Category Archives: Historical

Crime, Historical

Len Levinson Strikes Again!

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I haven’t even had a chance to read the last release from the maestro of men’s adventure fiction…and he’s got another one out. Here’s the press release:

 GRIP OF DEATH, another all-new novel by Len Levinson has just been published by Rough Edges Press, it was announced today by Jennifer Lawrence, new president of the Len Levinson Fan Club, during a press conference beside the outdoor swimming pool in the sprawling backyard of her Malibu Beach estate.

Ms Lawrence recently replaced Scarlett Johansson as president of the Len Levinson Fan Club. Ms. Johansson was forced to resign due to term limits, much to her regret. “I don’t see Lenny nearly as much as I used to,” she complained bitterly during a recent interview on the Jimmy Fallon Show. “I miss him terribly, his wit, astute advice and stimulating presence.”

In attendance at the press conference were the usual eminent literary critics, distinguished journalists representing major and minor outlets, celebrity porn stars, and delegates from the National Book Awards and Nobel Prize for Literature.

Ms Lawrence explained charmingly to the esteemed gathering that GRIP OF DEATH is set in New York City during the first year of the Civil War. Someone is murdering prominent Wall Street financiers. Is the culprit one or more disgruntled investors? Insane Marxist revolutionaries? Or possibly a Confederate conspiracy to destabilize the Union banking system?

To complicate matters further, a crime wave engulfed New York City following the outbreak of the Civil War, as if that conflict loosened the darkest passions in the hearts of men and women. Robberies, burglaries and assaults were commonplace, including garrotings on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight!

The Detective Precinct is under political pressure to figure out who is killing financiers, but the best detectives have enlisted in New York regiments.

Out of desperation, Deputy Chief of Detectives Timothy Flanagan hires a former army officer wounded at the Battle of Bull Run (only three months ago), and a former Southern Belle stranded in the great Empire City. Flanagan calls her his secretary because women can’t be detectives, but she carries a revolver and does actual detective work.

The ex-officer is a staunch outspoken abolitionist, and the ex-Southern Belle hates abolitionists, blaming them for the invasion of Dixie Land. Naturally they loathe each other on their deepest levels, but must work together to solve the crime.

Their investigation takes them from Fifth Avenue mansions to the dangerous slum called Five Points, from Gramercy Park to Battery Park, from fashionable men’s clubs to elegant and not so elegant whorehouses, gambling dens, the glittering Broadway theater district, the colorful Bowery, and the Peyster Street docks where a man’s life isn’t worth a dead fish.

Along the way the reader will encounter actual historical figures such as banker J.P. Morgan, Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer, newspaperman Horace Greeley, Chief of the Union Intelligence Service Allan Pinkerton, Confederate Senator Robert Barnwell Rhett, real estate tycoon William Backhouse Astor, Archbishop John Hughes of the New York Archdiocese, young Billy the Kid, artist John Frederick Kensett, poet Walt Whitman, a not-very-succesful actor named John Wilkes Booth, members of a criminal gang known as the Dead Rabbits, and the controversial mayor of New York City, Fernando Wood.

Will the Detective Precinct solve the case? They dare not fail. The future of the war and fate of the nation is at stake!

“This is Len Levinson’s great American Civil War novel,” declared Ms. Lawrence. “One could say it is his GONE WITH THE WIND. It is suspenseful, reads smoothly and replete with interesting oddball characters like any other Len Levinson novel. I hope to play the Southern belle in the film version but so does Scarlett Johansson and every other actress in Hollywood.”

Ms. Lawrence pointed out that Len now is author of 85 published novels. He has been acclaimed a “Trash Genius” by THE PAPERBACK FANATIC magazine, was subject of an extensive interview in PAPERBACK PARADE magazine, has been described as “the gold standard” and “the king” of pulp fiction on various Facebook posts, and was introduced as “a legend” at a panel during the 2017 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention.

WEB OF DOOM is now available as an ebook and trade paperback on Amazon.

Historical, Sports

Ali-Shavers (A Glimpse Into Boxing History)

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To this day, the fanatic fan-boyism for Muhammed Ali is as myopic as ever. The Narrative on Ali is always him overcoming adversity and bigotry to beat the odds and show the world he was “The Greatest.”

