Watching John Cusack, in his thick black guy-liner, and Adrien Brody, sporting what looks like a wig from the Elizabeth Taylor collection, ham it up with Jackie Chan and 800 extras in China's Gobi Desert in the new wuxia epic Dragon Blade, one can only think, "I hope they got paid an armoured carful of money." Because the whole thing, from start to finish, is bats. (It opens Friday in theatres and on demand.)
When rival Roman factions aren't duking it out on the Silk Road along with hordes of Chinese, Huns, Arabs and a dozen other ethnic armies, or slicing and dicing each other in alleyways and palaces, they're making overly solemn speeches about nations coming together in peace. One minute, they're lopping off limbs, and the next, they're having a dance contest.
At the same time, it's obvious that the work that went into this thing is staggering. Writer/director Daniel Lee spent seven years on it. More than 350 crew members speaking 10 languages traversed 3,200 kilometres across China to film it. Three massive sandstorms and several smaller ones caused damage and delay – the first time because the crew members were so green that they didn't know to cover the cameras. Chan's 21-man stunt team, plus three assistant action choreographers, worked 18-hour days. A sizable chunk of the credits is devoted to the Gun Firing Department. Even the production notes call it "a massive and arduous production," in which "hundreds of crew went crazy."
And there, standing tall amid the insanity, are these two American actors – one of them, Brody, with a best actor Oscar (for The Pianist, in 2003). He actually fares all right here, because he's playing the villain. What scenery-chewer worth his SAG card wouldn't have fun declaiming, "I like people to hate me. Their hatred makes me feel alive"?
Cusack, on the other hand, just looks goggle-eyed and exhausted. He has no idea how to comport himself. It's as if on the first day of production, he wandered, stoned, into the wrong makeup trailer, and then simply shrugged and went with it. He can never find his eye line, and (spoiler alert) in his death scene, he literally gnashes his teeth.
Of course, bad movies happen to good actors all the time; these two are far from the first, or the only Oscar nominees. Jeff Bridges made R.I.P.D. Julianne Moore is in Seventh Son. Liam Neeson intoned his way into infamy ("Release the Kraken!") in Clash of the Titans, and then made a sequel. Many A-list thesps have a "one for the soul, one for the paycheque" policy in choosing projects.
It's not as if Cusack and Brody's stuff has been roaring up the box office lately, either.
Since his turn-of-the-millennium heyday of Being John Malkovich and High Fidelity, Cusack has made a lot of movies you've never heard of (although I did think he was a terrific psycho in The Paperboy, and he's in Spike Lee's next film, Chiraq, about racial unrest in Chicago).
Brody (whom I happen to find dead sexy, though I get why I'm in the minority there) practically has two careers: one full of interesting roles with the likes of Wes Anderson and Woody Allen; the other full of inexplicable doo-doo.
So perhaps we can understand why, when someone asked, "Want to hang out in China and learn martial arts moves from Jackie Chan, plus make a whackload of dough?" they grunted yes.
It's also possible that in a few years they'll look like geniuses, because Dragon Blade may just be the future of cinema. (The current financial crisis notwithstanding.) About 10 production companies and funding agencies put money into it, including Alibaba (China) – the very agencies American studios are madly courting for co-productions – to the tune of $65-million (U.S.). That might not sound high compared with some Hollywood budgets, but for China, it's mighty. And believe me, if it was made by an American crew, it would have cost about $300-million. The Chinese crew slept in tents, not hotel rooms, and ate more sand than sandwiches – decidedly non-U.S.-union practices.
When asked by Ain't It Cool News about Dragon Blade, Cusack said, "You think, 'Okay, that's a smart business move, you're going to be in China – China is a big, booming thing.' Those Chinese companies are probably going to buy Paramount and Warner Brothers one of these days."
And Brody, who made a previous Chinese epic in 2012 (Back to 1942, for director Xiaogang Feng), now heads up his own production outfit, Fable House, with staff in the United States and China, and funding from Chinese and Nigerian sources. It gives him, as he told Deadline, "access to an enormous amount of financing if it appeals to my partners' sensibilities." So who's laughing now?
Most important, if Dragon Blade doesn't cater to North American tastes, that may not matter much any more. Three supporting roles are played by K-pop musicians the Chopsticks Brothers and Si Won Choi, who may be bigger in Asia than Brody and Cusack ever were stateside.
When the film opened in China this past February (the cut was, unthinkably, longer and in 3-D), not only did it rake in about $120-million, it also contributed to the first month on record where the Chinese box office ($650-million) was higher than the U.S. box office ($640-million). I bet it won't be the last.