Wu Assassins, on Netflix: "An unassuming San Francisco chef" discovers that he is the Chosen One. Amid all the martial arts action, the trailer shows a girl-on-girl kiss. I'm more interested in finding out if "unassuming chef" Kai (Iko Uwais) has a heteronormative primary plot: Chosen One Gets the Girl. And whether he takes his shirt off.
Prologue: San Francisco, Today. In a dingy apartment hallway, Kai saves an elderly man from some assassins with five minutes of martial arts. The man asks "Who are you?" Kai: "I'm a chef."
Scene 1: Yesterday. Kai is busily chopping vegetables in the restaurant kitchen. It looks like French nouvelle cuisine, but the staff and patrons are all Cantonese. His enterprising buddy assures the audience that he's heterosexual, then asks him to quit and buy a food truck (this is a step up from nouvelle cuisine?). Kai doesn't want to.
One of the cooks accidentally put peanuts in a dish, so Manager Tommy drags him out for the customers to yell at and beat up. Kai tries to intervene, but Manager Tommy explains that they are Triad (a Chinese secret society involved in drugs, gun-running, and human trafficking). Their head is the Dragon Lord, Uncle Six.
Scene 2: Exterior shot of Chinatown as Kai heads home to his dingy by-the-week hotel. He brings food to the elderly Mr. Young across the hall, and in return gets yuet guk yuen (chrysanthemum tea) for "stagnation": he's stalled in a dead-end chef job; why doesn't he buy a food truck? Ok, I thought he was constipated.
Scene 3: Exterior shots of Chinatown, morning. Jenny gets coffee, greets everyone in the neighborhood, and heads to work at the restaurant (plot dump; she's the co-owner; Manager Tommy is her brother)..
The door is ajar; it's been trashed. Manager Tommy is lying on the floor, bleeding. He explains that Kai insulted Uncle Six.. So Tommy got beat up? Jenny wants to call the police or something, but Manager Tommy won't hear of it.
Scene 4: Uncle Six (Byron Mann, left) and his goons arrive at the docks, where two muscular, hooded guys are tied up in their underwear (one black, one Hispanic). He talks about Little Pete, the first Dragon Lord of Chinatown, who was willing to do anything necessary to protect his territory. Similarly, Alex McCullough should stay out of his business. Then he shoots them. Well, at least we got some beefcake.
Scene 5: At the police station, a blond woman (the one kissing in the trailer) listens to a news report about the gang-style executions. Plot dump about Alex McCullough: European gang lord, moved to San Francisco six months ago, is impinging on Triad territory. His henchman Grishna Babakov, even recruiting Triad member Lu Xin. No wonder Uncle Six is so upset! Why is a Russian mobster named Alex McCullough?
The blond woman is Inspector Gavin, borrowed from Vice. She speaks fluent Russian, so she's going to infiltrate the Alex Cullough gang. Wow, check out Bendix, the muscle man in the back row (Paul Lazenby), who disapproves of working with a woman. She counters: "the only thing you got on me is a smaller dick." He just appears in this episode.
Scene 6: Kai working in a food truck (he was helping out at the nouvelle cuisine restaurant; this is his full time job). A customer named Hannah drops by to flirt and order the dragon shrimp. His enterprising friend drops by to criticize him for working in a food truck. Wait -- didn't you want him to work in one yesterday? They discuss Manager Tommy getting beat up by the Triad.
Friend: "They're not going to let this go. You need to protect yourself." He just tried to intervene when he saw a guy getting beat up. He didn't even know they were Triad. Who cares?
Scene 7: Quitting time. Just as Kai prepares to drive the food truck home, some Triad goons appear with baseball bats. Kai beats them off and drives away. A woman is lying in the street. Not injured -- she was waiting for him! How did she know he would come by at that exact moment, and not 1,000 other cars?
She gives him the Monk Piece, a glowing piece of metal that "holds the power of 1,000 monks." Suddenly Kai is zapped to Medieval China! Five armored warriors conjure a water-dragon, which tries to python Kai to death. I was wondering when the paranormal stuff would start. It's started!
The lady rescues him -- so this was all a cautionary tale? -- and gives him a long, involved plot dump. The gist: He's the Chosen One, aka the Wu Assassin, who must kill the five Dark Lords threatening the world. Each controls an elemental power: Earth, Water, Metal, Wood, and Fire. What about Air?
Scene 8: Kai awakens on a hospital gurney. He's had an accident. Was it all a dream? But when he looks in the mirror, an ancient Chinese monk looks back!
Jenny the restaurant co-owner from Scene 3 comes to pick him up, and drives him home, yelling about the peanut thing from Scene 1. Is she his girlfriend, friend, or aunt? She looks much older than him...oh, she grabs his hand. Cougar girlfriend. No, he pulls his hand away. Cougar with an unrequited crush. Mr. Young from aross the hall offers an aphorism: "There's no friendship wihtout love, and no love without friendship."
Scene 9: Lu Xin (Lewis Tan, left), who moved from the Triad to the Russian gang, flirting with the waitress at a diner. Inspector Gavin from Scene 5 stops by to ask for a job. Gross -- she's eating his french fries and drinking his water! He rejects her.
Cut to Kai having coffee. Still in Chinatown. Don't you ever go to the Castro? It's only 10 Muni stops away. He stops in a temple to pray. Uncle Six drops in and asks why, since his mother was Muslim, he comes to a Confucian temple so often. "You taught me." Wait -- Uncle Six is Kai's foster father? Then why is the Triad after him?
Uncle Six brings him to an empty store that could be turned into a restaurant, and offers it to him. Kai refuses: "I don't need your help." Uncle Six: "But I brought you to America and raised you as my son."
Scene 10: The restaurant, busy night. Manager Tommy and Jenny arguing. He needs $1,200 to pay his rent; he promises not to use it for drugs. Isn't he the co-owner of the restaurant? She hands it over -- in cash. "You'd better not be fucking with me." Language, girl!
Scene 11: Kai taking a cable car home. Hey, other people see an ancient Chinese monk, too. Replay of the fight from Scene 1, except this time he is zapped to the afterlife, where the lady orders him to "Kill them!" I thought he just had to kill the Dragon Lords. Does he have to kill every single henchman?
Scene 12: Manager Tommy shooting up heroin, Lu Xin deciding to hire Inspector Gavin after all, Jenny at an underground fight club, Uncle Six yelling at his henchmen for screwing up. "You were supposed to kill my adopted son, whom I offered a restaurant earlier today!" He blasts them with fire; they dissolve into ashes. He's one of the Dark Lords! Was this supposed to be a big reveal? It seems obvious.
Mr. Young, in an ambulance, is still seeing the ancient Chinese monk. He asks "Who are you?" "I'm the Wu Assassin."
Beefcake: Just the thugs who get killed.
Gay Characters: No one expresses any heterosexual interest except for the two women who flirt with Kai, and Kai's best friend (unnamed, not listed in the IMDB). But no one expresses any same-sex interest, either.
Family: Uncle Six raised Kai and wants to give him a restaurant, but he also wants to kill him over the peanut incident.
Food Trucks: Sometimes working on a food truck is Kai's goal in life, and sometimes it's a dead end.
Manager Tommy: Sometimes an extremely competent manager of a five-star nouvelle cuisine restaurant, sometimes a drugged-out screw up.
Religion: One moment Kai is like "I don't have time for your Confucian nonsense," and the next, he's praying in a Confucian temple.
My Grade: C+