While one has to admire his footwork, his lateral movement, his masterful head games, and his ability to absorb punishment to the body, you must use selective metrics to determine he was ‘the greatest”…or even the greatest heavyweight. What he conclusively proved is that, at least in his younger days, he could move faster backwards than his opponents could move forward.

Nobody before Gaseous Cassius had so brazenly flaunted such raw egotism. Humility was still a virtue before Cassius Clay’s ascendance. Now all athletes (and most people in general) are arrogant, trash-talking legends in their own minds. Clay/Ali was the trailblazer for grandiose, egomaniacal personalities in sports.

In this bout, Ali probably thought he could use the rope-a-dope strategy as he did in Zaire, and cause Shavers to punch himself out. There turned out to be two problems with that plan: the ropes weren’t nearly as loose as they were in Zaire; and Shavers had learned from that particular George Foreman blunder. Although Shavers had a small gas tank (like a lot of power punchers), he showed remarkable discipline in pacing himself, for the most part.

Arguably, Shavers was far too cautious. He ignored multiple opportunities after stunning Ali with hard shots, and had him hurt more than once, but failed to follow up effectively. Unbelievably, Ali even backed into the corner on several occasions. This would have been a suicidal tactic against a fine-tuned Mike Tyson, or The Rock at any time. (Marciano would pound on whatever part of an opponent’s body could be reached. If the best target he had was the arms, he would bang them until they couldn’t be lifted for protection any longer.) But Shavers only made token efforts at punching in these circumstances. Every such opportunity ended by Ali clinching, or Shavers simply backing away to let him off the hook.

A fight historian can probably count on one hand the number of times the elusive Ali was ever hit flush. Three of those times, he went down. Shavers never caught him flush, but even glancing blows from Shavers nearly took Ali’s head off. Starting  in the fifth round (and intermittent thereafter), Ali jumped on his “bicycle” to evade Shavers, offering an occasional feather-fisted counterattack.

As in too many fights throughout history, only a knockout could have overcome the favorite’s “home cooking” in this bout. As was typical in Ali’s reign, the referee allowed him to hold and hit for all 15 rounds, with only one warning. Because he could get away with it as usual, Ali clutched the back of Shavers’ head with one glove any time Shavers got inside. Shavers was the aggressor from bell to bell, landing the most effective punches consistently, unfazed by Ali’s occasional attempts at offense right up until an adrenaline-fueled flurry in the last seconds of the fight. No fair, impartial judge would have awarded the champion more than five rounds…but the judges were, like the referee, effectively part of Team Ali. All of them scored the fight an astonishing nine rounds to six in favor of the guy who got battered around the ring like Michael Avenatti’s girlfriend.

Shavers fought less than a perfect fight, to be sure. And maybe his excessive caution was partially warranted–he seemed to be out of gas by the end of Round 15 (possibly because, despite his caution, he still tended to load up and swing wild Western Union punches when he got excited). He was hardly the first to be exhausted from chasing the Louisville Lip around all night. Considering the officiating and scoring he was up against, his only path to victory was a knockout. He had Ali in deeper trouble, far more frequently, than Foreman ever did. It would have been fascinating to find out what might have happened, had Shavers not squandered so many opportunities.

Fantasy, Historical

Gods & Proxies–the Supernatural in Antiquity

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An excerpt from the afterword in Gods & Proxies, discussing how belief in the existence of “other gods” is not necessarily pagan, anti-Christian, or unbiblical:

There’s a famous road paved with good intentions. One good intention of theologians in centuries past was to eliminate or explain away any passage in the Bible which could be construed as supporting polytheism.

The Bible clearly portrays Yahweh (El Elyon/El Shaddai/”The God of Many Names”/etc.) as the One True God; but it also documents that He judged the gods of Egypt (Exodus 12:12). In the Commandments we are warned not to put other gods before Him (Deuteronomy 5:7). The Adversary, called “the devil” and “Satan” in English, is referred to as “the god of this world” or “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4) depending on translation (or “prince,” which is also how the messenger* in Daniel 12:1 referred to the Archangel Michael).

