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 onny Yu's The Bride With White Hair 2 is a good
example of a sequel that shouldn't have been, and the two White Hair
films, put together, is a good example of a movie that shouldn't have been cut
in half and made into two separate films.
White Hair 2 opens with a flashback to The
Bride With White Hair, catching us up on what has transpired, before
introducing a new set of characters that represents the "next
generation" of the Eight Clans. One of these newcomers is Kit (Sunny Chan), the
newest and last member of the Wu Tang Clan. In an effort to restock their
numbers after 10 long years of being constantly attacked by Ni-shang, now
unaffectionately known as the White Hair Witch (Brigitte Lin), the Wu Tang plans
on marrying Kit off to Lyre, a woman from an outside clan. Unfortunately for the
Clans, the White Hair Witch has another idea, and kidnaps Lyre during her
wedding night and nearly wipes out the Clans all over again. Now it's up to Kit
and members of the other clans, including Moon, a tomboy female who has a crush
on Kit, to penetrate the White Hair Witch's "Evil Palace" and take
back Lyre. If they can.
Those who have seen the original should expect more of the
same, since it's obvious this "series" was never intended to be a
series in the first place, and that sometime during filming of the original the
producers convinced Ronny Yu to split the film into two separate entities in
order to cash in on what they thought was going to be the "next big
thing" to hit Hong Kong cinema. They were right, and both movies brought
back great box office numbers. (Of course, the above scenario is only my
uneducated guess, but I'm pretty sure it's close to reality.)
White Hair 2 continues where the original left off,
but 10 years later with a grungy Yi-hang (Leslie Cheung) still waiting patiently
for a magic flower to finally come to full bloom so he can rescue his beloved
Ni-shang, not realizing that she's already gone off the deep end. Instead of
Cheung, who has what amounts to a glorified cameo appearance (he totals about 10
full minutes in the whole movie, not counting the flashbacks), the sequel is
centered on Kit's quest to retrieve his beloved bride from Lin's White Hair
Witch.
As was the case with the original, the kung fu is lacking, and what
little martial arts there are have been heavily doctored with Yu's usage of
varied film speed, in which the action looks choppy and blurred. This is
obviously a technique used to hide the fact that these kids (and that's what
they are, really, just teenage kids) really have no clue about actual martial
arts, and thus can't be trusted to actually "perform" said martial
arts onscreen. What's worst, Lin's White Hair Witch has ceased all pretensions
of martial arts, and now has some kind of telekinesis and can throw people
around just by thinking it.
Besides having very little credible action, the film goes
on an odd tangent involving the White Hair Witch's new sect, consisting of all
females that have been mistreated, in one form or another, by men. An Evil
Sisterhood, if you will. I suppose if one was so inclined one could look at the
reasons behind the Evil Sisterhood's purpose as relating to women's treatment in
male-dominated China. Unfortunately I doubt if Yu had any such noble intentions,
and only wanted an excuse to show women being evil, making evil faces, and
consorting half-naked and insinuating lesbian eroticism. I might have enjoyed it
on just that perverted aspect, but even those scenes are embarrassingly dull.
Whatever the case, White Hair 2 is a poor sequel,
and is not much of an action film. Its heavy reliance on varied film speed gave
me a slight headache and the swordplay was uninspired. The indoors staging of
the scenes (and supposedly outdoor scenes) use to be "odd but
inspired" in the original, but now that I've gotten used to it, only looks
cheesy and cheap. The right word for this movie is "uninspired". There
seem to be no reasons for the sequel save to capitalize on the original's
popularity. The movie's teenyboppers and their various love triangles are
juvenile and unconvincing, but then again, what about this film isn't?
White Hair 2 is notable for only one thing: it
closes out the story of Yi-hang and Ni-shang and leaves no room for another
sequel. If you had seen the original and enjoyed it, and wished to find out how
it all ends, then I recommend renting this movie and fast-forwarding all the way
to the end, stopping at the last 10 minutes, and find out how it all ends. I do
not recommend watching the whole film unless you really want to spend an hour
and 20 minute staring pointlessly at the screen, which I was force to do in
order to write this review. Consider yourself warned (and lucky).
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