“Invincible Swordsman” Theatrical Poster

Director: Luo Yi Wei
Cast: Kitty Zhang Yuqi, Tim Huang Xiyan, Xuan Lu, Terence Yin, Sammo Hung, Yun Qianqian
Running Time: 118 min.

By Paul Bramhall

When Brigitte Lin was cast as the character Invincible Asia in 1992’s Swordsman 2, few could have predicted the role would become so iconic, leading Lin to spend the last 3 years of her acting career as a mainstay of the new wave wuxia genre. In just a few short years she appeared in more than 10 new wave wuxia’s, and her role in each is probably reason enough why, even with the technological advancements in the 30 years since, few directors have been bold (or dumb, depending on your perspective) enough to try and remake any of them. The last to try was Jacob Cheung, who in 2014 helmed The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom, a re-make of Ronny Yu’s 1993 classic The Bride with White Hair, which was mostly met with negative reviews.

Now in 2025, for his sophomore feature director Luo Yi Wei decided to take a crack at remaking the very movie that made Lin such an iconic presence in the new wave wuxia genre, with Invincible Swordsman tackling the same story as Swordsman 2. Debuting in 2022 with Swords Drawn, Yi Wei admittedly has a convenient out of any potential comparisons, thanks to the fact the source material is one of wuxia writer Jin Yong’s novels, The Smiling, Proud Wanderer. While it’s almost impossible to count the number of time Yong’s The Condor Heroes has been adapted for the screen, comparatively The Smiling, Proud Wanderer is one of his lesser adapted stories. Apart from the Tsui Hark produced trilogy of the early 1990’s, there’s been a couple of TV adaptations in the 2000’s and that’s it, so the source materials relative scarcity of appearing onscreen make the comparisons to its last big screen adaptation all the more inevitable.

While The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom saw Fan Bingbing step into the role that Brigitte Lin originally played, in Invincible Swordsman the honours go to Kitty Zhang (The Mermaid, Legend of the Demon Cat) who’s tasked with stepping into the shoes (or should that be billowing silk?) of Invincible Asia. In the role of Lunghu Chong (played by Jet Li in Swordsman 2) is Tim Huang (Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms, Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force), whose biggest problem is his friendship with Xuan Lu (Midnight Hair, Battle: The Insidious). She plays the daughter of a power-hungry clan leader played by Hong Kong mainstay Terence Yin (New Police Story, Special ID), so naturally Huang’s own clan doesn’t approve of their budding relationship, ultimately leading to him bring expelled.

Lucky for him, he’s taken under the wing of a martial arts master who’s been living in seclusion played by Sammo Hung (God of War, The Bodyguard), who trains him up on such awesomely named techniques like the Sword Nourishing stance. While Huang lives in isolation on the (equally awesomely named) Cliff of Contemplation, Zhang defeats Yin and becomes the leader of the Sun Moon Cult, imprisoning him by blocking his vital points, and vowing to take over the martial arts world. When Huang gets wind that his former clan is also in danger from her plans for world dominance, he decides to return to the world of jiang hu, using his new skills to go into battle with members of the cult. It’s in the midst of a fight that he mistakenly believes he saves Zhang, not realising who she is, beginning a doomed love story as the truth is bound to eventually reveal itself.

It goes without saying that Invincible Swordsman is a much more straightforward affair than its last iteration on the big screen. The whole element of how Invincible Asia is actually a man, who after making himself a eunuch has transitioned into a woman, is here not given a mention (despite being more culturally relevant today than it was in the early 90’s!). The only slight reference it gets is in a throwaway scene where Zhang admires the female servants she’s surrounded by, implying a feeling of physical attraction, although in a stark contradiction she then falls for Huang minutes later. There’s also understandably a lack of the political subtext that Tsui Hark is known for, but considering China’s current cinematic climate that’s to be expected. Instead we’re left with a relatively pedestrian re-telling of the source material, one that gets by on the goodwill of seeing the likes of Sammo Hung back in a wuxia production again.

More an extended special appearance than a supporting role, Hung’s main duty is to pass on his martial arts skills to Huang in a CGI rendered clifftop setting, and it’s always a pleasure to see him onscreen. The last time he was in a wuxia you have to go back to 2010’s 14 Blades, but his role here as a white bearded martial arts master is more likely to recall his role in Wong Jing’s 1993 slice of wuxia madness Kung Fu Cult Master (speaking of which, it’s Wong Jing who’s on script and producer duty for Invincible Swordsman). Hung’s always been able to evoke a sense of authority when his performances call for it, something we saw last in the previous year’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, and it’s a joy to see the elder statesman of kung-fu cinema supplant that same authority from a contemporary setting into a wuxia one.

Others fare less well. As the main character Huang is decidedly one note, appearing in every scene like he’s just been told to “smoulder for the camera”, and little else. Sure any wuxia flick requires a degree of posing in a variety of heroic martial arts stances, but when the entire performance feels like posing, it becomes a problem. Similarly Zhang struggles to make the role of Invincible Asia her own, too often feeling like she watched Swordsman 2 on repeat for a few weeks, then attempted to emulate Brigitte Lin’s performance as best she can. Inevitably, the scenes they share together which are intended to carry the most dramatic weight land with a resounding thud, devoid of any chemistry.

Regardless of performance quality though, the one aspect of Invincible Swordsman that nobody can escape from is a painfully pretentious script. Almost as if ChatGPT had been asked to create a script consisting entirely of fortune cookie pondering, lines like “Gain and loss are but two sides of the same coin” and “How long is an inch of justice? How long is an inch of longing?” are commonplace. It kind of feels like there was an unspoken rule that if a character was going to speak, they had to come out with something deeply profound, but the result is one that leads to plenty of eyerolling fairly early on. If anything, it came as a relief when there was a scene involving one of the clans throwing a celebration, and the song they decided to belt out consisted purely of a bunch of men chanting “raa raa raa!” on repeat.

That leaves the action, which sees Wu Yue (Paradox, The Brink) stepping into an action director role for the first time since 2016’s The Adventures of Wei Bao, and he does a serviceable job. Invincible Asia’s threaded needles benefit best from the CGI enhancements, with one particular scene involving a character getting one of them straight through his eyeball, which is then used to pull him forward. The appearance of a trio of villains – named Greed, Anger, and Ignorance – also feels like a call back to the crazed wuxia’s of yesteryear, with the use of a lute and oversized butchers knives providing both variety and energy to the action beats. There’s nothing really on display that hasn’t been seen before though, and there’s a distinct feeling we’re watching the go-to action beats from the ‘Wuxia Wirework for Non-Martial Artists’ playbook, meaning there’s no standout moments to separate Invincible Swordsman from its contemporaries.

As it stands, for his sophomore feature director Luo Yi Wei shows just how far the Chinese web movie industry has come in the last 15 years, as Invincible Swordsman received a theatrical release despite being funded by the likes of iQIYI and Tencent, production companies that once exclusively made movies for streaming. Indeed the budget may be higher, the CGI locations now mixed with actual location shooting, and the runtime much longer, but is Invincible Swordsman likely to stay in the memory any longer than the average 75-minute web movie wuxia? Honestly, probably not.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

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“World of Desire” Theatrical Poster

Director: Chao Chen-Kuo
Cast: Robert Mak, William Ho, Blackie Ko, Shou-Liang, Norman Tsui Siu-Keung, Chiang Ta-Chuan, Suen Man, Chen Kuan-Tai, Ng Naam-Yiu, Xie Jian-Wen
Running Time: 74 min.

By Paul Taggart

In these days of boutique labels releasing Asian cinema hits and relative obscurities, there are still those who swim in murky waters where even Godfrey Ho fans wouldn’t swim. It’s a strange place, full of bottomless pits of crappiness, tonal whiplash, fountains of sleaze, geysers of violence and the detritus of cinema. It is the land of the Taiwan exploitation film. Usually rougher round the edges than even the similar Hong Kong movies, but just as worth checking out. Perhaps the best known Taiwan 90s entries into this type would be the gangster squib sleaze sagas of Hunting List or Requital. But they are the peak, and something like World of Desire is far from those lofty heights and lies broken and twisted at the bottom, mumbling to itself incoherently.

You would think World of Desire is a cheapie 74-minute soft-score film from its poster and title, but it’s actually a cheapie gangster film with nudie bits. The plot is pretty basic, concerning three night club hostesses and a hoodlum who end up on the run from a gang after an incident at a hotel involving an old man, one of the women and a pistol. Various shenanigans ensure for the rest of the run-time mostly set around a night club the quartet end up running whilst trying to evade the local mobsters gunning for them.

But what’s so bizarre about World of Desire is it’s cast – William Ho you’d expect in something like this, it was his bread and butter – but not cameos from Blackie Ko, Chen Kuan Tai and Norman Tsui. Norman looks rather dishevelled whenever he appears on screen and it’s rather off-putting to see him squeeze some poor woman’s arse for 40 seconds, but kind of funny at the same time. Thankfully the viewer is spared any extended sex scene with Norman, but he sure makes the most of his bottom fondling opportunity and there’s a shot of him lying on a bed where he seems rather too excited under a towel he is wearing. The rest of the guys mostly escape with their dignity intact.

The lead is Robert Mak who is rather bland but appears in a lot of gangster orientated Taiwan films of this era and in more than one he always seems to end up wearing a black vest for some reason. World of Desire spends a lot of time trying to convince that Bob is Mr. Sex, but he’s more Barnaby Jones than Tom Jones. The actresses aren’t memorable at all, and sadly due to their lack of any characterisation. I had time telling them apart as they mostly appear on screen all together, like a female three stooges but lacking any comedic timing.

World of Desire’s lack of budget is evident, near enough the whole film takes place in garish nightclubs, musty pubs or messy living rooms with far too many shots of mahjong players. At one point William Ho and his gang have a meeting in what looks to be a cramped karaoke booth, diminishing any menace the scene is supposed to portray. The soundtrack seems comprised by wonky keyboard demos, one of which is an annoying machine gun funk synth tune. It’s still kind of fun though, the action is shoddy but there’s plenty of it scattered throughout and the exploitation content is pretty high, heavy on the nasty repetitive lady slapping and one of the women is randomly forced to drink wine out of a shoe at gunpoint. Nudity is ample but kept to brief moments, despite the lurid title, the focus is indeed as a low-rent gangster film, one that wishes to make you believe a household metal bin can be used to deflect machine gun fire.

It’s entertaining crap but William Ho exits too early and leaves a large hole in the film’s collective charisma which it stumbles on past due to it’s relative shortness. Not really one for anyone except lovers of trash, World of Desire is a scuzzy curiosity.

Paul Taggart’s Rating: 4/10

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“Iron Angels 3” Theatrical Poster

Director: Teresa Woo San
Cast: Moon Lee Choi-Fung, Alex Fong Chung-Sun, Kharina, Ralph Chan Shing-Gwai, Mark Steinborn, Katy Hickman, Marco Lo Chi-Fung, Bill Rockloff
Running Time: 91 min. 

By Z Ravas

1989’s Iron Angels 3 was the third Iron Angels film in as many years, which makes one wonder whether these movies were a smashing success in the local Hong Kong market or else Teresa Woo’s production company Molesworth simply hit a groove in the late 80’s that saw them turning out these Girls with Guns flicks with efficient ease. Either way, I must once again sing the praises of distributor Vinegar Syndrome for bringing together the entire trilogy in one attractive hi-def package, albeit in a limited number (they apparently sold out of the initial 5,000 print run in a matter of days).

For those of you just joining us, the Iron Angels series is a loose trilogy of Hong Kong action films about a co-ed Charlie’s Angels-like group of mercenaries; the Angels are the team that get called in when a terrorist or criminal threat is simply too much for local law enforcement to handle. I say ‘loose’ trilogy because continuity is not exactly a priority here; the purported leader of the Angels, portrayed by David Chiang, doesn’t show up in any of the sequels, and the lead actors are often playing characters named after themselves (Moon Lee stars as Moon, for instance), suggesting our protagonists are not so much fleshed out characters as they are mere avatars for our highly qualified cast of martial artists. In other words, you could probably get away with watching these Iron Angels films in any order without feeling lost.