Acknowledging that the ancient pagans were worshiping living entities, and not just the idols formed to represent them, is not polytheistic. It is simply biblical.

Those of us who learned the Bible from an English translation (or worse yet, from “preacher talk”) have inherited many assumptions about our Creator. For instance, we assume that “God” is His name.

One of the Commandments forbids us to misuse His name (Deuteronomy 5:11). Well, what exactly is His name? Most Gentiles have no idea, except for the cryptic statement given to Moses via the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). But where our English translations call him simply “THE LORD,” the original text used one of His names.** How many times have we seen references to His name in our English translations, without actually seeing His name in the text? Those translations also use the word “God” as if it is a name (hence we assume “God” is his name), but the word “el” that is translated “god” was a more generic term in Hebrew for a supernatural being that is not necessarily the Creator God. Many of us were taught that the word Elohim, which includes the word for “god” with a Hebrew plural suffix, is a reference to the Trinity–one God in three persons. But some Hebrew scholars insist it refers to a pantheon, the Divine Council, or Heavenly Assembly.*** (Not that they deny the Trinity, as there is textual evidence of that concept elsewhere in Scripture.)

*The word angel means “messenger,” but, in our lexicon, has come to refer exclusively to created celestial beings. Certainly the word often refers to those; but sometimes a human being can be an “angel,” and sometimes the Messiah Himself plays the role of a messenger, or “angel.”

**That is, the “Tetragrammaton.” This has been pronounced “Yaweh” or “Jehovah,” historically, though exact pronunciation is not certain because there were no vowels in the original Hebrew. It’s like an acronym formed from the Hebrew phrase the Creator used to answer Moses: “I am that I am.”

***Psalm 82:1 “God has taken his place in the Divine Council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” Deuteronomy 32:8-9 “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided up humankind, he set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the Heavenly Assembly.” Job 1:6 and 1 Kings 22 also give us a fleeting glimpse of this Heavenly Assembly.

Another phenomenon mentioned in Gods & Proxies is “spiritually charged objects.” This sounds like a pagan or Wiccan concept, but it’s also Biblical. In the New Testament, certain people were healed and/or delivered merely by physical contact with aprons and handkerchiefs touched by Paul (Acts 19:11-12).

If the Holy Spirit (working through Paul) could spiritually charge an inanimate object, then it’s entirely possible that evil spirits could supernaturally charge objects as well–such as the items in Jericho that the Israelites were forbidden to take as plunder (Joshua 6:17-18, 7:1).

Those who like to deny the supernatural also insist that witchcraft is nothing more than a myth perpetuated by tricksters and illusionists. But the author(s) of the Bible saw it much differently. God considers witchcraft a serious manifestation of evil, not to be dismissed as harmless Halloween stories.  The Bible also documents how Pharoah’s magicians, and the witch of Endor accessed some sort of actual power that no huckster could ever duplicate.

 

Adventure, Fantasy, Historical

Paganism Vs. Reality

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Or perhaps “Religion Vs. Truth” would be a better title for this scene:

Some priests, and others from the L’vim sat with the visitors all that day. The offer was made early that the visitors were welcome to come outside the outer court of the Temple and worship Hashem.

“Thank-you, but no,” the ambassador said, with a nervous laugh. “That won’t be necessary.”

“I beg your pardon?” a priest asked, brows knitting. “You traveled all this way to make peace with us because you’ve heard that nothing and no one can stand against our god…yet you don’t want to know him?”

The visitors all glanced around their own countrymen, but eventually their collective gaze focused on the ambassador. He wiped sweat from his forehead and said, “True. We don’t want him to destroy us, but we’d prefer to serve our own gods.”

“You mean your own gods who can’t protect you from him?” a priest suggested.

“Well, um…yes,” the ambassador said.

The priest pointed at the stone idol resting on a wooden pedestal at the center of the visitors’ encampment. “That is the god you prefer to serve?” he asked.

“It is a representation of our god,” the ambassador said, uncomfortably. “It is sacred, because it bears his likeness. He dwells within it sometimes. It can receive our worship in his stead, when he chooses not to show us his image directly.”

