Mirage (1987)

ouch

I am still catching up with movies from the Fridays of Fury Action Club, join the fun and see past and upcoming movies here.

Mirage is a 1987 action-adventure epic from China that utilized a lot of Hong Kong-based film making talent. That means we get the go-for-broke stunts and death-defying entertainment of Hong Kong cinema with a much larger budget and production. Battles with literally hundreds of extras running around or being launched by explosions. A horse-based competition with dozens of men on horseback (many of whom we see painfully fall to the ground) riding way too close together as they wrestle over a dead goat. An entire town/encampment exploding.

The movie opens with merchants on the Silk Road in the 1930s being attacked by former Russian soldiers who have become bandits. We only get a brief introduction to our hero Tong (Yu Rongguang) before the attack, but thankfully he has a bright red scarf to help us keep track of him in the chaos.

The action is immediately attention grabbing, as in between large-scale groups running and shooting at each other, we zoom in on moments like a dude getting launched 10 feet horizontally before bouncing off a camel’s payload, or Tong taking out a grenadier by shoving his own grenade into his pants and kicking him down a hill (which we see the guy bounce and roll down in its entirety, Homer Simpson-style). Even when a person just flips or throws another person without wire assistance they are sent flying to the ground HARD in this movie.

OUCH

One unique element I enjoyed was that most of the guns involved were single-action rifles, allowing people to close distance and mix in hand-to-hand combat. After the bandits are defeated and retreat, everyone sees a giant mirage in the sky (oh, that’s why it's called Mirage!) of a beautiful woman. Tong grabs his camera and takes a picture before it disappears. While the appearance/mechanics of this particular mirage are questionable, I looked it up and you actually can take a picture of a naturally occurring mirage because it can capture the bending/refracted light, neat!

Back home we find out Tong is a successful photographer, but he decides to leave that behind to investigate the beautiful mystery woman. He visits his friend Mao (Tsui Siu-Ming, also the director!), who informs us Tong is also an expert equestrian and an orphan with no knowledge of his past. I joked to my wife that Tong had a hell of a dating profile, a handsome horseback riding photographer with no family ties and a mysterious past, ladies line up! Trusty sidekick Mao vows to help Tong on his quest. Which he really does, despite seeming a bit short and stout Mao fights and stunts like a boss!

most eligible bachelor and most valuable sidekick

They visit an old friend of Mao’s at a restaurant to see if he recognizes the woman in the photo’s tribal garb. Mao has a crush on waitress Annetta (Connie Khan), leading him to intervene when a local gangster (with entourage) tries to drag her away. Eventually Tong joins in and they wreck the absolute shit out of the joint before taking the fight into the streets.

DOUBLE OUCH

There are stunts of both the slapstick and “oh shit!” varieties as Tong grabs his motorcycle and starts whipping and riding into dudes, walls, and neon signs with it while Mao and Annetta try to escape, ending in a crazy rickshaw stunt. The action was still legible on the laserdisc rip we were watching, but this is the scene that most made me wish for a higher quality release of this movie*.

The trio travel into the desert to investigate and end up in Annetta’s home village. Tong proves himself a total badass in the aforementioned goat game and the tribal leader/Annetta’s father offers his daughter to Tong (ooh, sorry Mao!), but he refuses and continues looking for his mystery woman. Luckily for Tong, he does get a bucking white horse out of the deal, which he breaks in minutes because he is just that badass. Unluckily for Tong, he eventually finds the mirage woman and she turns out to be the leader of the bandits that keep attacking everyone! The epically named Gaza Nova (Pasha Umer) is a brutal bandit boss bitch who looks just as good lounging in her luxurious linens as she does machine gunning men in her Mad Max combat clothes.

hello, nova!

She really wants a piece of Tong, and even as he resists she foolishly lets him live. It makes sense though, as we have already established Tong could pass for a romance novel love interest with his photography, horse skills, and handsomeness. Nova is also turned on by his action hero skills as he fucks up her best fighters and pulls off a daredevil motorcycle escape leading to them trekking through the desert together. Things eventually culminate with the people from Annetta’s village taking the fight to the bandit town in an explosive climax.

*SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL MINUTES*

I have mentioned before that I love lethal ladies, especially of the villainous variety. So it should come as no surprise that my wife and I were all about Nova. Once Tong realizes she is hardcore evil, he says that he says that her beauty is the real mirage, hiding the monster inside (oh, THAT’S why it's called Mirage!). We were still into her, even after she bit a chunk out of Tong's neck and then killed his horse to drink its blood in the desert!

slightly feral, still hot

I think the movie realizes Nova is too gorgeous and charismatic, because it finally got us to turn on her when she shoots lovable sidekick Mao. Then in an absolutely bonkers climax, Mao sets himself on fire, burns and fumbles for a long time, grabs a motorcycle, and rides it WHILE ON FIRE into the weapon/ammo building to blow the entire place to kingdom come!

Holy shit! This is some of the craziest fire-stunting I have ever seen. Swamp Thing had a guy who was engulfed in bigger flames, but he just did a straight runner to a body of water and jumped in. This is more on the level of Maniac Cop 2’s climax, where even with multiple cuts and slow motion you think “this guy has been on fire for a while…” and then they start doing crazy shit while still burning. Then everything blows up, roll credits!

The sudden Hong Kong-style ending caught me off guard. As I thought about it, I appreciated the fact that the movie ignored a lot of traditional narrative beats. There is no destiny or greater purpose, it seems like the mirage and Tong seeing it was just a coincidence. It does eventually lead to the bandits being found and defeated, but that wasn’t his motivation at all (his motivation was boner). The quest is partially because he feels directionless and lacks connections to his past, but he never really finds a purpose or anything about his identity. When Annetta’s father offers her to Tong (which she is into), Mao says Tong should take her and be happy even though Mao is in love with her. I worried Tong and Annetta would get together at the end unprompted, but that didn't happen. But Tong is pretty much immediately at odds with Nova, even though she is into him, so that relationship doesn't develop either (as awesome as Nova is). It does leave the narrative feeling a bit oddly shaped and slight, but I will take that over perfunctory scenes that irritate or bore me. This movie is more about the spectacle and the action, which it delivers in spades.

Just like with The Wild Bunch, I will add the caveat that I imagine these horses had (at best) a bad time during filming, especially the two that really seemed to kick the shit out of each other. I also worried for a moment that they shot a camel, but like a second later they blew up a juicy head squib on a human, so I assume the camel shot was a squib too. Some stunt men were definitely harmed in the making of this picture, but for some reason that doesn't bother most of us as much, right?

*Big thanks to Action Club member Dave, who not only selected this movie but put together and provided a watchable version of this hard to find obscurity. He goes more in depth about the filmmaker and (lack of) distribution in his review here.

See other Club members’ reviews here.