While my recent rewatch of the original Iron Angels helped to solidify that film as one of my favorite Hong Kong action films of the 1980’s, I had to ding the sequel a little bit for bumping up Alex Fong’s bland character Alex to the lead—sidelining Girls with Guns icon Moon Lee in the process—and saving most of the rewind-worthy action for the ending. Fortunately, Part Three gets the series back on track by bumping up the action quotient and giving Moon Lee much more to do, even if it commits the almost unforgivable sin of dropping Elaine Lui from the cast. (I can’t find any information about why Elaine Lui was absent after being such a highlight of the first two Iron Angels; one suspects it may have simply come down to scheduling issues).

Iron Angels 2 saw the Angels on vacation in Malaysia; in their final outing, there’s no time for R&R as our heroes-for-hire are busy tracking the operation of a deadly criminal organization in Thailand. Once the Angels are boots on the ground, Alex teams up with some new compatriots, including a tech wizard gweilo who’s literally named Computer, while Moon Lee gets the juicier role of attempting to infiltrate the gang as an undercover agent. This leads to several standout action sequences for Moon, including a sensational fight in which she fends off an army of black-clad henchmen with nothing but her nunchaku and dynamic kicks.

Though perhaps it’s true that no film in this series except the original has been able to get the formula 100% correct, as Moon Lee proves conspicuously absent during the big finale here. It would have been preferable to see Moon get in on the action with Alex and his ally Kwai (played by Ralph Chen), but I can’t say too many bad things about the climax of Iron Angels 3. In fact, I don’t want to say too much about it at all for fear of ruining the surprise; let’s just say Teresa Woo takes a little bit of inspiration from Thunderball era James Bond and veers close to science-fiction territory in the process. The relentless, ‘infinite ammo’ shoot-em-up action of the finale was taking me back to those Time Crisis arcade cabinets, you know, the ones where you held a big blue or red plastic gun and mowed down wave after wave of disposable bad guys. The conclusion to Iron Angels 3 is a lot of fun if you can get on its ridiculous wavelength, ending the series on another high note, exempting our M.I.A. Moon Lee.

And I absolutely must mention an earlier scene where Alex Fong steps into the ring with a Muay Thai Boxer—their fight seems to rage on for a solid 10 minutes, but more importantly that Thai boxer is played by none other than the late, great Panna Rittikrai, mentor to Tony Jaa and a damn fine martial arts filmmaker himself. It’s a treat to see Rittikrai in his prime, delivering what look like some devastating flying knees to poor Alex Fong’s midsection.

Rare is the trilogy in which the sequels manage to top the benchmark set by a beloved original; even if the first Iron Angels remains the gold standard, director/producer Teresa Woo deserves credit for maintaining a level of quality throughout the series and for making sure the climax to Iron Angels 3 met expectations for a delirious action high.

By Z Ravas’s Rating: 7.5/10

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“Iron Angels” Japanese Poster

Director: Teresa Woo San
Cast: Saijo Hideki, Elaine Lui, Yukari Oshima, Alex Fong Chung Sun, David Chiang, Hwang Jang Lee, Peter Yang Kwan, Wang Hsieh, Lam Chung, Chiang Tao
Running Time: 93 min. 

By Z Ravas

I can’t say this period of history has many consolations for those of us living through it, but getting to experience obscure Hong Kong action films via terrific looking and sounding boutique Blu-ray releases is most assuredly one of them. The first time I saw Iron Angels, it was on a crappy Region 0 DVD that I ordered off of Ebay; I say ‘crappy’ mostly because the disc kept skipping during the final twenty minutes of the movie. (If you’ve seen Iron Angels, you know some of the film’s best action is crammed into the final twenty minutes. You don’t want to miss that part!). What a difference a few years make: now I have the privilege of watching Iron Angels with a pristine hi-definition transfer, courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome.

And if you’re unfamiliar with this series, it’s absolutely worth springing for Syndrome’s recent 3-film box set. The first film ranks up there alongside Royal Warriors and She Shoots Straight as one of the finest examples of that Hong Kong subgenre fondly remembered as Girls with Guns. The movie has the brilliant idea to ask, ‘What if Charlie’s Angels were co-ed and Charlie was played by Shaw Brothers legend David Chiang?’ The story opens with a sequence that could mislead you into thinking you’re in for a military-themed actioner, as the Thai army unleashes machine guns and flamethrowers on a massive opium-harvesting operation in the Golden Triangle. Back in Hong Kong, a lead subordinate of the drug operation—played by Japanese martial artist Yukari Oshima—swears revenge and begins targeting various Interpol agents around the globe. With their backs to the wall, the Hong Kong police decide to enlist the help of the mercenary service known as the Angels.

And you really don’t need much more justification than that to string along 90 minutes of go-for-broke Hong Kong action, though the film has a capable cast to lean on. The Angels are led by Hideki Saijo, an actor primarily known for his singing career in Japan (he did a chart-topping cover of the “Y.M.C.A.”) but who comes across as a tough martial artist here; Moon Lee, a veritable icon in the Girls with Guns genre thanks to her appearances in films like Fatal Termination and Devil Hunters;  and Elaine Lui Siu-Ling, who would go on to co-star in fan favorite Hong Kong titles like The Bride with White Hair and The Red Wolf.

I have to single out Elaine Lui Siu-Ling in particular because at first you assume her role is kind of the party girl of the trio, you know, the gal with big hair who’s more into her wardrobe than taking the mission seriously—but about halfway through the film, her character makes a sharp pivot, diving into battle while strapped with grenades and bullet clips like a pint-sized Rambo. Elaine Lui totally sells you on the transition too, displaying a wealth of onscreen moxie. It’s one of the greatest examples of the Hidden Badass trope that I can recall seeing.

Director Teresa Woo Ann is immediately interesting as one of the only women filmmakers in the Hong Kong action space during this time. I should note that Raymond Leung and Ivan Lai are also sometimes listed as co-directors or Executive Directors on the film, but Woo would seem to be the driving creative force behind this project, having also served as producer and sole credited screenwriter. The action is attributed to the great Tony Leung Siu-Hung (Bloodmoon, Ip Man) and it’s undeniably spectacular stuff, despite the obviously thrifty budget, including a sequence where Hideki Saijo is hanging from a helicopter’s ladder as he fires his machine gun into a McMansion’s worth of bad guys. (As an example of the budgetary limitations: expect liberal use of stunt dummies for some scenes). The final clash between Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima is brief—in fact, I don’t think it’s much longer than a minute or so—but the two combatants go at each other with such ferocity that their bout has rightly become the stuff of legend.

There’s a short list of the top Hong Kong action movies of the 1980’s, the ones that a casual viewer can sample to get a feel for the genre and witness the industry operating at its peak; no doubt well-known titles like Righting Wrongs and In the Line of Duty IV would have to be on there, but I could imagine making a case for Iron Angels as well. While it’s not quite as technically polished as what filmmakers like John Woo and Yuen Woo-ping were producing at this time, when it’s firing on all cylinders, the movie delivers some of the most electrifying action of its decade.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 9/10

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“Escape From The 21St Century” Theatrical Poster

Director: Yang Li
Cast: Ruoyun Zhang, Chuxi Zhong, Yang Song, Xiaoliang Wu, Yanmanzi Zhu, Zhengrong Wen
Running Time: 98 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Keeping up with what is and isn’t allowed in Chinese cinema is always somewhat of a daunting task, with everything from ghosts to cleavage falling victim to strict censorship laws in recent years. While these days the National Radio and Television Administration sits directly under the Central Propaganda Department, where it’s been since 2018, during the early 2010’s the department was still just as feisty over what was considered acceptable for audiences to consume. In 2011, in its previous incarnation as the SARFT (the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television), time travel made it onto the blacklist, with the reasoning being that too many time travel stories were being released that “disrespected history and promoted superstition.”

Such reasoning may explain why there was a 4-year gap between Donnie Yen’s Iceman 3D released in 2014, where time travel didn’t really play a significant part in the plot, and 2018’s Iceman: The Time Traveller, in which time travel was central to its premise. In any case, it’s safe to say that in the latter 2010’s the ban was no longer being actively enforced, and in 2024 time travel was on the agenda again in Escape from the 21^st Century. Director Yang Li isn’t taking any chances though, so in a similar style to how China’s straight-to-streaming action genre tends to set itself in fictional Southeast Asian countries, here Li takes it one step further and sets the story on a completely different planet. Planet K to be precise, although the only giveaway that we’re not on Earth is the hazy sight of multiple moons in the daytime sky, and a passing reference to how the days are only 12 hours long rather than 24.

This isn’t the first time for Li to visit the theme of time travel, with Escape from the 21^st Century marking his third feature length production, having debuted in 2011 with Lee’s Adventure. The story of a gamer who comes across a game capable of opening a door to the past, it was a remake of his own short film from 2009, and considering the year it came out, perhaps was also partly responsible for the time travel ban! Li played it safe for his sophomore feature in 2018 with the coming-of-age comedy Nuts, so it’s good to see him return to a more creative venture with his latest.

Set in 1999, the plot focuses on a trio of 18 years old friends played by Li Zhou Zhao (The Wandering Earth), Chen Yi Chen (Love Death and Cat) and Kang Qi Xuan (Successor). After getting into a brawl with another gang from their school, they all end up in a lake along with a mix of colorful chemicals that have spilled from a bunch of oil drums amidst the scuffle, the result of which first sees Zhou Zhao realise he can travel 20 years into the future by sneezing. Leaving his 18-year-old body behind in 1999, in 2019 he’s now played by Song Yang (The Sword Identity), and discovers he’s a gun for hire working for an illegal organ trafficking syndicate.

Also able to travel back to 1999 via a sneeze, soon Yi Chen and Qi Xuan follow suit. Yi Chen’s future self is played by Zhang Ruo Yun (Sky on Fire), a journalist looking to uncover the same organ trafficking ring that Yang is involved in, while the chubby Qi Xuan finds himself played by Leon Lee (Dragon Hunter), now a ripped 30-something who’s become the alpha of the trio. Most significantly, Lee also finds himself in a relationship with Zhu Yamanzi (An Elephant Sitting Still), who back in 1999 was in a relationship with the 18-year-old Zhou Zhao that they thought would last forever. Something clearly went wrong along the way, with the Qi Xuan back in 1999 hesitant to tell Zhou Zhao that in the future he’s in a relationship with the love of his friend’s life, and in 2019 Ruo Yun’s investigation gets ever closer to uncovering that his friend Yang is now involved in illegal organ trafficking.

The complications the future hold may give some indication as to the origin of the title, and while many sites have made comparisons between Escape from the 21^st Century and Everything Everywhere All at Once (although here there’s definitely no lesbians, something that not even setting the story on another planet would fly with the Chinese censorship board!), these are for the most part surface level. If any comparison had to be made, then I was most reminded of Korean director Lee Myung-se’s distinctive visual style in the likes of 1999’s Nowhere to Hide and 2005’s Duelist. It’s safe to say that Li’s latest is the most hyper stylised piece of cinema of recent years, with an almost non-stop barrage of cinematic techniques used to tell the story. From the different aspect ratios used between 1999 and 2019, to animation being mixed in with live action, the narrative propels itself forward in a visual kaleidoscope of color.

There’s so much happening onscreen at any one time that Escape from the 21^st Century feels like a prime candidate to have the accusation of style over substance levelled against it, however behind the sensory assault the story that Li’s chosen to tell has a surprising amount of heart. Ruo Yun finds himself falling for the journalist he’s partnered with, played with a feisty zest by a scene stealing Zhong Chuxi (The Knight of Shadows: Between Yin and Yang), with the ideals of his 18-year-old self clashing with the reality of life 20 years later. A scene where she puts on a pair of headphones before fighting off a group of attackers is a highlight, with her usage of the headphones explained by her disliking the “sound of men screaming”, and the script gives her some of the best lines.