“Let me make sure I understand this,” a priest said. “You have an opportunity to know the ultimate god, who created the world; and the wood, the stone, the metals that your so-called “gods” are made out of. And he created man, who formed your ‘gods’ out of wood, stone, or metals. But you would rather worship lifeless objects?”

“We wouldn’t expect you to understand,” the ambassador said.

“I think we do understand,” an angry-faced priest said. “You want Hashem’s mercy; you want his blessings; but you don’t want to give him anything in return.”

“It’s not just a stone idol,” one of the ambassador’s men stated, hotly. “It has power it is foolish to disrespect.”

Now Pinchas rose to his feet. “Let me give you a practical demonstration of religion,” he said, strolling toward the idol.

The visitors watched him apprehensively, some twitching as if about to stand.

Pinchas poked the statue with his staff. It toppled off the pedestal and thumped on the ground.

The visitors gasped. Some of the escorts shot to their feet, hands on weapons.

“Why would you disrespect our god this way, Yacovite?” demanded one of the escorts.

Pinchas turned to face the guests, shrugging. “When he puts himself back up on this pedestal, I’ll apologize.”

Gods & Proxies has gone wide. You can get it for most e-readers, including the Kindle.

Historical, Military

The 82nd Airborne on D-Day

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D-Day related posts used to be a tradition for me on June 6th, back at the Two-Fisted Blog. I just found out, according to an online article dated in 2014, that Division was slated to be taken off Airborne status–so I’m assuming this has already happened.

Sometime between the end of the Vietnam experience and when I joined up, the 101st Division had been taken off Airborne status–though they retained the “Airborne” tab above the unit patch. Now it’s evidently happened to my alma mater, too. I don’t know if the Rangers will follow suit. I doubt if SF will.

HHC, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment

Both divisions (the 82nd and 101st) dropped into Normandy (or came down in gliders) the night before the invasion of Hitler’s “Fortress Europe,” in a brief window of acceptable weather in 1944. Despite a massive gaggle in which almost no units were put out over their drop zones, the Airborne caught the Germans by surprise and secured crucial bridgeheads on the causeways leading out from the invasion beaches.

Paratroopers were bad dudes, but not quite the gang of murderers and rapists that Nazi propaganda chalked them up to be. By the time I came along, the standards in Jump School were plummeting to accommodate the inclusion of women, but there were still plenty of bad dudes in Division.

More 508 PIR troopers show off their German souveniers.

There’s been a long, gradual subversion of the Armed Forces. Patriots and bad dudes have been (probably still are being) purged from the ranks. In an Army that pays for sex change operations, where soldiers are made to wear high heels, but everyone is given a black beret, there’s frankly not much room left for bad dudes (who aren’t gender-confused, anyway). And, generals have been ragging on airborne insertion for decades–claiming it’s an obsolete and daaaaaaa-aaaangerous method to deliver troops to the battlefield.

Maybe the generals are right. Maybe the 82nd can be just as effective as another “Air-Assault” light infantry division, which is ferried-to-firefight by helicopter.

All Americans Through the Wars.

Then again, the folks in charge have reimagined the military as a huge, publicly funded, gender-confused social experiment. It’s primary purpose is not to fight wars, anymore. When it fights them anyway, it’s not in the service of American interests. In such an organization, bad dudes are obsolete–probably even embarrassing.

I haven’t maintained any connection to Division. Never went to any of the reunions, even though I was coerced to join the Association when I served there. Last time I drove through North Carolina, my route took me close to Bragg, but I didn’t even bother to detour there to see what the new barracks look like.

But this kinda’ bums me out, anyway. Enjoy the photos.

Historical, Politics/Current Events, Satire, Uncategorized

Revised History: Hitler and Fascists

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Since before Donald Trump took office, we’ve been repeatedly informed that he is “literally Hitler” and that his supporters are fascists at best, Nazis at worst.

This is a little confusing, because I’d been previously informed by a high school biology teacher that Ronald Reagan was literally Hitler. That’s three separate individuals who are all the same person: Trump, Reagan, and presumably Hitler himself.

