've done a bit capoeira with Amen Santo in Santa Monica who was also the guy who choreographed the fights in my film ONLY THE STRONG."

Returning back to the States at age 18, Dacascos attended Valley College in LA for one year, and inspired by watching early Jackie Chan films he joined the gymnastics team. He next spent one year at Portland State where he auditioned for a role in "West Side Story." After two months of doing that, he returned to LA and landed an eight month gig on GENERAL HOSPITAL as an "under-5 role," an extra who has 5 lines or less.

He jokingly adds, "Which is about the number of lines (which were all in French) I had in WOLF. But that worked for the character Mani. But in reality, he is someone I would like to be. From a personal philosophy standpoint, being from Hawaii, for the first 6 years of my life I spent a lot of time in barefeet, my feet in the sand and water, feeling the wind and the sun. So it was natural to be with mother Earth. We wear shoes today and so how often do we feel our feet in the grass, or sand or Earth. A loss of connectivity. I love nature as does Mani. He's in a foreign country, France, just as I was, Germany. So I do feel in tune to who he is. So in the film he speaks very little but when does, he has something to say. It's the old philosophy that its about using your eyes to say more than your mouth. Of course that would be hard for you to write an article if I just stared at you for an hour or so. (we laugh) It's hard to do that in today's world and especially in the film industry. It is hard to live a plain, simple life. So my wife and I live an hour outside of LA with the trees and mountains...it helps us find a balance.

"And so through martial arts, that has increased my own personal connectivity to the Earth. It about being in touch with your own body and makes things more real. And this is not intended to be a knock on video games, but instead of playing those games or watching the computer game do a kick, I'd rather be working out and doing those movements and kicks myself. Look at history, men have always been fighting and what the martial arts does is connect the mind, body and spirit and so instead you fight against judgement and the insecurities you might have. And if you have to fight for real, you have a strong body and you are spiritually prepared. So you practice the "martial" but you also practice the artistic, it's beautiful and there's so many things our there you should do and just not your kick butt power."

While stunt coordinator Yuen Woo Ping spent eight hours a day for four months training and rehearsing the fight choreography with the non-martial artists Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishburne for MATRIX, casting Dacascos eliminated this expensive and time consuming approach opening the doors for Kwok's brutal action style.

"I'm really not to sure what you can call his style," Dacascos laughs, "But it was definitely interesting and it was sort of a 3-layered preparation. Christophe the director would have his ideas, specific movements in mind and the emotion he wanted behind it, Phil (Kwok) put the ideas into choreographed movements and then it was my job to interpret the movements into what Mani would do with them and take the "kung-fuish" look out of them. Phil adds his kung-fu stylized look to it but we both agreed that it would have been too unrealistic for Mani to do that, the poses. So I took the lines and curved them into different angles and made them Earthy and less kung-fu stylized.

"And as you noted earlier, the fights in MUSKETEER were out of context so we were also concerned with that too. We wanted to see how far we could go without making it look so incredible, incredible as in not realistic. The justification I came up with is that if anybody is fighting three or so people, you'd have to use your hands and feet. And of course what makes a front kick kung-fu or karate-like is the stance before and after the kick, so it was important to eliminate that. I had to be responsible to my character and to myself so no butterfly twists and landing in a pose. I tried to give Christophe his Hong Kong feel and stay true to Phil's movements."

One of the his intriguing fights in the film is the opening fight in the torrential rain on a mountainside, in the middle of nowhere. Dacascos reminisced, "It was real rain and that whole fight was done in the mud and water. We also used a large rain machine. The final film only used about one third of what we shot for that fight but the DVD will feature the whole thing. We wore wet suits under the leather coats which were obviously very heavy and the ground was extremely slippery. It was tough and the logistics of getting everyone and all the equipment up there. Yet is was still fun. It took time to get into the wet suits so during lunch, we'd just leave them on which was physically uncomfortable and made for some miserable days. But on the other hand we knew we had something really cool going on and so we gave it our all."

As the year 2002 opens, it is apparent that the Hong Kong craze still has a few laps to go. Films like MATRIX 2, BLADE 2, a slew of Chan movies and the highly anticipated Hong Kong films, Michelle Yeoh's THE TOUCH and Jet Li's HERO. When I close by asking Kwok if Hollywood's rush to embrace the Hong Kong action craze could cause the style to lose some of its luster, he confidently answers "no" providing people come up with new things. He points out, "As American audiences watch this style of action, they'll learn what's is good or bad, borrowed or original. So that means anybody doing action must keep improving and not just do the same thing over and over which is what is happening at this moment all over American TV and low budget films."

About By Dr. Craig D. Reid:
Dr. Craig Reid is a martial artist and writer living in Los Angeles, California.