Quick, name the genre when a movie has guns, violence, train robberies, little towns run by corrupt officials, bandits, shootouts, and whores with hearts of gold. If you thought Western, then yes those would be elements in a typical western...but the film covered today is set in early 1900s China, "Let the Bullets Fly."
The protagonists are the leader of a gang of bandits, and a dude about to become a governor of a small town. Their opponent is Chow Yun Fat as a notorious mob boss in charge of a tiny town. Thus instead of good vs evil, it's morally ambiguous vs more bad. Along the way there are double-crosses, assassination attempts, horrible unjust deaths and the vengeance that comes along with it, extortion, Robin-Hooding, betrayals, more saddening deaths, and ultimately, a master plan to take down the crime boss that controls the fear-ridden little town.
Great pseudo-western Chinese film with dark humor that range from awkward chuckles to why-am-I-laughing-at-this?-this-shouldn't-make-me-laugh.
There was a lot of this going on too despite the fact this wouldn't be popular til thugs from the hood started doing it in the 80s-90s...
Just to get it out of the way, I am slightly biased toward comedy movie series. They usually involve cheap laughs involving dicks, sex, toilet humor, and etc with nothing but those as material to make you the audience try to laugh. That being said, I am strangely impressed with "Little Fockers," which was reportedly such a dumb script Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller's onscreen dad in the previous film, wasn't on board. (They upped his paycheck and his role (slightly) so he made a longer cameo than previously rumored.)
The story follows the same formula as the previous two films, with Robert de Niro's character mistaking Ben Stiller's character as a lousy guy, due to circumstances beyond Stiller's control (or it was in his control but it looks much worse than intended). But at the end their differences are resolved and de Niro respects his son-in-law once again. What makes it different this time is that Stiller's character is not as intimidated by de Niro's character and as such, is much better at the verbal sparring and more of a match for de Niro's machinations. De Niro himself is not depicted as such an implacable man and untouchable as he was previously. Owen Wilson is a more prominent character in this film as well, coming off from a broken engagement and unintentionally wooing Stiller's wife, but also going pretty crazy as far as his other culture obsession goes (refer to Hansel from "Zoolander"). It's this kind of characterization that strangely sets apart the "Meet the Parents" trilogy from other raunchy comedies.
Ironically, the characters that "Little Fockers" didn't develop too well were the titular little Fockers themselves. We get that the girl is the more mature and smarter of the twin pair and that the little boy has issues but apart from that, we don't get much. It was pointed out at one point that the girl might've taken more genetically from de Niro's side of the family but that was dropped pretty quickly. Also, Jessica Alba shows up as sort of an unintentional temptress, but other than that, her character is poorly written, exceedingly perky, and pretty much NOT a real person and pretty much a living drama device.
Overall, just plain nutty but if you liked the previous movies, it's a good end for the series (at least we hope so...sequel hoooooook)
Yeah, forget what you knew of the previous character Owen Wilson played, HANSEL IS BACK!