Of course it all makes sense if you watch enough Star Trek. Obviously some malevolent entity that first possessed Jack the Ripper later possessed these three evil historic villains.

“And anybody who disagrees with us is a fascist!”

Um, did I say “evil”? Of course all woke people know there’s actually no such thing as good or evil. The only people who believe in such outdated, puritan concepts as evil are evil religious-right demagogues. So Hitler wasn’t truly eeee-veel, he was just insane. If only his school teachers had identified his mental illness and pumped him full of psychotropic drugs, that would have fixed everything.

“But wait,” say the millennials and Generation Z, “who is Hitler? Wasn’t he supposed to be this, like, really mean guy or something?”

Well, even though it’s like, totally lame to think, talk, or read about anything that happened more than six months ago, we maybe should randomly empower you with some woke info on this paranormal force of evil meanness that just so happened to control some ancient, like, European dude with a funny mustache.

We should start with Socialism…this totally amazing system where:

  1. Everybody is disarmed except the police and armed forces.
  2. Genocide can be efficiently implemented when necessary.
  3. Children must attend state-controlled schools and be programmed to believe The Narrative without question.
  4. A progressive, graduated income tax keeps the non-ruling class equally miserable.
  5.  Careless speech (or even suspected thoughts) will result in dissenters vanishing, never to be seen again.
  6.  The state owns and controls all business and industry.

But along came this dude named Mussolini who instituted a system that was TOTALLY, 100% OPPOSITE!!!!!!!!! (And therefore wrong.) Just look at how utterly distinct Fascism is from Socialism in every way:

  1. Everybody is disarmed except the police and armed forces.
  2. Genocide can be efficiently implemented when necessary.
  3. Children must attend state-controlled schools and be programmed to believe The Narrative without question.
  4. A progressive, graduated income tax keeps the non-ruling class equally miserable.
  5.  Careless speech (or even suspected thoughts) will result in dissenters vanishing, never to be seen again.
  6.  The state controls all business and industry, although symbolic private ownership is still tolerated.

Now, can you see how socialism is a moral, Utopian ideal which leads to paradise, while fascism is just so…um…like, unwoke?

And now you can see how “Antifa” is legit and TOTALLY UNLIKE the blackshirted mobs in 1920s Italy that threatened and attacked anyone who disagreed with their politics.

Alright, so let’s talk about this Hitler guy.

He was like a deplorable combination of Ron Paul and Ted Cruz. If he was here, he’d so be a member of the NRA, the Tea Party and Gamergate. He would do really mean, backwards things like broker peace between North and South Korea, recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (and move his country’s embassy there), and deregulate industry (because, y’know, he just hated micromanaging and being in control).

Oh yeah–he would do undignified, unpresidential things like tweet on Twitter, too. (FDR on the other hand, being dignified and presidential, would continue to hold his Fireside Chats on the radio in 2018.)

And that’s the approved, official, credible, trustworthy, fact-checked history. Anything else is fake history according to Facebook, Google, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

(Until further notice.)

Historical, Politics/Current Events

The All-New Revised History Series

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Along with Barack Hussein Obama, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and innumerable other altruists, Virtual Pulp has been deeply inspired by the blatantly orchestrated sincere, heartfelt speeches given by David Hogg and other tools wise, experienced and courageous youth insisting our rights be stripped from us. One has to marvel at the caliber of education that has led them to such a level of understanding.

Wouldn’t it be, like, really dope if everyone, y’know, was able to learn the real important stuff, like they have, so we could all, like, make such an impact? So starting with this post, Virtual Pulp will be publishing the fake history woke history that has made Camera Hogg & Company such model spokespeople for their generation.

9/11 and the War on Terror

Once upon a time, there was an area called the Middle East. Diverse peoples in the Middle East followed a Religion of Peace, which is no different from Christianity (except that Christianity is silly, racist, sexist and oppressive, whereas Islam is merely misunderstood). There were no problems whatsoever in that region before Israelis and Americans came on the scene. Republican administrations from the US made these peace-loving, tolerant people defensive and suspicious of infidels ruthless, exploitative colonialists.