Similarly the inevitable conflict that builds between Yang and Lee is well handled, with a fight that breaks out between the pair creatively constructed so that it plays out across both 2019 and 1999 (where Zhou Zhao and Qi Xuan take over). Amidst the internal strife of the trio, Li smartly offers up a bad guy for the good guys to rail against in the form of Wu Xiaoliang (Brotherhood of Blades 2), playing a character in 2019 that’s part of the same organ trafficking ring that Yang is working for. He makes for a suitably imposing figure, with the origin of his powers linking back to the trios lives in 1999, but perhaps more importantly, his presence offers up the opportunity for a final fight set to Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out for a Hero. It’s the final fight soundtrack you never knew you needed, but within the context of the world Escape from the 21^st Century takes place in, somehow it just works.

There’s a welcome humorous streak in Li’s latest that also works in balancing the zany tone of what unfolds onscreen. I’m not usually a fan of movies that choose to be intentionally self-aware, but after an adrenaline pumping training montage of the main trio, when it cuts to Zhung Chuxi straight after announcing “What a useless montage” directly to camera, it was impossible not to laugh. An ongoing joke around how Ruo Yun has a small brain similarly has a killer pay-off, and Li even manages to ensure a censorship board approved message is weaved into the finale via a laugh, with a damning indictment of what can happen to you if you become addicted to pornography.

In the end Escape from the 21^st Century acts as a reminder that only what we do in the present has the ability to set out the path to the future, so we should strive to be better versions of ourselves, something that’s relatable to anyone regardless of culture. The fact that it’s chosen to be told through a mix of bag pipes, kamikaze ravens, the threat of a microwaved cat, a scientist with a constantly steaming head, and references to Streetfighter II, all come together to make Li’s latest his most distinctive work yet. Perhaps most notably, it’s a sign that even within an industry where a multitude of restrictions need to be navigated around what can and can’t be shown onscreen, with the right amount of creativity and vision, it’s still possible to craft original pieces of cinema that transcend their limitations. Strongly recommended.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8.5/10

The post Escape from the 21st Century (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Hunt the Wicked” Streaming Poster

Director: Suiqiang Huo
Cast: Xie Miao, Andy On, Andrew Lien, Shuang Hong, Sara Aliu, Jing Gu, Rui Han, Jane Wu
Running Time: 102 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The challenge of getting noticed in the Chinese web movie world of giant creature features, ropey sci-fi flicks, and kung-fu throwbacks is a real one, however in the 2020’s Xia Miao has arguably risen to the top of the latter. Titles like Eye for an Eye (and its sequel!), Fight Against Evil (and its sequel!), and multiple turns playing iconic characters like Sun Wukong have seen him keep consistently busy. So much so that he’s already made close to double the number of movies in the 2020’s than his entire filmography of the 2010’s. It’s telling of just how popular the action genre has become in the world of Chinese streaming that it’s fair to say Miao even has some competition – notably Fan Siu Wong (arguably the pioneer when it comes to HK kung-fu alumni turning to Chinese steaming content) and Ashton Chen (who, like Miao, was also a child star).

Hunt the Wicked is the latest dose of web movie action to star Miao (and I say that tentatively, since these productions come out so quickly that, by the time this review is published, there may already be another one), and in it he’s given co-star status alongside Andy On. An actor who’s similarly tapped into the action genre safe haven that platforms like iQIYI provide for HK action stalwarts, On is a rare case of a performer who continues to find success both on the big screen and in the world of streaming. Balancing roles in big budget productions like 100 Yards and Ride On alongside headlining streaming titles like Blind War and The Grey Men, it’s the latter that allows for 2 of Hong Kong action cinema’s most recognisable faces to share the screen together.

The plot involves Miao’s cop on the trail a drug manufacturing gang who are making a dangerous new drug called “spider ice”. While the higher ups are keen to paint a picture of the drug being made overseas and imported, Miao suspects it’s being manufactured closer to home, and all indications point to a sashimi loving criminal played by Andy On. Such is his love of sashimi, that his weapon of choice is a sashimi knife that he keeps on a rope, so when he’s not using it to feed himself slices of raw salmon, he uses it like a rope dart. There’s an idea for a franchise in there somewhere, in which the villain uses a utensil associated with their favorite food as their weapon of choice – pizza slicers, ice-cream scoops, crab crackers – the possibilities are endless.

In any case, crab crackers would be off the menu for Hunt the Wicked, since it’s explained that in the city the story unfolds in “no one’s eating the shrimp and fish because of the outdated sewage system.” Wait, doesn’t Andy On spend all of his time eating sashimi?  Yes, but this is a web movie, you shouldn’t be paying that much attention! It’s also the city that makes for another of Hunt the Wicked’s curiosities, one that I always find to offer up some low-level intrigue. In short web movies can get away with much more than mainstream productions in the Chinese film industry, where any movie is subject to passing a strict censorship board before its approved for screening. Elements like bad guys who aren’t completely bad, and good guys who aren’t completely good, are strictly off the table, however web movies have seemingly found a loophole in the system.

Usually setting themselves in a fictional country, to see what they’ve come up with has become half the fun of watching them. Here it’s Wusuli, and it contains of all the expected oddness from a city found in these type of movies – everyone speaks in either Chinese or horrendously dubbed English, all signage and documentation is written in English, and there are references to other strangely named cities like Manula (presumably the same Manula mentioned in Blind War!). The result of course, is that when Miao’s suspicions prove to be correct and the drugs turn out to be made locally, it’s ok – because Wusuli isn’t China, a country where an activity like drug manufacturing could never happen! My favourite bizarre “only in a Chinese web movie” moment occurred though when one of Miao’s colleagues invites him to a movie, and upon presenting the ticket it turns out to be for 1996’s From Dusk Till Dawn!

Directed by Huo Suiqiang, Hunt the Wicked marks the 3^rd time for him to collaborate with Andy On, having first come together on 2022’s Blind War, and then again on 2023’s The Comeback (and with a 4^th in the pipeline in the form of The Sixth Robber). Having made his directorial debut in 2017 with Twin Detective Suiqiang is already a veteran of the web movie scene with 14 titles under his belt, and when it comes to his collaborations with On it’s Long Zhao who’s become his action choreographer of choice. According to English language sources, the 3 collaborations between Suiqiang and On (along with the Yuen Qiu and Philip Ng starring Second Life from 2024, which was also directed by Suiqiang) are all the credits to Zhao’s name, however despite being a relative newcomer the action still delivers for the most part.

An early fight between Miao and On (which is really their only fight – worth mentioning to manage expectations of those waiting for a Miao versus On finale) is a highlight, with Miao wielding a sledgehammer attached to a chain up against On’s sashimi knife on a rope. There’s some welcome creativity in the choreography, with the CGI assistance given to the sledgehammer successfully conveying its impact. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for when there’s any exchange that becomes open handed, which is usually my favorite type of onscreen combat. The issue isn’t so much in the choreography itself, more so that it’s painfully obvious there isn’t much power behind the hits, and while this can often be compensated for by cranking up the sound effects, here Suiqiang has opted for the ‘soft’ sound design, which only exasperates the issue.

Thankfully most of the action is either done with weapons or relies on the good old car chase. A brief fight that sees Miao facing off against a group of electric trident wielding attackers reminded me of a similar scene from 1997’s Drive, which saw Mark Dacascos facing off against a similar group, just swap out the electric tridents for electric cattle prods. Similarly a raid that sees Miao and On teamed up against a small army of attackers is also effectively done, even though there are a few too many Shaw Brothers-esque moments, where lackeys are left busying themselves in the background by waving their weapon back and forth rather than actually attacking.

There is one fight that’s criminally mistreated, with Miao fending off an attacker while trying to save an injured colleague, which he does by telling his colleague to recite the team’s favorite meals so that they don’t lose consciousness. Watching a fight scene set to a soundtrack of a weak voice saying stuff like “spaghetti bolognese, beef curry, duck leg with rice….” in the background didn’t quite hit the intended dramatic note it was probably intended to, instead coming across as unintentionally amusing.

Overall though for anyone craving a simple and undemanding action fix, Hunt the Wicked should temporarily scratch the itch. For true web movie aficionados Suiqiang even throws in a cheeky nod to On’s character in Blind War, when he visits a police station where Miao is being held by pretending to be his blind lawyer. While not quite on the same level as the Xie Miao starring Eye for an Eye series, or web-movie action filmmaker extraordinaire Qin Ping Fei, there’s enough fists, feet, bullets, and car crashes to keep any fan of action cinema entertained. For everyone else, the question of if the residents of Wusuli will ever go back to eating the cities shrimp and fish should be one that keeps them watching to the end.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

The post Hunt the Wicked (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

Shaolin Boxers | Blu-ray (Eureka)

Director: Huang Ta
Cast: James Tin, Lee Tin-ying, Li Min-lang, Chu Mu, Leung Tin, Tien Mi, Hon Kwok-Choi, Chu Mu, Choi Sui-Cheng, Cheung Chok-Chow, Mars
Running Time: 78 min.

By Ian Whittle

“The only problem with James Tien seems to be his weight. When we first saw him on screen he was slim and muscular but of late his girth seems to have increased somewhat. Perhaps his marriage early in 1974 had something to do with it. The studio claims he does not drink much but home cooking can spoil the form of a kung fu fighter.”

– Clash Magazine, 1975

Ouch!

James Tien is probably one of kung fu cinema’s big enigmas – since retiring in 1993 after Blade of Fury, he does not appear to have given a single interview on his career. The impression some film critics/historians like to cultivate is of him seething away at Bruce Lee having stolen his thunder, much in the manner that we know Bela Lugosi did on Boris Karloff. But it would be nice to think that Tien is happily enjoying retirement and catching up on watching movies. Lord knows that is what I’d do with my retirement!

Tien was originally the star of new studio Golden Harvest’s first contemporary martial arts movie, The Big Boss, but during production he found himself relegated to sacrificial lamb in favour of Bruce Lee. And this was probably for the best – The Big Boss without Lee as the star would likely have seen Golden Harvest bankrupt fairly quickly. Tien consequently was in a fair number of GH’s films, but very much as support or antagonist to the leads – chiefly Lee and Jimmy Wang Yu. And by the end of the 70s he was support/antagonist to Jackie Chan in three films for Lo Wei, before spending most of the 80s as a busy character actor.

So The Shaolin Boxers is quite the oddity – a James Tien starring vehicle. Well, sort of…

Although Golden Harvest’s logo appears at the beginning, it would appear this is an independent production from Jia’s Motion Picture Company. Whose logo appears to be painted on a bedsheet, whilst GH’s Raymond Chow is noticeably absent from the credits. Not a good sign…

1974 was when Shaw Brothers began their Shaolin Cycle films, focusing on the destruction of the Shaolin Temple (allegedly; it turns out that only was there probably not a Southern Shaolin Temple, but that the Northern temple was restored by the Manchus!). Like Joseph Kuo’s Shaolin Kung Fu of the same year, The Shaolin Boxers doesn’t have anything to do with the temple or the legendary masters, but rather with some unknown martial artists who are apparently practicing Shaolin martial arts in what appears to be the early 20^th century.

As a tournament is to be held between the martial artists of the Dragon and North Gate villages, which will decide the fate of the area, tensions and feuds flair up as Dragon fighters Lin (James Tien) and Shao Xiong (Lee Tin-ying) come into contact with a sleazy gangster Lei Biao (Li Min-lang) who is in cahoots with North Gate headman He Rong (Chu Mu). And it turns out Lei Biao raped Lin’s mother when Lin was a child… in front of said child, which is probably why the BBFC gave this an 18 for the recent UK Blu-ray (same rating they gave Dragon Lord back in 2003!)

