Peking Opera Blues – Review

A wild mishmash of comedy, seriousness, history, stage acting and action, Peking Opera Blues brings a whole lot to the table at a frenzied pace. It is 1913 and a very corrupt General Tun (Ha) hasn’t paid his soldiers in weeks. They aren’t happy. He escapes town with his 28 wives. One of the musicians at his mansion Sheung Hung (Chung) sets her sights on a box full of jewels, and tries to escape with it, but it winds up being taken on a cart into the local opera house as officers on the street look for local looters.

Another local General named Tsao (Tsang) has a firmer grip on the solders, and keeps his daughter Wan (Lin) in check, or so he thinks, as she supports local revolutionaries. Wan winds up helping Sheung get out of trouble when soldiers are frisking and harassing her while looking for looters, and both head into the opera. Wan has ulterior motives as she has a meeting with another revolutionary there named Ling Pak-Hoi (Cheng), who has a plan to upend her father’s plans for a governmental power play.

Things are getting serious, and twisty already! Meanwhile, in the theater itself, Mr. Wong (Ma) operates the acting troupe, while his daughter Bai Niu (Yeh) wishes to get on stage, but isn’t allowed as “women don’t act in the opera.” Duh.

As chaos continually interrupts all parties, alliances form and thrilling action shenanigans hit the screen left and right as bullets fly and plans are foiled. Entertainment value however remains fairly high.

Peking Opera Blues is quite an interesting time, even for those that have little knowledge of the history of China during this time period, or no idea about Chinese theater/opera. I am sure there are many parallels to famous stories and the opera itself that could enhance this film, as well as historical references, however even without any of that this is a good and energetic time.

The story zips along with non-stop twists and turns and mostly works fairly well. A bit of the comedy I thought was too juvenile, but primarily it worked for me and was definitely entertaining. The acting is pretty good as it bounced back and forth between serious and silly, which was probably decently hard to do with such a comedic script backed with serious and historical subject matters. The opera house was a fun backdrop to display all the action and antics, and if I had known more about the time period or the art style, I probably would have liked it all even more. I definitely have a few questions, like mostly about the auditing bureau, but I had a good time with this film.

This one is pretty tough to compare to too many other films, but some below have a few elements...