Imagine Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with kung fu. Now replace Dr. Jones with a Shaolin monk on the run from a band of evil Manchurian oppressors hell-bent on his destruction. And further more, to finish the analogy, substitute the cult found in Temple, with one controlled by an evil and lecherous kung fu master who uses paint and paintbrushes as his ultimate fighting technique, and who also wants nothing more than the total destruction of Shaolin. With these changes in place, one can easily imagine Burning Paradise in all of its genre capacity.
Directed by Ringo Lam and produced by Tsui Hark, Burning Paradise is steeped in the iconic imagery and themes found in both Lam’s and Hark’s other work. Much has been said about "Tsui the Producer," and almost none of it is favorable from the perspective of those who work with him. Because of his abundant creativity, Tsui often worked on a multitude of projects at once, and because he couldn’t possible direct them all, he would farm out his films to other directors. To say Tsui is a "hands-on producer" would be a gross understatement, as many filmmakers have claimed that directing a Tsui-produced film often feels more like co-directing, and sometimes even less.
I cannot attest to how much of Burning Paradise Hark actually directed, if any at all, but his mark is definitely visible. However, Ringo Lam was no light weight when it came to ass-kicking genre cinema, and so I would like to think that he was given free reign. Burning Paradise is no light-hearted, romantic romp through lands occupied by effeminate flying swordsmen, sexually ambiguous beauties, lustful ghostly vixens, or luscious scenery. No - Burning Paradise is more like a trip down a horrific and hellish path to a decaying pit of sorrow and terror. In a word, it is bleak, and totally in tune with Ringo Lam's worl.
Historically speaking, the film’s plot could in fact fit in with the Shaolin cycle. It transpires after the Manchurians have destroyed the Shaolin temple. The plot also features another portrayal of the Chinese folk-hero Fong Sai Yuk, a legendary hero made more famous by Jet Li, in the films Fong Sai Yuk 1 and 2, and earlier by Fu Sheng in Cheng Cheh's Shaolin films. In Burning Paradise, Fong is portrayed as younger man, and is played by Willie Chan. It begins as he and his master are being chased by a marauding band of Manchurians and meet up with a young girl. The three fugitives take to hiding in an old abandoned desert hovel, while the evil Manchus hunt them down. Here, the young hero stands up to the evil oppressors but fails to save his master from death. He and the young women are taken prisoner, become slaves, and are taken to the Red Lotus temple where the film really starts to move.
The majority of the film takes place in the Red Lotus temple, and it is this setting that allows the narrative to stand apart from other similarly plotted films. The Red Lotus temple is a horrific and terrifying place full of death-dealing traps, nefarious devices, rotting carcasses, and loads of fire and serpentine-like caverns. What could have been just another monk-on-the-run narrative, becomes something much more dark. and ominous, almost crossing into the horror genre.
Many of these martial arts films are in fact quite similar (even I a huge fan of the genre attest to this fact), and so it is these little touches bestowed by ultra-creative filmmakers that allow certain films to rise above the sea of imitators and mediocrity. The temple itself allows for many cleverly designed traps and set pieces, giving way for some hard-hitting and violent bouts of kung fu ass-kickery. There are fights atop suspended bridges, over pits of fire, across crevices of rock, and in the belly of a tomb-like cave brimming with piles of dead and rotting bodies – great stuff all around!
Ringo Lam is not typically known for directing period martial arts cinema, as his forte lies in the hardboiled land of cops and robbers, the Triads, cigarettes, and double fisted 9mms. Many of his films deal with the dark underbelly and sinister goings-on’s of underground crime, and here he successfully transfers these themes and tropes to a decidedly different genre. Would he have made this film the same way without Hark’s presence and hand’s on production? I don’t know. However, this is one co-production that really feels as if it equally belongs to both the director and the producer, and it is this dual sensibility that injects the film with enough creativity to make it worth seeing.
Burning Paradise is one of the era’s lesser-known films, and to my knowledge, it has never been released on DVD in any kind of remastered or official capacity. Much like Tsui's own film, The Blade, Burning Paradise represents a darker edge not often associated with the filmmaker or the genre. The action is great and is complimented by atmospheric set design, both augmented by a decent script and performances. By no means is the film a landmark for the genre, but its atmosphere and setting make it better than many of other likeminded and plotted films.