This is a rather undwheming plot, and an underwhelming production, clearly shot on the cheap in the HK sticks. Where it does score is the very top-notch fight choreography by future HK action movie big cheese Ching Siu-tung, who incorporates a lot of stylish kicking and acrobatics into the fights. As with The Big Boss, the filmmakers seem to be trying out James Tien against another leading man, Lee Tin-ying in this case – here cutting between their fights with different characters at the same time, so as Tien is having his tournament match, Lee is fighting elsewhere against the slime-balls who are trying to rape his girlfriend. Two leading men, neither particularly up to the task of carrying a film, and they are not helped by the dull villain played by Li Min-lang, who is a convincing sleaze but not very intimidating as a martial arts villain – he is fast enough but too scrawny. So the idea that two strapping young men can only beat him with the aid of perennial scrawny clown Hon Kwok-choi is probably the biggest nail in the coffin for James Tien becoming a movie star – the film doesn’t give him a chance!

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 4/10 

The post Shaolin Boxers, The (1974) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

The Monkey Goes West | Blu-ray (Imprint)

Director: Ho Meng Hua
Cast: Yueh Hua, Ho Fan, Pang Pang, Tien Shun, Fan Mei Sheng, Kao Pao-Shu, Lan Wei-Lieh, Li Yin, Diana Chang Chung-Wen, Mao Wei
Running Time: 112 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Having gotten into Asian cinema in the late 1990’s, my first exposure to the phenomena of Journey to the West mania came in the 2010’s. For most of the decade it felt like a big screen adaptation of the 16^th century novel was never more than a few months away – from Soi Cheang’s Monkey King trilogy (2014 – 2018), Stephen Chow’s double bill of Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013) and Journey to the West: Demon Chapter (2017), Derek Kwok’s 2017 adaptation Wu Kong, to a big budget 3D animated feature in the form of The Monkey King: Uproar in Heaven (2012). That’s before you begin to count the literal bombardment of web-movies (easily pushing into double figures) that also took the tale as their inspiration.

Looking at the bigger picture though, it quickly becomes clear that movie adaptations of Journey to the West have never really gone away. Since the first known version in 1927 called Journey to the West: The Spider’s Cave, the tale of a monk travelling to India to retrieve a Buddhist scripture has been having the spotlight stolen out from under him for close to 100 yearsby one of his travelling companions, namely – Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. One of the most famous adaptations came in 1966, when the Shaw Brothers studio took up director Ho Meng-Hua (The Flying Guillotine, Shaolin Hand Lock) on his idea to bring the tale to the screen for the first time under the famous Shaw Brothers logo. Released in January (just 2 months after the Josephine Siao starring Monkey Saint Teases the Fairy of Flowers!), The Monkey Goes West proved to be a hit.

Released a year before Chang Cheh’s iconic One-Armed Swordsman, a production which shifted HK action cinema into a more violent and male orientated direction, The Monkey Goes West very much feels like a movie treading the border between the traditions of old, and the direction cinema was heading towards. This can be seen almost from the get-go with the top billing of Diana Chang, one of the most sought-after starlets of the 1950’s and 1960’s, for which The Monkey Goes West was one of her last roles before retiring from the film industry the following year. Despite having what essentially amounts to an extended cameo, the fact that pre-1960’s Hong Kong cinema was primarily dominated by female actresses (and their names carried the most star power) sees her name take the top spot. The real star of the show of course, as the title indicates, is the Monkey King himself.

The character proved to be one of two breakout roles in 1966 for Yueh Hua, with the other being cast in King Hu’s Come Drink with Me. Still a relative newcomer to the film industry, his dancing background saw him as a glorified extra in the likes of The Dancing Millionairess (1964) and The Lark (1965), but it was also this background which saw him chosen to play the sprightly Monkey King. The success of The Monkey Goes West would see a total of 3 sequels ushered into production, with one released later the same year (Princess Iron Fan), and the others being released in 1967 (The Cave of the Silken Web) and 1968 (The Land of Many Perfumes) respectively. However in a move that would act as a precursor to Donnie Yen’s decision after playing the same role in 2014’s The Monkey King, Hua would only return to the role for Princess Iron Fan, siting the makeup routine as being too much of a hassle to go through any further.

The other actors who make up the core foursome of any Journey to the West tale – the righteous monk, the gluttonous Pigsy, and the dependable Friar Sandy – were more game, and would maintain their roles throughout the sequels. The plot of The Monkey Goes West can basically be surmised as the origin story of how the 4 come to be together, with the monk meeting the others on his journey, and the various mishaps they encounter along the way, giving the narrative a road movie like feel. Ho Fan (Vermillion Door, Madam Slender Plum) plays the righteous monk, and somewhat ironically is most notable for transitioning into a director of Category III sleaze once he retired from acting in 1973 (including the 1991 classic Hidden Desire). Meanwhile Pang Pang (Killer Darts, The Water Margin) plays Pigsy, and Tien Shun (Tiger Boy, Too Late for Love) plays Friar Sandy.

The location shooting in Taiwan offers up some stunning scenery, which is mixed in with the Shaw Brothers lavish indoor sets, all of which are complimented by some charmingly old school special effects work. While rarely acknowledged for it, as a director Ho Meng-Hua helmed some of the Shaw Brothers more ambitious (or at least out there!) gene efforts that incorporated special effects in the 1970’s, with his name attributed to the likes of The Mighty Peking Man and Oily Maniac. Here we get everything from rear screen projection (the entire underwater finale is set against the backdrop of a fishtank), super imposition, some slightly clumsy wirework, and possibly the origin of the atrocious orange wigs from Spiritual Kung Fu. Sure it looks dated now, and some of the underwater costumes definitely have a “whoops, we’ve got 10 cents left, just get whatever you can” (yes, even for 1966) feel to them, but it all adds to the charm.

Other parts may possibly feel a little too quaint for modern audiences. At this point in Chinese cinema it was still considered quite normal for certain scenes to be sung in the Chinese Opera style, even if the production itself wasn’t considered to be a musical, such was the tradition so embedded in the cinematic output of the era. So we occasionally get conversation exchanges sung rather than spoken, although there admittedly is one musical number, the subject of which is how delicious the monk’s flesh is going to be. It sounds much more macabre on paper than how it comes across onscreen. In other scenes though it’s possible to see the modern style of filmmaking beginning to encroach. At one point the Green Snake Demon attempts to seduce Pang Pang by offering her 3 daughters for marriage, a scene which sees them disrobe to expose some shot from behind nudity, something that was unthinkable just a few years prior.

However it’s the brief bursts of action which offer the strongest indicator of how The Monkey Goes West had one foot in the future. While an action choreographer (criminally) isn’t credited, there’s a sprinkling of fight scenes that fall into the classic SB category of one versus many. The fluidity and speed of the action feels surprisingly ahead of its time, with Yueh Hua jumping and somersaulting around staff in hand fending off multiple opponents. In many ways the grounded nature of the choreography reminded me of Chang Cheh’s Journey to the West: Go West to Subdue Demons, which came 25 years later in 1991, and featured Tung Chi-Wa as the Monkey King (and I dare say features similar effects work to the 1966 outing!). Unlike Chang Cheh’s version though here the action is of a family friendly variety, which applies to the production as a whole (yes, even the brief sight of some bear butts won’t cause any offence for young eyes).

From a purely historical perspective, for fans of Hong Kong action cinema The Monkey Goes West also features the onscreen debut of a certain stuntman and member of the Jackie Chan Stuntman Association by the name of Mars, here just 11 years old and briefly turning up towards the end as a sand demon. However The Monkey Goes West serves as much more than just a historical snapshot of where Hong Kong cinema was at before it gradually became more modernised. Even almost 60 years on from its release it remains a genuinely enjoyable road movie that, by choosing to make its core focus the story of how the main foursome come together, proves that sometimes the simple approach is best. As a throwback to a time when big budget fantasy spectacles had to be made without any assistance from CGI, The Monkey Goes West is a refreshing journey to an era that we’ll never see again.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post Monkey Goes West, The (1966) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

The Snake Prince | Blu-ray (Imprint)

Director: Lo Chen
Cast: Lin Chen Chi, Ti Lung, Helen Ko Ti-Hua, Fan Lei, Wong Yu, Ng Hong-Sang, Wong Ching-Ho, Ching Miao, Leung Seung-Wan, Lin Wei-Tu
Running Time: 93 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

When it comes to 1970’s Shaw Brothers oddities there are a few titles that will likely spring to mind. Whether it be the studios riff on King Kong with The Mighty Peking Man, venturing into mutant territory with The Oily Maniac, or taking a crack at the tokusatsu genre with The Super Infra Man, all come with their own distinctive charms of the era. One production which seems to have flew under the radar though for fans of the bizarre is 1976’s The Snake Prince, an unlikely genre mishmash of Chinese folklore, musical, kaiju action, horror, and even a little eroticism and kung-fu thrown in just for good measure. If you were looking for the Shaw Brothers movie that has everything, then The Snake Prince could well be the one that ticks all the boxes.

Helmed by Lo Chen, as a director he was one of the Shaw Brothers most prolific filmmakers in the 1960’s working outside of the studio’s martial arts flick factory. Adept at making a wide range of genres, Chen’s output spanned everything from comedies (The Tryst), musicals (The Shepherd Girl), dramas (Torrent of Desire), and Chinese Opera (Comedy of Mismatches). By the time the 1970’s rolled around Chen increasingly worked for other studios as well as the Shaw Brothers and, like so many directors, inevitably found himself directing a handful of martial arts flicks thanks to the genres rising popularity. Whether they be wuxia’s like 1971’s The Mad Killer (notable for being the choreography debut of Yuen Woo-Ping) or gritty slices of kung-fu like 1974’s The Concrete Jungle, it seemed Chen was never comfortable as a kung-fu movie director, so in many ways The Snake Prince represents him making a return to what he does best.

Opening with a solemn Lin Chen-Chi (The Spiritual Boxer, The Battle Wizard) leading the members of her drought-stricken village in song to ask the Gods for rain, the first impression may be one of a serious drama retelling a Chinese legend. However that’s before the funky electric guitars kicks in, and we basically spend the first 15 minutes getting down in the Chinese folklore equivalent of a tiki bar, complete with scorpion bowls and straws. Of course any village that features Lin Chen-Chi sauntering around in song is likely to draw attention, and sure enough three snake spirits from the nearby Snake Mountain slither down to check things out, handily able to take on human form through thousands of years of practice. The Snake Prince of the title is played by Ti Lung (The Blood Brothers, Four Riders), flanked by his loyal followers Wong Yu (Executioners from Shaolin, Dirty Ho) and Ng Hong-Sang (The Daredevils, The Proud Youth).

Unable to resist the sound of 70’s funk (who could?), the trio decide to get in on the action, and after a couple of synchronised song and dance numbers, Lung finds himself helplessly enamoured with Chen-Chi. This particular version of the folk tale, of which there are a few, takes its inspiration from The Snake and Three Sisters, which sees Chen-Chi’s father venture into the forbidden Snake Mountain to ask the snake spirits if they could put an end to the drought. Lung agrees to use his “snake magic” to give them access to their water source, but on the condition the father grants permission for him to marry Chen-Chi, after which you can bet we’ll get to see a very different kind of “snake magic”. While Chen-Chi herself is happy to marry Lung (even after learning he’s a snake), everyone else, from the villagers to her 2 older sisters, are resistant to the idea, and gradually the human world begins to threaten their happiness together.

The best way to describe watching The Snake Prince is to say that it’s a bit of head trip. The role is a complete departure for Ti Lung, who’d star in much more familiar fare like Chang Cheh’s Shaolin Temple and Chor Yuen’s The Magic Blade during the same year, and who’s closest experience to appearing in a musical was a blink and you’ll miss it musician cameo in 1970’s The Singing Killer. His actual participation in the song and dance numbers (which, to be honest, mostly disappear after the initial 30 minutes) is limited, meaning his dance moves are few enough to not be held up to too much scrutiny. Appearing far more frequently is his scaly reptilian makeup, which definitely doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, although there’s a certain charm to be had in the old school nature of the effects.