Meanwhile, in that oppressive despotic dystopia of the USA, a secret team of Bible-thumping home-schooled NRA members hijacked several passenger jets and crashed them into buildings in New York City because…um, they hate women…or black people…or something.

The buildings collapsed perfectly into their own footprints just like a controlled demolition, because that’s what tall buildings always do, with absolutely no planning or preparation. These right-wingers hated with such a hot heat that World Trade Center #7 (which was never touched by an airplane or had its superstructure exposed to burning jet fuel) also collapsed perfectly into its own footprint.

Or maybe it was global warming that caused the steel girders to melt. Anyway: home-grown right-wing terrorists are a far worse threat than Islamic workplace-violence-committers. So there! That’s why we need millions more Muslim immigrants inside the country (taxpayer-funded, of course), but need to abolish the Bill of Rights for law-abiding American citizens.

The coward George Dubya Bush hid in an elementary school, using the bodies of school children to protect him from the blast of the jet crashes. Then he returned to the White House and signed The Patriot Act, which was an immoral, tyrranical act of oppression right up until Barack Hussein Obama bullied persuaded Congress to renew it. As soon as Saint Hussein vouched for it, of course, the Patriot Act was instantly transformed into a reasonable, common-sense protection that is totally not a despotic police state measure to further strangle the Bill of Rights. Saint Hussein further advanced the cause of liberty by giving us Indefinite Detention–so that Americans can be imprisoned for life without a trial or even charges.

It goes without saying that President Trump would be LITERALLY HITLER if he was to use any of these usurpations laws signed by Democrats. (Well, he’s already literally Hitler, of course. But he’d be, y’know, even worse than Hitler if he was to do what his predecessors  did.) Worse than literally Hitler, like…Joe McCarthy…or somebody. (More about that deplorable monster in a future installment.)

Since 9/11, there have been multiple incidents when some distraught motorists, disgruntled nightclub patrons and other oppressed victims have accidently engaged in behavior that inadvertently caused harm to others, while shouting, “Allah akbar!” Deplorable racist xenophobes have alleged that this phrase somehow indicates Islamic ideology. But our experts have discovered that this assumption is just redneck ignorance at work.

It turns out that “Allah akbar” is really from a secret code language spoken by Bible-thumping home-schooled NRA members, and, literally translated, means: “MAGA!” (Make America Great Again.) These home-grown domestic terrorists love to speak in code, as you well know. Our experts have decoded phrases like “American citizen” to actually mean, “Aryan ubermensch.” Similarly, “Second Amendment” actually means “Death to school children!” And “voter ID laws” means “We hate minorities!”

So those incidents were really carried out by Tea Party operatives–the most dangerous terror threat in the universe! Therefore any such atrocity should be classified as terrorism and be followed immediately by crackdowns on individual rights insensitive civic behavior.

The end.

Espionage, Historical, Military, Reviews

The Exception – a Review

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Coincident with the German blitzkrieg into France, Heinrich Himmler assigns a special detail to “protect” Wilhelm Hohenzollern, the former Kaiser of the Second Reich, who is exiled in Holland.

The assignment is passed down to young Captain Brandt, a veteran of the Poland Campaign who was wounded winning the Iron Cross, but also got on the wrong side of the SS after witnessing an atrocity. Still recovering from shrapnel wounds to his stomach, he nonetheless doesn’t want this cushy rear-echelon job. But orders are orders, so off he goes.

Brandt is quickly caught in a tug of war between the Kaiser’s military attache; the Gestapo; Wermacht Intelligence (trying to track down a British spy in the area), and a young, nubile war widow who is down for cheap, meaningless sex.

It’s a pleasant surprise how good this movie is. While it certainly has its faults, it’s not always easy to guess what will happen next.

Adventure, Fantasy, Historical, Reviews

Marco Polo – a Review

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Even the most fanatic revisionist white knights couldn’t ruin a story set in the Mongol Empire during the conquest of south China, right?

Ahem.

I wish I could say I’m surprised by what they’ve done with the subject matter.

First off is the main character, Marco Polo. His motivations are sketchy at best, beyond some vague desire for a father figure. In the first season he’s habitually stupid…but not as stupid as the series writers assume their audience is.

