Netflix and I have a history. You might think this isn't relevant, but, let me start with a digression.
Or, not so much a history as an understanding. I understand that they are trying to make it easier for people to see movies and they understand that, in a town with Scarecrow Video, I was more willing to run down the street to get the movie I wanted, if I didn't already own it.
My problem with Netflix was that, often times, when I wanted to see a movie, I wanted to see it now. I didn't want to wait. That's why I have a DVD collection. I wanted movies that I could watch when I wanted to watch it. Can't sleep? Let me grab Bridge on the River Kwai off the shelf. Need a little martial arts fix? Maybe Samurai Fiction would help.
Plus, I could then lend those movies to other people to help with my need to enable people to see things that they normally wouldn't. Sure, everyone should have seen The Great Escape, but, not everyone has.
Then, they came out with that whole 'Instant Watch' thing. Cool, but, well, I didn't want to pay for DVDs when all I would use is the streaming side of it. Just seemed a waste of money. "Call me when they have an 'Instant Watch' only plan," I'd say.
Flash forward to this past month when the in-laws were coming up to celebrate Christmas after my wife put a kibosh on my whole 'Let's fake a death. Or at least a cruise' plan to get us a holiday alone for a change. Television is a great way to eat up some time where the in-laws aren't interested in hiking, walking (much), board games, or Kinect. Golf, the one hobby that might work, isn't entirely available in Seattle's December, although we could have gone to the driving range, just for kicks. Well, not kicks. More like slices and hooks. While we could put the Golf channel on during the day, that didn't interest us too much at night. Most TV shows were on winter break so, since Netflix streams through our Xbox and had a free month special, we figured, what the heck, let's try it out. Plus, the in-laws had just gotten a new TV/Blu-ray player which could do the whole Netflix streaming thing, and they were curious if they wanted it, it'd be a great way to introduce them to the service, even though their interface would likely be better than the Xbox's Netflix interface.
If you haven't gone for Netflix Streaming, or flipped through the available selection, let me lay out what you're in for.
You're going to get roughly 40% disappointment, 50% childish glee and 10% sure, whatever. That disappointment will be from new movies, just released on DVD, most of which won't be there and old movies and TV shows that, for whatever reason, aren't available on streaming at all, just on the DVD program. The 50% childish glee will be from finding things you were actually looking for and things you never knew you were looking for, like, say, SeaQuest DSV.
The 10% whatever are those movies that get recommended to you based on what you add to your queue that you say, well, yeah, whatever, lets try watching that.
Which leads me to The Butcher, The Chef, and The Swordsman, a Hong Kong import that blends comedy, drama and martial arts type action into...
I was going to say a cohesive story, but it isn't. It is fractured and a bit confusing, although it does use one of my favorite little concepts, the story within a story within a story quite well.
The main character isn't any of the titular fellows but is an cleaver. Not just any cleaver, but a cleaver made from the melted down swords of one of China's greatest swordsman's defeated foes. But I get ahead of myself.
The story starts (more or less) with the Butcher trying to get the cleaver, so that he might win the hand of a courtesan from a well paying, but inherently evil fighter. Truth be told, she was more of a prostitute. As he tries to convince the person holding the cleaver to hand it over, so launches the first inner story of 'No, I can't give you this cleaver, let me tell you of its history first....'
I say more or less, because there is a very 'What the hell?' type scene that actually starts the movie that will have you scratching your head for a bit as an obvious high level of society and skilled fighter breaks up a cock fight looking for Fat Tang (no relation to the Kool-Aid Man)... but I digress.
The story of the cleaver turns into that of a restaurant (hey, I knew I'd like this movie!) which had a renowned tasting menu of eight courses. The staff is visited to be told that Eunuch Liu will be attending the restaurant and, if the food is not up to snuff, everyone will be killed. Think of Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life mixed with Alice's Queen of Hearts. The chef needs an apprentice and selects the mute servant that they had caught breaking into the restaurant to steal food and forced into service, after said slave wins an Iron Chef type competition between the sous chefs. As he learns the tricks of the master chef, the cleaver is brought out as the key ingredient to the final dish, a sushi type soup where the cleaver kills the fish so fast, it is still swimming in the diners bowls, unaware it is dead.
But, it turns out that the mute has a few secrets of his own and wishes Eunuch Liu dead and, upon seeing the cleaver, realizes that this is the way it can be done. Which launches into the next 'No, I can't give you this cleaver, let me tell of you its history first...'
Which brings us back to the cock fight that was so oddly placed at the beginning of the film with nary a mention since. I'll be honest, it felt like the prologue in Game of Thrones. Even after finishing the book, I still can't figure out why it was there.
Fat Tang is a sword maker, and while the swordsman breaking up the fight is theoretically the swordsman of the title, I think the titular reference more accurately applies to him. He made the finest swords in the land and forged the sword for China's greatest swordsman. All the weapons belonging to those who that swordsman defeated were rounded up and melted into a gigantic ingot-y blob (although, after watching the movie, I actually don't believe that part). That blob has been found and this brash youth breaking up the cock fight wants Fat Tang to fashion it into a sword, what will be the greatest sword in history.
Faced with death, he does as he's asked. What happens to that fighter, well... it isn't good (for him), but I'll let that happen for you if you decide to watch this flick. Fat Tang, however, goes on to make a second item: a cleaver. He gives it to a young boy, stating 'A swordsman's blade only brings sorrow, only a chef's blade can bring joy.' (two guesses as to who that boy becomes and the first one doesn't count). Which fast forwards all the way back out to finish the Butcher's tale, where he uses the cleaver to win the damsel until it all falls apart.
The Butcher's tale, that of the pursuit of the courtesan, is horribly weak. The Butcher is not a sympathetic hero and not a very 'likable' anti-hero. He's a pig, plain and simple, which likely may be part of the joke. But, when the other two stories, the Chef and the Swordsman, are so much stronger, that weakness really shows and becomes a detriment to the overall enjoyment of the movie. I didn't time it, but, the Butcher section seems to be 75% of the movie vs the other two stories. And it doesn't feel that way because it was so awesome.
Can I tell you with all honesty that you should watch this movie? No. I can't. The weakness of the Butcher's tale is too overwhelming. There isn't the beautiful choreography of, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or the brutal savagery of Yojimbo.
But, despite that, I still enjoyed it. It had quirkiness and was mildly enjoyable. Even the Butcher's tale had some glimmers of fun, namely a rap song that almost salvaged the whole story. But then they ruined it with a shoutout to Hamlet. No, seriously. Well, ok, fine, maybe not seriously. They may not have meant it as Hameletian, but a play wherein the lead character is ridiculed is definitely a little Bardy.
I give this movie a solid ... oh, lets go with 60 stories within a story out of a 100.
So there you have it. A story within a story. Or, a review within a story. Will we stick with Netflix? Maybe. We've added a few TV shows on DVD that we're working our way through and maybe, must maybe, we're ready to drop most of Cable for Netflix and Hulu+. If Amazon Prime ever shows up on the Xbox though, we're on a short trip off of cable into TV Independence (and an HD antenna so we can watch some sports.)