While the stuck-on snakeskin may be blatantly obvious, the three gigantic snakes fare much better, seemingly created from a lot of rubber and some rudimentary animatronics. They also take centre stage for what essentially becomes an all-out human versus kaiju finale that becomes surprisingly bloody. A number of extras meet a grizzly demise, whose facial expressions so far have sometimes struggled to hide their confusion at why they’ve been asked to sing and sway in the background, versus the usual routine of waving around a weapon in a non-descript fashion. From being set on fire, falling off a cliff, repeatedly rammed into a rockface, to being eaten alive, all the while blood is liberally splattered everywhere and eyeballs are impaled with arrows. The last 10 minutes of The Snake Prince almost feel like director Chen was visited by Chang Cheh for a quick masterclass on orchestrating bloody onscreen mayhem.

Which brings us to the question of exactly who the audience is (or was) for The Snake Prince. For the first two third’s proceedings are for the most part family friendly, there’s even some comedic kung-fu thrown in, however in the last third things start to get rather raunchy and violent. On their wedding night Lung confesses to Chen-Chi that he can only have sex in snake form, leading to one of the most bizarre snake human sex scenes ever committed to film (although I’m not sure how much competition the scene actually has). Intimacy coordinators would certainly have earned their pay cheque with that one. However it’s the introduction of Chen-Chi’s 2 sisters that really begins to derail Lung and Chen-Chi’s marital bliss as, upon seeing the riches of Snake Mountain, both attempt to seduce Lung without a thought for their younger sister.

As the middle sister Ko Ti-Hua (The Sugar Daddies, Virgins of the Seven Seas) is a particular highlight. I confess I haven’t seen many musicals so am far from an expert on the genre, but from those I have seen, The Snake Prince is the first that offers up a musical number completely in the nude. Knowing that Lung is in the vicinity of the bathing area, Ti-Hua de-robes to take a bath, busting out a sultry musical number to grab Lung’s attention while in her birthday suit. She also proves to be the most ambitious in her desire to replace Chen-Chi, leading to her interruption of Chen-Chi’s giving birth resulting in a particularly traumatic birth scene, one of those that falls into that distinctive category of “only in Hong Kong cinema.”

It is worth pointing out that, as with almost any Hong Kong production from this era that involves snakes, for those averse to animal cruelty there are certain moments when you’ll want to look away. While there’s nothing on the level of Calamity of Snakes (but then again, what is?) which would come 7 years later, or even Shaw Brothers own The Killer Snakes from a couple of years prior, there’s still a few instances of snake trampling on display and threats involving fire.

Subjectively answering the question of if The Snake Prince is a good movie is a tricky one. Throwing seemingly every genre that you can think of at the screen, and wrapping it up in occasional outbursts of song and dance, feels like it shouldn’t work, but perhaps thanks to the fact it’s been aged by almost 50 years and they just don’t make them like this anymore, more often than not it does. For a dose of snake-skin mid-riff bearing waist coats, and Ti Lung passionately singing about embroidered handkerchiefs and face cream, The Snake Prince is the movie you’ve been looking for.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post Snake Prince, The (1976) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Raiders of Buddhist Kung Fu” Theatrical Poster

Director: Godfrey Ho 
Cast: Gordon Liu, Wang Ryong, Kim Ki-Joo, Seol Ji-Yeon, Kwak Eun-Gyung, Baek Hwang-Gi, John Kelly, Choe Moo-Woong, Lung Ho-Yu, Park Hui-Jin, Lee Hwa-Jin
Running Time: 90 min. 

By Ian Whittle

So I picked up the DVD assuming from the cover still of Gordon Liu in his usual monk attire that this was going to be another “Gordon from Shaolin” by way of a Korea flick, but once again I have been fooled… here Gordon is the villain! A warlord in what may be Republic era China, but it’s not very clear. And I don’t think Shaolin came into it at all!

So my thoughts on this mess….

• IFD used the Star Wars music for their damn logo!
• Gordon Liu is very miscast as a very milquetoast villain, who seems way too fond of his hot sister. I find it very hard to believe the boyish Liu is supposed to be a powerful warlord here. He’s not helped by the weird old man voice given to non-sequiturs they give him – “Arrest everyone….traitors!”
• An unexplained Roy Horan/Bob Baker/Wallish/ gwailo
• A rather repulsive hunchback traitor, disfigured with a large bright red port-wine stain AND a large cold-sore…
• Speaking of cold, even for a Korean film this looks freezing! Several of the interior scenes show the smokey breath flying out of people’s mouths like a fog machine!
• The old master is very trendy; what’s with his covid mask!?
• The masked monkey fighter on the other hand…
• Ooh, the V-Ger music from Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• Gordon looks very funny riding into battle with what looks like a dead squirrel on his head
• The hero fights Gordon on the ice, bare-chested! Brrrrr….
• Gordon is winning easily with his staff (or “bar” as the dubber calls it), so of course he then throws it away to fight bare-handed….
• Eagles ex machina
• I take back some of the mean things I said about Fury in Shaolin Temple…

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 2/10

The post Raiders of Buddhist Kung Fu (1981) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants” Theatrical Poster

Director: Tsui Hark
Cast: Xiao Zhan, Zhuang Dafei, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Sabina Zhuang, Bayaertu, Alan Aruna, Ada Choi, Wu Hsing-kuo, Hu Jun, Zhang Wenxin, Zhao Shuai
Running Time: 146 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Novelist Jin Yong’s Legend of the Condor Heroes has been adapted countless times for both the big and small screens since it was first serialised from 1957 – 1959, with each one having to grapple with how to best portray such a sprawling tale on film. Chang Cheh attempted to cram it across 4 movies with The Brave Archer series, while TVB’s classic adaptation in 1983 was spread across 59 episodes. Others chose to adapt parts of the tale, like Wong Kar-Wai’s 1994 wuxia deconstruction Ashes of Time, or take inspiration from it like Wong Jing did in 1993’s The Kung Fu Cult Master. In 2025 auteur Tsui Hark has opted to go for the same approach as Wong Kar-Wai with Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants, taking the rarely adapted latter part of the story where battlefield warfare breaks out between the Mongols, the villainous Jin, and the Song Empire.

It’s a bold move, considering most adaptations tend to focus on the martial arts mastery that the main characters seek, so by largely eschewing this onscreen staple Hark risks alienating those who come to an adaptation of Legend of the Condor Heroes with certain expectations. However it also shouldn’t be a surprise from a director like Tsui Hark, a filmmaker who’s consistently remained a distinctive voice in the world of Hong Kong and Chinese cinema since his debut with The Butterfly Murders in 1979. Despite remaining active in the 2020’s – he contributed a segment to the omnibus Septet – The Story of Hong Kong in 2020, and co-directed The Battle of Lake Changjin and its sequel alongside Chen Kaige and Dante Lam in 2021 and 2022 respectively – it feels like it’s been a while since we’ve seen the real Tsui Hark.

To re-visit the last time he sat in the director’s chair solo for a feature length production you have to go back 7 years to 2018, when he helmed the 3^rd entry in his Detective Dee series with Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings. To that end it’s a pleasure to see a Tsui Hark movie back on the big screen again, and LotCh:TG (as I’ll refer to it from here on in) shows he clearly hasn’t lost his touch for envisioning grand scale sequences that deserve to be seen in the cinema. Kicking off with the seemingly obligatory novel length spiel that these productions come with (see also Creation of the Gods: Kingdom of Storms), once up to speed we meet our main character, played by Xiao Zhan (Jade Dynasty, The Rookies). Those familiar with the character of Guo Jing will be used to seeing him train in the martial arts, but here he’s already a master, and is on a mission to find the love of his life.

Played by Sabina Zhuang (Johnny Keep Walking!, Be My Friend), when the 5 masters who trained Zhan turn up dead on Peach Blossom Island, he blames Zhuang’s father Heretic East for their murders, for whom the island is his home, and parts ways with his beloved, unable to forgive Zhuang for her fathers deeds. However when he learns that Zhuang’s father wasn’t on the island at the time of their murder, Zhan realises he’s made a mistake to end their relationship, and roams the lands looking for her in the hope they can rekindle their romance. It’s during his search that the land falls into turmoil, with the Jin’s looking to occupy more territory, and the Mongols led by Genghis Khan (played by Mongolian actor Baya’ertu – Genghis Khan, Close to Eden) firmly opposed to their aggressive expansion. Bear in mind, all of this is in the first 15 minutes!

On top of everything, there’s a crazed martial arts expert called Venom West (played by a scene stealing Tony Leung Ka-Fai – League of Gods, The Myth) who’s after a sacred scroll called the Novem Force, the same source of Zhan and Zhuang’s martial arts powers. In short, there’s a lot going on, with warring tribes, crazed power-hungry martial arts villains, and family strife, all wrapped up in the tale of a solemn lover looking for the girl he unjustly dumped. Despite only adapting a small part of Legend of the Condor Heroes, Hark crams a lot into the story, so much so it’s hardly surprising that it clocks in with a runtime of 145 minutes. For the most part it flies by, with Hark filming on location in Mongolia, and even having the characters speak Mongolian to maintain a level of authenticity.

Interestingly for the English language speakers watching LotCh:TG the subtitles have been written in what can best be described as a mix of Shakespeare meets Yoda, with lines like “Escape my grasp, you shall not!” and “Is there aught that is real?” giving some idea of what to expect. Whether it’s a true reflection of the style of language that’s actually being spoken I can’t say, but at some point you find yourself buying into the grandiose style of translation the subtitles go for.

While many adaptations tend to emphasise the simple nature of Guo Jing, thankfully the part of the story Hark has chosen to adapt avoids such traits, with Xiao Zhan instead portraying him as steadfastly righteous and stoic. He may not be the most morally complex character to grace the screen, but it fits the story Hark has chosen to tell. It’s a portrayal that’s offset by Zhuang’s role as Huang Rong, in which she perfectly captures the smarts of the character, none more so that when she finds herself staying in the same Mongol camp that Zhan is also a part of, and aids his battle strategies while staying out of sight. As the central pair they’re perfectly cast (although there’ll no doubt be Legend of the Condor Heroes loyalists who’ll disagree), and are complimented by a stellar supporting cast, with a debuting Wenxin Zhang as the daughter of Genghis Khan who Zhan has been bequeathed too being a particular standout.

Notably LotCh:TG marks the first time for Tsui Hark to be credited as action choreographer, working alongside Chen Chao (who choreographed 2023’s Hidden Blade), and there’s certainly no shortage of it. Martial arts purists will likely want to stay away, as the action here is purely of an ‘exaggerated wirework while throwing energy blasts at each other’ variety, however its imbued with a level of creative energy that still makes it an enjoyable thrill to watch. The extensive CGI effects aren’t quite to the standard of the previously mentioned Creation of the Gods series, even with involvement from Korea’s VFX studio Dexter (the Along with the Gods movies), but for the most part they’re of a high quality. If anything, the swirls of energy that surround Zhan when he engages in battle feel like an unintentionally charming throwback to when Hong Kong first started dabbling in CGI effects in late 1990’s efforts like The Storm Riders.

While obviously a Mainland production, there are few directors left who can still bring the Hong Kong old guard and Mainland talent pool together like Tsui Hark, and witnessing a practically unrecognizable Tony Leung Ka-Fai appear as an eye bulging all powerful madman for the finale is the undeniable highlight. Chewing scenery like nobody’s business, Ka-Fai injects the kind of unhinged manic energy into proceedings that hark back (no pun intended) to Hark’s new wave wuxia classics like Swordsman, and the faceoff between him and Zhan strikes the right balance of wirework and special effects.

Overall Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants shares a lot of its DNA with Hark’s 2011 wuxia Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, in that they both go for a mix of over the top spectacle and sprawling stories, but here Hark trumps his earlier effort by paying as much attention to the narrative as he does the set pieces. Considering how much more material is out there to adapt from Legend of the Condor Heroes (including a pair of follow-up novels!), if Hark decides to return to the material it would be cause for celebration.  Whether you’re a fan of sprawling wuxia epics or the Legend of the Condor Heroes novel, there should be something to enjoy in this ambitious adaptation. For everyone else, we get Tony Leung Ka-Fai flicking a horse 100 feet into the air. What more could you want?