The sad fact is, that assumption may prove correct.

There’s all the formulaic theater, white-knight feminist tropes, and contrived plot devices you can find in any other TV show, and the Trojan beach head of perversity we can expect from a Weinstein Company-backed tale of palace intrigue.

(But to be honest, it’s doubtful Harvey Weinstein is any worse than the other producers in Hollywood. In fact, he’s probably mild compared to some of them.)

But the sterling character of the morally pure saints headquartered in Homowood, Commiefornia never rests until it has delivered a hypocritical moral message. And so their favorite perversion (pedophilia) is represented not accurately (like, say, in the character of an entertainer or leftist politician), but in the form of a Christian Mongol.

Nothing special here.

 

Action, Adventure, Historical, Reviews

Birth of the Dragon – a Review

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This film was inspired by the fabled showdown between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man.

I was only vaguely familiar with the story; and only as told from the perspective of Lee and his legions of devoted fans. But there is controversy surrounding not only the outcome of the fight; but why it took place.

If you’ve seen Bruce Lee biopics before this, you’ve seen Lee’s victory over Man depicted. In Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, the showdown occurred because the Old Guard of Kung Fu demanded Lee endure trial-by-combat, for the crime of teaching their ancient secrets to non-Chinese.

Pretty heroic narrative. The stuff of legends.

This film, however, tells the story from an entirely different perspective:

Wong Jack Man was not sent to San Francisco to spy on Bruce Lee, to punish or kill him. Although he was reluctant to share Kung Fu with non-Chinese, it wasn’t his motive for coming to the USA. Rather, he came to work as a dishwasher as a form of pennance, while ostracized from his Shaulin monastery for badly injuring a Tai-Chi master during a demonstration that was not supposed to be full-contact. Washing dishes will put his pride in check and help him restore internal balance.

Bruce Lee fans probably hate this movie, because (although he has some likable qualities, including his fighting skills) he’s an egomaniacal bully blinded by his own ambition. He delights in publicly humiliating others, and it is he who tries to goad Wong Jack Man into a fight. The prideful, childish side of alpha male behavior is portrayed accurately in this regard. Nobody knows for sure how the real life events played out, because there are few witnesses, and those witnesses tell contradictory versions of the story. However, this version does have the ring of truth to it. Certainly it’s not 100% accurate; but it strikes me as more plausible than the more popular Bruce Lee hero myth.

The acting is good–especially Xu Xia as Wong Jack Man. Philip Wan-Lung Ng has a physique much like Bruce Lee, and has mastered Lee’s poses, gestures, and movement. This was displayed best when fighting or sparring, when he would dance around his opponent (in western boxing this is called “the bicycle”–Bruce Lee’s bicycle was distinct and rather flamboyant).

What eventually persuades Man to fight Lee is a sub-plot concerning an American Kung Fu student trying to rescue a Chinese babe (Jingjing Qu) from indentured Servitude to a Chinatown mob boss. Perhaps the premise is too fairy-tale, but the part of Steve “Mac” McKee (Billy Magnuson) was written and performed adequately. I appreciate that they didn’t make this fictional character the stereotype “arrogant racist American who had to be taught a lesson before he could believe in equality” yada yada yada. He’s a very likable character, with his own ego in check (if not his emotions); a teachable student who respects both Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man.

We know that in real life, after the fight with Man, Lee abandoned traditional Wing Chun and went on to develop Jeet Kun Do. In the film we see a more extensive turning point for Lee–that he has actually learned some humility by the end. Not to sound like the message in a fortune cookie, but this film version of Lee is closer to bringing his inner self “into balance” before the final credits.

The older I get, the harder it is to sit through the old Hong Kong martial arts flicks, pioneered by Bruce Lee. The Hollywood-produced Enter the Dragon is watchable, but still a little on the cheesy schlock side of B-movie-dom. The production values of this movie are miles higher than those old exploitation quickies. Mainstream critics (pompous SJWs who get paid to spout off their opinions) have panned this film, but I assure you it’s both written better and more exciting than any Star Wars flick made within the last couple decades.