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10

The post Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants (2025) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance” Theatrical Poster

Director: Bingjia Yang
Cast: Xie Miao, Yang Enyou, Huang Tao, Kuishan Pei, Pema Jyad, Fengchao Liu, Jampa Tseten
Running Time: 90 min.

By Paul Bramhall

In my review for 2022’s Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman I expressed the hope that we’d see a “continued collaboration between Yang, Qin, and Miao in the future”, referring to director Bingjia Yang, choreographer Pengfei Qin, and star Xie Miao. Thankfully we didn’t have to wait long, with an unexpected sequel arriving less than 2 years later in the form of Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance. The dynamics in the world of Chinese direct to streaming movies are fast moving, and while I predicted at the time of the original’s release that director Yang could be a talent to look out for in China’s DTV action scene, it’s actually choreographer Pengfei Qin who’s come to the fore.

Stepping into the role of co-director alongside Yang for the Xie Miao starring sequel Fight Against Evil 2 in 2023, its Qin who’s gone on to become the premier director when it comes to China’s straight to streaming action. The likes of 2024’s The Drunken Prodigy, Black Storm, Blade of Fury, and Bodyguard all offer up the kind of no frills mid-budget actioners that used to by synonymous with HK in the 1980’s and early 1990’s (and cranked out at a similar pace!), making the genre his own. Amidst his own directorial efforts, Qin also returned to choreograph EfaE: BV (as I’ll refer to it from here on in), while for Yang the production marks his sophomore feature sitting solo in the director’s chair. Interestingly Yang seems to have switched his focus primarily to screenwriting, penning both the sequel and the original, in addition to more outlandish efforts like 2022’s Mutant Tiger (Xie Miao vs. mutant tigers in the Ming Dynasty!).

It’s a shame, as the world that Chinese DTV encompasses tends to be one that’s populated by one-hit wonder directors, and with this sequel Yang proves the first wasn’t just a fluke. Now with a longer runtime (a whopping 90 minutes compared to the original’s 75 minutes!) and a broader canvas to tell his story on, there’s no point in EfaE: BV where you feel that time is simply ticking over until the next action scene. We meet Miao’s blind bounty hunter wandering into a small town to conduct his latest dealings, where corrupt officials are quelling anyone who threatens to rise up, and poverty plagues the streets. When a young street urchin and her toddler brother witness a sadistic official (played by Huang Tao – Huge Shark, The Killing Angels) massacring a group of rebels, he mercilessly kills the younger brother, leaving the sister (played by Yang Enyou – Lighting Up the Stars, Always Have Always Will) to swear revenge.

If the first Eye for an Eye was a riff on Japan’s Zatoichi (as the character has been for almost any blind swordsman that’s graced the screen in the last 50 years), then the sequel seems to be riffing more of the Lone Wolf and Cub series. Knowing what Miao’s capable of, Enyou begs him to take her under his wing, and although initially reluctant, much like a certain Leon and Mathilda, eventually he agrees to show her the ropes. Movies that feature kids as main characters tend to be hit and miss, with the miss end of the scale being particularly painful, perhaps no better recent example being 2022’s Polar Rescue to prove the point. However here Enyou, who was 10 at the time of its release, nails the role as an innocent child filled with a desire for revenge. While their story arc is entirely predictable, it’s effectively executed, with the bond that develops between the pair feeling like a convincing one.

Complimenting the engaging characters are noticeably superior production values for a straight to streaming movie. A sequence that sees Miao and Enyou clinging onto the side of a cliff after the horse and cart they’re travelling on goes over the edge feels particularly well done, lending a sense of proportion to a genre that can often feel like it’s restricted to a handful of limited locations. The overall sense that Yang really cares about the story he wants to tell extends into the smaller details, like the way the contact who provides Miao with his targets uses a pin to create brail on the wanted posters, allowing Miao to read about who he’s after.

Of course as with any production that sells itself on the promise of some action, it’s the fight scenes that need to deliver if the sequel is really to be viewed as a success. Thankfully the uptick in quality across the board also applies to the choreography, with bones snapped so they protrude from the flesh, and blood gushing out of slit throats, and all of this before the opening title appears onscreen! EfaE: BV is perhaps the goriest example yet of just how much more a straight to streaming movie hosted on platforms like iQIYI and Youku can get away with (including a distinctly un-wuxia like stabbing frenzy by one character, the shock of which gives the narrative a welcome grounding), compared to their more censorship afflicted mainstream counterparts, with blood spilled liberally.

Miao himself continues to prove why he’s at the forefront of the genre, a role which he now has some healthy competition from Ashton Chen (who seems to have become Pengfei Qin’s go-to leading man), clocking in a performance that delivers on both the acting and the action front. Qin orchestrates a couple of excellent close quarters fights, one in a small hut on a lake and another in the vault of a bank, allowing Miao’s blind swordsman to use the confined environments to his advantage. While the action in the original leaned into brief bursts, the sequel allows for more elaborate choreography, striking a pleasing balance between the swift efficiency of the chambara style, and the rhythm that feels like such an integral part of Hong Kong action.

While the editing occasionally feels overly frantic, resulting in disorientation of who’s fighting who, for the most part it serves its purpose of imbuing the action scenes with a sense of urgency and danger. The finale in particular is a highlight, which sees Miao and Enyou team up to take on an army numbering in the hundreds. Fans of 1990’s Hong Kong action cinema will appreciate the call back to Miao’s origins, when as a 10 and 11 year old in 1994 and 1995 respectively he was paired with Jet Li in The New Legend of Shaolin (itself a Hong Kong take on the Lone Wolf and Cub series) and My Father is a Hero. They’re brief, but there’s a few moments in the choreography which are clearly inspired from the Corey Yuen Kwai choreographed classics, and if you’re going to take inspiration from anyone, then the late kung-fu legend is as good a reference as any.

For those who’ve been left wanting by the restrictions on how much violence a mainstream Chinese production can show, the eventual face off between Miao and Huang Tao sees the later meeting his demise in particularly brutal fashion, delivering a welcome dose of catharsis to a tightly paced tale of vengeance. While just a few years ago the Chinese straight to streaming action scene (or ‘web movie’ as it was referred to in the 2010’s) was seen as a murky backwoods (primarily populated by Fan Siu-Wong starring low budget wuxia’s), the quality and talent behind these productions has come along (wire assisted) leaps and bounds in the 2020’s, and in this case both the original and the sequel are testaments to the same.

Part spaghetti western, part chambara, and part wuxia, Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance takes everything that worked well in the original and does it better, from the characterisation, to the world building, to the all-important action. Whether we’ll see more of Xia Maio as the wandering blind swordsman is still a question mark, but for anyone who askes the question of “what happened to that kid from the 90’s Jet Li movies?”, the Eye for an Eye movies are a good direction to point them in.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10

The post Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force” Theatrical Poster

Director: Wu Ershan
Cast: Kris Phillips, Narana Eryeneeva, Wu Hsing-Go, Yu Shi, Luke Chen, Yafan Wu, Ci Sha
Running Time: 144 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

I ended my review for Creation of the Gods: Kingdom of Storms by expressing how I “hope we’ll be paying another visit to the Creation of the Gods sooner rather than later”, and sure enough less than 18 months on the sequel (and middle part of an intended trilogy) is here in the form of Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force. Part of the reason why the first part was so enjoyable was down to how relentlessly epic it felt, the result of which saw it become a massive blockbuster success in its native China, safely securing the sequels arrival (a fate that wasn’t so kind to the previous adaptation of the source material with 2016’s League of the Gods, which stalled due to a tax scandal that rocked the Chinese film industry at the time).

Director Wu Ershan has gone all in on the intended trilogy (although he did direct the Chinese comic adaptation The Traveller in between, which disappeared from Chinese screens almost as soon as it arrived), having spent 8 years prior preparing to the first instalments release, and the sequel continues to confirm that it was time well spent. Clocking in at a sprawling 2 hours 25 minutes, unlike so many other productions in recent years, Ershan ensures that CotGII:DF (as I’ll refer to it from here on in) fully earns its runtime, cramming in so much spectacle that it almost feels like a crime to not watch it on a cinema screen (and preferably a really big one). Interestingly it feels like longer has passed since the first instalment, likely more a result of most modern franchises having an omni-present feel to them (Marvel I’m looking at you) than anything else, however anyone who was hoping for a recap of Kingdom of Storms will be out of luck.

Ershan steers away from traditional recap altogether, instead throwing the audience straight back into the thick of things, either trusting everyone’s remembered the events of the first, or that they’ll catch up as the plot progresses. In fairness it’s a gamble that pays off, and I doubt there’ll be many who watch the sequel who won’t fall into one of the two categories. Picking up straight where the first one left off, the king and his fox demon lover (played by a returning Kris Phillips and Narana Eryeneeva) are still after the divine scroll that has the power to turn mortals in Gods, and are willing to kill anyone who dares to defy them. In the first instalment that included his own son, and now he plans to raze the hometown of his adopted son Yu Shi, who gradually became the de facto main character in Kingdom of Storms.

There are complications though, first off his go-to general, played by Wu Hsing-Go (God of Gamblers Returns, The Accidental Spy), wishes to retire, which sees his second in command step up to accept the mission. The decision results in the singularly named actress Nashi not only being given a much more substantial role than she had in Kingdom of Storms, but essentially she becomes a co-star alongside Yu Shi, and proceeds to steal every scene she’s in. Likewise for newcomer Luke Chen who played the son that Phillips murders. Placed in front of the Gods they realise that despite being dead, his lifeforce remains strong, a result of the rage he experienced at the injustice of his death. Choosing to bring him back in the hope he could be the one to stop the Great Curse, Chen returns more powerful than any of them anticipated, becoming a gigantic blue God with 3 heads (and torsos!) made up of pure life force.

Compared to the first instalment that spent most of its first hour cramming in a novel’s worth (quite literally) of world building, the sequel feels like a more straight forward affair and is all the better for it. There’s still a need to have the name of every character that appears onscreen appear via text, but it never confuses from the main plot, which sees Yu Shi discover his fighting spirit to protect his hometown of Xiqi from the enemy. It’s just as well since there’s a lot of them, from 4 giants, each armed with their own unique weapon (including an energy absorbing umbrella, a fireball throwing lute, and a sword that turns into a dragon), to evil sorcerers that use the moonlight to cast a paralysis spell on whoever stumbles into it.

In many ways it feels like the Creation of the Gods movies have come at just the right time. The 3D fad of the early-mid 2010’s now feels like it belongs in the past, while many of the big budget fantasy flicks coming out of China in the latter 2010’s felt a little too eager to shoehorn in President Xi’s direction to make “patriotism the main theme of literary and artistic creation” (who can forget the flag waving scenes of the Red Guard during Ershan’s 2015 action adventure Mojin: The Lost Legend?). Now in the 2020’s the Chinese film industry has matured enough to deliver a suitably bombastic retelling of the 16^th century novel Investiture of the Gods, with the stellar effects work creating an almost non-stop parade of mythical beasts and battle scenes, the sheer scale of which make CotGII:DF a joy to watch.

Thankfully Ershan doesn’t rely entirely on spectacle to sell the sequel. With so many characters whose intentions and ambitions are as clear cut as it gets (revenge for a family members death, saving the world from the Great Curse, seeking immortality etc.), Nashi’s newly promoted general provides the most compelling character for the audience to invest in. Her father fell in battle to those fighting against Phillips beguiled king, unaware that he’s under the influence of a fox demon, and still believing him to be a righteous monarch. Swearing revenge against Shi and his comrades, when they finally cross paths she begins to feel conflicted over which path to take, with the narrative leaving the audience in the dark as too her true intentions as much as the characters she interacts with. The result leads to some of the sequels most satisfyingly duplicitous moments, allowing for some surprising plot twists along the way.

The nature of the story the sequel tells means we get to spend less time with Phillips and Eryeneeva this time around, with their roles mainly limited to Phillips recovering from the injuries sustained in the first instalment, however with Nashi’s more substantial role it feels like a welcome trade off. The fact that it’s such an unexpected one (other than her role in the Creation of the Gods franchise she only had supporting turns in Ershan’s previously mentioned The Traveller and 2019’s S.W.A.T.) feels like the icing on the cake. Xia Yu’s (Wind Blast, Birth of the Dragon) evil sorcerer (who serves the yet to be seen big bad) also has a more substantial role this time around, with his spell to create an army of undead soldiers being a horrific highlight (even though, mild spoiler, we don’t actually get to see them in action in this instalment).

Culminating in an imaginative all-out battle that sees returning characters Na Cha and warrior god Yang Jian (again played by newcomers Yafan Wu and Ci Sha respectively) take centre stage, CotGII:DF gets the balance right of knowing it needs to go out with a bang, while also leaving enough appetite for the 3^rd instalment. Much like the Kingdom of Storms (and, well, every Marvel movie ever made this century), the sequel crams its 15 minutes worth of end credits with a number of post-credit scenes to offer up glimpses of what awaits, ensuring there’s still plenty to come back for in the third round, which as of the time of writing will be called Creation Under Heaven.

A true cinematic spectacle, Creation of the Gods: Demon Force is one of the purest examples of big blockbuster entertainment we’ve seen in a long time, crafted with a level of care that feels like it’s been missing from similar recent Hollywood efforts. Considering how these big budget fantasies from China were approached with such trepidation just 10 years ago, Ershan and his team have set the bar high for any future efforts. Thankfully we still have another instalment to go to close out the trilogy, so here’s hoping it nails the landing. If Demon Force is anything to go by, it certainly looks like it will.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force (2025) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“The Magic Crane” Theatrical Poster

Director: Benny Chan
Cast: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Anita Mui Yim-Fong, Rosamund Kwan Chi-Lam, Damian Lau Chung-Yan, Lawrence Ng Kai-Wah, Norman Tsui Siu-Keung, Zhang Tielin
Running Time: 96 min.

By Paul Bramhall

In 2017 the late director Benny Chan unleashed Meow onto the world, the tale of Louis Koo and an oversized ginger cat from space, a production which had much of the action maestro’s fanbase scratching their heads as to what exactly was going on. For long-time fans of Chan though, as tough as it is to admit, Meow wasn’t the first time for the director to dabble in the world of oversized animals. Admittedly you have to go back almost 30 years, however the fact remains that in 1993 the world was gifted with The Magic Crane, which saw Hong Kong icon Anita Mui flying around on the back of a, well, gigantic crane.

After his debut co-directing 1988’s Let’s Rage the Gangland with Chik Kin-Chung, Chan dabbled in various genres during the first 5 years of his directorial career, but all shared a contemporary setting. The Magic Crane would be the first and last time he’d helm a new wave wuxia flick, and he did so working from a script written by Tsui Hark, who also sat in the producer’s chair. If any one man was responsible for igniting the new wave wuxia genre then it was arguably Hark, and by 1993 it felt like he’d penned so many movies that he realised he’d never be able to direct them all himself. So while he did helm Once Upon a Time in China III and Green Snake, for the rest of the year he let other directors take the reins, and took a step back as producer.

Yuen Bun got to make his directorial debut with Once Upon a Time in China IV, Raymond Lee and Ching Siu-Tung shared directing duties on The East is Red, Yuen Woo-Ping took on Iron Monkey, and it was Chan who’d be trusted to bring The Magic Crane to the screen. Surprisingly, the titular crane in question isn’t actually all that important to the plot. It’s kind of like if Moon Warriors from the previous year was called Killer Whale instead, although at least in that movie the whale was real. Here the oversized crane relies on a mix of miniature puppetry for shots of it flying in the distance, and for its close-up appearances we get a slightly clunky but impressively to scale mechanical model.

Like most wuxia’s based on novels (this one is based on one by Wolong Sheng), the plot is a convoluted affair with a plethora of characters. Essentially it involves the equivalent of a martial arts business conference, with 9 schools meeting up to agree on the dividing up of territory, and hopefully live in peace. Tensions are running high though, with mistrust between certain factions, and an aggressively ambitious master played by Lawrence Ng (To Be Number One, Lethal Panther) keen on taking over more territory than what he came in with. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (Hard Boiled, Europe Raiders) plays the only student of the most pitiful school, and it’s when he accidentally falls off a cliff that he finds himself rescued from certain death by the giant crane.

From there, the plot throws itself around like a pinball table in heat. Anita Mui (Rouge, A Better Tomorrow III) rides around on the crane with a flute, and has to deal with her vengeance seeking sister who she never knew she had, played by a lute brandishing Rosamund Kwan (The Head Hunter, Undeclared War). The different martial arts schools end up at each other’s necks through a series of both comedic misunderstandings and straight-faced double crossing. One of the masters played by Zhang Tie-Lin (Once Upon a time in China II and V) is forced to eat half of a secret scroll and accidentally turns into a superpowered madman that wants to kill everyone. There’s a kaiju sized tortoise that has its gall bladder ripped out (comparatively Gamera had very little to worry about!). Oh, and rubber bats, lots of them.

If you’re looking for coherent plot structure and clearly defined motivations, then The Magic Crane probably isn’t the movie for you. On the other hand if you’re looking for the typically manic paced energy that so many of the new wave wuxia’s of the early 90’s were imbued with, then you’re definitely in luck. Many of these movies can be split into 2 categories – those that cast legitimate martial artists in the lead roles, and those that didn’t. While Swordsman 2 and Butterfly & Sword benefitted from casts that included the likes of Jet Li and Donnie Yen, others like Three Swordsmen and The Dragon Chronicles: The Maidens of Heavenly Mountain relied on the presence of popular actors of the era like Andy Lau and Brigitte Lin. Thankfully the wirework heavy nature of the new wave wuxia genre didn’t necessarily call for martial arts expertise, however there can be do doubt that their physical talents certainly helped.

The Magic Crane falls into the latter category with no real martial arts talent so to speak, however choreographer Lau Chi-Ho (Duel to the Death, A Chinese Ghost Story II) makes up for it by going big on the spectacle front. The faceoff between the giant crane and tortoise is probably the closest a Hong Kong production has gotten to a kaiju showdown, and sets get blown up with gleeful abandon once everyone starts to take flight (which is frequently!). Having Tsui Hark in the producer’s chair seems to have allowed for a sizable budget, and it’s used to create some memorable imagery. In one scene Anita Mui and Rosamund Kwan face off on the deck of a ship, while the ocean that surrounds them explodes in geysers of towering water, an epic shot that acts as a reminder of the power of practical effects.

Compensating for the lack of martial arts prowess, both Anita Mui and Rosamund Kwan rely on the deadly musical instruments that they carry with them to attack their enemies (and each other), with Mui opting for a flute, and Kwan brandishing a lute (pre-dating the deadly lute in the following years Deadful Melody). The wirework doesn’t quite reach the heights of what we were seeing from Ching Siu-Tung and Yuen Bun at the time, however the sheer volume of it makes it difficult to not be entertained, and you know things aren’t afraid to get crazy when at one point the actual flute and lute fight each other in the air.

The final battle in particular is a hoot, as the ladies, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Norman Chu (playing the father of Anita Mui and Rosamund Kwan), Damian Lau (playing Tony Leung’s master), and the crane all come together to fight Zhang Tie-Lin, who’s come to the party brandishing a massive metal bell the same size as he is. The ensuing battle is an entertaining mix of high-flying energy blasts and wonton destruction, including the crane taking a somewhat kamikaze approach to its contribution in defeating the enemy. If you thought the flute action in American Pie was a unique use of the instrument, I challenge anyone to watch The Magic Crane and not be impressed by how Tie-Lin is ultimately disposed of. Definitely a classic example of “things you can only see in a Hong Kong new wave wuxia flick” (right after Donnie Yen being reduced to half a skeleton in Dragon Inn!).

By the end of the 90’s Benny Chan had established himself as a successful commercial director of contemporary action flicks thanks to the likes of Big Bullet, Who Am I? and Gen-X Cops, so if anything The Magic Crane is a rare opportunity to see him apply his craft to the wuxia genre. While there’s not much on display to separate it from the rest of its energetically paced peers of the era (well, ok it’s the only one with a giant crane), there’s still plenty to enjoy, and the action comes thick and fast. Plus, kudos goes to Rosamund Kwan for the way she breaks up with Tony Leung after they’ve slept together, telling him not to worry because “What you’ve left inside my body’d be squeezed out by my Kung fu!” Brutal.

An entertaining genre effort and the only time Anita Mui got to headline a wuxia flick (and of course sing the theme song, which she did with Jacky Cheung), for fans of both new wave wuxia’s and the impressive cast, The Magic Crane is worth a watch.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

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“The Prosecutor” Theatrical Poster

Director: Donnie Yen
Co-director: Ho Pong Mak
Cast: Donnie Yen, Julian Cheung, Shirley Chan, Kent Cheng, Michael Hui, Ray Lui, Mark Cheng, Kang Yu, Pak Hon Chu, Adam Pak, Kong Lau, Liza Wang
Running Time: 118 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Is it just me or is Donnie Yen making a bit of a niche for himself riffing on Yuen Biao’s 1980’s era? During the 2010’s we got a 2-part remake of The Iceman Cometh with Iceman 3D and Iceman: The Time Traveller, and now in the 2020’s we have The Prosecutor. While not announced as a remake, the parallels to Biao’s 1986 classic Righting Wrongs are glaring. Both feature a prosecutor who also happens to know kung-fu. Whereas Righting Wrongs dubiously endorsed vigilante justice, The Prosecutor dubiously endorses the beating of mothers who are hopeless drug addicts. We even get a carpark set action scene in both productions, with Yen ducking and diving to avoid being hit by a vehicle much the same way Yuen Biao did almost 30 years ago.

Since his disastrous attempt to move into purely dramatic territory with 2022’s lamentable Polar Rescue, in the last couple of years Yen made the wise decision to stick to his action roots, notably also stepping into the director’s chair for his 2023 Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils adaptation Sakra. He remains in the director’s chair for The Prosecutor, returning to the contemporary actioner (not counting his supporting role in John Wick: Chapter 4) that feels synonymous with the Yen brand of action for the first time since 2021’s Raging Fire. Opening with Yen as a cop leading a raid in an abandoned construction site, he and his team are ambushed by an armed and dangerous enemy, leading to a stellar action scene that incorporates some innovative camera work and first-person perspective shots. The sequence sees The Prosecutor bolt straight out of the gates, and at this point the title hasn’t even appeared onscreen.

Due to a lack of evidence though the criminal ultimately walks free when tried in court, which means only one thing – we must watch Yen go on a law school studying rampage, presented as a montage that doubles up as the opening credits. When they’re over it’s now 7 years later, and Yen has become – The Prosecutor! Decked out in a tailored grey suit and impeccable hair, Yen’s prosecutor is as virtuous as they come, solving murder cases on his first day in the office while making friends with his new colleagues, and proudly declaring that “Our job is prosecution, to have a trial, to find the truth, and to convict.” Did I mention that it’s based on a true story? His steadfast belief in the justice system is questioned though when handed his first case involving a teenager accused of drug trafficking, with the proposals of the defence lawyers seemingly geared more towards a quick outcome than a fair trial.

Played by Julian Cheung (Death Notice, A Mob Story) and Shirley Chan (Crypto Storm, Love Suddenly), Yen’s obsessive quest for the truth soon puts him at loggerheads with the pair, as well as the wider Department of Justice community. That broader community is a significant contributor as to why The Prosecutor works so well, with Yen surrounding himself with an impressive cast of Hong Kong talent. From Kent Cheng (Run and Kill, Walk on Fire) as the experienced prosecutor he’s paired with, Francis Ng (Customs Frontline, Death Stranding) as his superior, and Michael Hui (The Private Eyes, Rob-B-Hood) as a seasoned judge, to villainous turns from Ray Lui (Operation Bangkok, Thunder Run) and Mark Cheng (Gong Tau, Invisible Target). While there’s no doubt The Prosecutor is the Donnie Yen show, the veteran cast bring a gravitas to proceedings that mean you’re never just waiting for the next action scene.

That’s just as well, since anyone clocking into The Prosecutor expecting an action extravaganza will likely walk away disappointed. Yen’s smartly tuned into Hong Kong cinema’s current streak of successful courtroom thrillers like The Sparring Partner and A Guilty Conscience, and has created something which feels at once familiar and fresh at the same time. While the court proceedings don’t delve into the complexities as much as the mentioned titles, we do spend a significant part of the runtime in the courtroom, complete with onscreen definitions explaining the step in the legal process the particular hearing is related to. Thankfully the legal banter is engaging, and serves as the main driver to propel the narrative forward, one that equally thankfully sees Yen frequently find himself in moments of danger outside of the courtroom, usually that involve him having to break out flying kicks and punches to the face.

There’s a welcome lack of pretension to the way The Prosecutor is structured that feels like a hark back to the glory days of HK action cinema. Sure, the courtroom drama is meant to be taken seriously, but there’s also no hesitation to segue into a scene that requires Yen to fend off a small army of night club security staff like a one-man wrecking ball. He could almost be playing the same character as he was in Special ID, now a decade later and more mellowed (although in one action scene we still get the Donnie Yen crazy smile that I think debuted in Special ID). Like in Sakra Yen once more takes a step back from choreographing himself (which he hasn’t done since Raging Fire), this time handing over to his action team member Takahito Ouchi.

Following a similar path to Kenji Tanigaki, Ouchi has worked extensively in both Hong Kong (he was part of the choreography team on both Special ID and Enter the Fat Dragon) and Japan (choreographing the action in the likes of Ajin: Demi Human and the High & Low franchise). Here his touch brings a welcome freshness to Yen’s distinctive action chops, focusing more on brutal efficiency over complex exchanges, with many of the fights taking place in close quarters or against multiple attackers. Heads are rammed between doors and steel poles used liberally, all delivered with a sense of kinetic energy as the surrounding environment is used to stay out of harms way. The final fight set on a train is a highlight (washing away the bad taste of the similarly set finale in Iceman: The Time Traveller), with Yen attempting to protect a witness while contending with a pair of attackers (including a riff on Hammer Girl – the Hammer Triad!).

If anything I only wish Yen’s final opponent came with more emotional weight, with frequent collaborator Yu Kang (Wu Xia, Big Brother) appearing as a hired lackey for a brutal face off. It delivers on all cylinders from a choreography perspective, and while the narrative attempts a backstory by having Kang deliver a throwaway line revealing it was Yen responsible for him serving time in Cambodia, it fails to create a meaningful connection. It is of course a trade off of Yen playing a prosecutor, as due to China’s strict censorship guidelines there was no way we were ever going to see him lay the beatdown on any of the real villains behind the plot. So this way we still get a final one on one fight which any Donnie Yen action movie needs, this time with added law related one-liners, it just comes at the cost of not really having any catharsis to it.

Amusingly the only other time we’re blatantly reminded off the censorship requirements is during the traditional closing scene mugshot stills showing how all the criminals received jail time for their crimes, which includes the criminal from the initial scene that I’m sure most audiences will have forgotten about. But since it needs to be clear that everyone who committed a crime has to pay for it regardless of their relevance to the plot or screentime, we’re told he committed another crime 8 years later, and this time he was successfully found guilty. I’m sure audiences everywhere will be relieved.

At almost 2 hours long The Prosecutor could have benefitted from a little trimming, but overall it’s easily Yen’s most mature work as a director to date, showing a level of restraint and balance that’s been lacking in his directorial efforts so far. The fact that it delivers his best contemporary action performance since 2014’s Kung Fu Jungle (a whole 10 years ago!) is the icing on top, proving that it’s still possible to innovate in Hong Kong action cinema in 2024, a fact that makes it worth checking out alone.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10

The post Prosecutor, The (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Lucky Seven” Theatrical Poster

Director: Chao Chen-Kuo
Cast: Chiao Pei, Yang Wei-De, Lin Tung-An, Wang Chi-Cheng, Cheng Wei-Pai, Chang Chai-Ming, Hsu Yu-Ta, Hsiao Hung-Me, Eugene Thomas, Chang Yi-Teng
Running Time: 90 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Spend long enough in the niche genre that is kung-fu cinema, and you’ll eventually find yourself exploring some of the more obscure corners of what’s on offer. One such corner is that of the Taiwanese kids kung-fu movie, a sub-genre that rose to prominence in the 80’s and lasted into the early 90’s. While the traditional kung-fu flick was on the way out by the beginning of the 80’s, in Hong Kong the likes of Jackie Chan kept audiences engaged through bigger stunts, and an evolution into a more modern kickboxing style of screen combat. Taiwan and Korea on the other hand, while attempting to emulate the same, largely shifted their focus to making productions aimed at kids, and it was a move that turned out to be a successful one.

Many of these productions made the decision to actually have kids headline the cast, and some of the first out of the gates were 1980’s The Flying Tigers and the Kung Fu Kids and Kung Fu Kids Break Away. In 1986 the first entry of the popular Kung Fu Kids series hit the screens, spawning 5 sequels over the next 3 years, plus a reboot in 1992! Suffice to say, if watching kids headline kung-fu movies was your thing, then the 80’s was a great time to be alive. Shuffling itself in amongst the pack is Lucky Seven, which was released the same year, and more than likely was inspired by Kung Fu Kids.

Imbued with what feels like a go-for-broke approach to the genre, whereas Kung Fu Kids had 3 main protagonists, Lucky Seven more than doubles it with (you guessed it) 7 heroic kids as our leads, and similarly looks to ramp up the comedy and action stakes as well. The world that Lucky Seven unfolds in is a surreal one, and is probably best described as a live-action cartoon. Who exactly the 7 kids are is never given any explanation, but none of them seem slightly concerned that their parents don’t seem to be around, and they have no issues booking hotel rooms or reserving a table at a fine dining restaurant. However if you’re giving a thought to such things, then it’s safe to say that Lucky Seven probably isn’t the movie for you.

The kids come together when 6 of them go to the airport to meet their 7^th member who’s flying in from the States. In a conversation fairly typical of what you can expect from Lucky Seven, he explains that in the U.S. he’s called ‘Rambo’, but in Taiwan they should refer to him as ‘Rocky’. Being educated in western culture, he takes the gang out for dinner at a steak restaurant, during which they witness the exchange of a large diamond go all kinds of wrong at a nearby table. In short, the diamond ends up in the kid’s possession, who are entrusted to find its rightful owner, of whom the only identifying features they have to go on is it’ll be a lady that’s wearing a flower and she has a mole on her upper thigh. Hijinks ensue as the kids attempt to find the rightful owner, while being pursued by the gangsters who want the diamond for themselves at every turn.

Lucky Seven is one of those movies that plays with your head, at once as grating as you’d expect it to be, but at the same time displaying a humorous streak that’s so intentionally dumb it’s hard not to laugh (for some reason I found it genuinely funny when, in the restaurant Rocky orders everyone a medium steak, and the others question as to why he doesn’t want them to have a full size one). There’s an infectious energy on display that means even the more offensive (or just plain absurd) jokes manage to get a free pass – from women being harassed, to Eugene Thomas being compared to a chimpanzee, and at its most brazen one of the kids tells an Argentinian fighter to “stop shooting at our boats” (a reference to the sinking of the Chian-der 3 incident, a Taiwanese shipping boat that was sunk by the Argentinian Navy in May 1986, resulting in 2 deaths).

The kids themselves are clearly all martial artists, and it’s probably safe to say that the trauma some of them endured in the action scenes is the reason why, for most of them, Lucky Seven is the only credit to their names. Out of Chiao Pei, Yang Wei-De, Lin Tung-An, Wang Chi-Cheng, Cheng Wei-Pai, Chang Chai-Ming, and Hsu Yu-Ta, it would be only Yu-Ta who’d go onto work in the film industry for a few more years, turning up alongside Lin Hsiao-Lu in a trio of fantasy flicks made between 1987 – 1990. Other than that, to see these kids in action front and centre, Lucky Seven is the only place to do so, and for that it may be worth it alone.

Marking the choreography debut of Chiu Ying-Hong, who’d go onto work on such Taiwanese productions as the 3D hopping vampire movie The 3-D Army, and the insane unofficial live action Dragon Ball flick, The Magic Begins, here he was already showing himself as a capable orchestrator of action. Like many Taiwanese action movies of the era, there’s a strong emphasis on impact and falls, with the undercranking turned up to just the right level of intensity. The restaurant brawl involving the diamond is ferocious, with a vicious kickboxing style on display (involving plenty of bodies crashing through tables), predating the kind of contemporary triad action that’d become the go-to in many HK productions during the late 80’s and early 90’s. The same scene also introduces Hsiao Hung-Mei (Sworn Brothers, Mr. Vampire Part 3) as the lady with the flower, who displays some impressive moves and willingness to take some brutal hits.

Director Chao Chen-Kuo, who had helmed action flicks before like 1983’s The Village Brother and 1984’s A Girl Rogue, thankfully knows to save the best for last. While many of the fights throughout the runtime are played for laughs, to the point that you’ll need to endure listening to the theme song which the kids sing play over some of them, the finale means business. Clearly inspired by the finale of Sammo Hung’s 1983 comedy Winners and Sinners (and indeed there’s nods to the My Lucky Stars series throughout), the kids and gangsters descend upon a warehouse filled with a healthy amount of stacked sandbags, barrels, and of course multiple levels to fall off. Each of the kids has their own specialty – one is a ninja (complete with full black garb), one riffs on Bruce Lee with a pair of nunchucks, one is a fencer, and…well, you get the idea.

As hard as it is to believe, the final throwdown contains barely any stunt doubling, with the kids getting thrown around like ragdolls, smashed through glass (poor Chiao Pei is thrown through a window and lands face first, the impact of which causes her legs to go over her back the wrong way, all in glorious slow motion), and kicked in the face. In any other movie it would be classed as child abuse, but apparently, not in Taiwan! The most hilarious element of the finale is not only how ludicrous the physical violence gets, but also the bizarre tone it takes, with the ninja kid killing a guy with his katana, and Chiao Pei snapping one of the bad guy’s necks! The beatdowns continue with the arrival of 2 foreign fighters, one of whom doesn’t appear to be listed anywhere, and the other is an always welcome appearance by Eugene Thomas (The Super Ninja, Ninja Condors), here taking a break from his Lo Rei partnered ninja shenanigans.

Throw in musical cues that include Madonna’s Material Girl, Survivor’s Burning Heart, and even a body popping disco dance off to Wham’s I’m Your Man, and you have yourself one of the most distinctly mid-80’s Taiwanese action flicks out there. Lucky Seven feels like it spends its entire runtime balancing on a delicate tightrope between inspired Looney Tunes style insanity, and gratingly juvenile comedy, and had it been in the hands of a director like Chu Yen-Ping it probably would have fallen off the wrong side in the opening minutes. As it is, while many of the jokes fall flat, there’s an equal number of bodies falling into just about anything that’ll break, and that balance is enough to result in an enjoyably manic dose of Taiwanese mayhem.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

The post Lucky Seven | aka 7 Ninja Kids (1986) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“A Legend” Theatrical Poster

Director: Stanley Tong
Cast: Jackie Chan, Bextiyar Gülnezer, Yixing Zhang, Aarif Lee Zhi-ting, Chen Li, Max Huang, Kim Hee-seon, Shawn Dou Yecheng Zheng, Ray Lui Leung Wai
Running Time: 130 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Back in 2021 I wrote a retrospective on Jackie Chan and Stanley Tong called ‘Giving the People What They Want’, framed from the perspective of how their collaborations as director and star always appealed to the demographic Chan was catering to at that point in his career. In the closing line I’d speculated how “when the pandemic is over we’ll need a movie that gets people back into cinemas for good, and perhaps Chan and Tong will be the ones to deliver it.” Well, writing in 2024 thankfully for most of the world the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming an increasingly distant memory, and it also happens to be the year when Chan and Tong would reunite, this time for A Legend, the official sequel to their 2005 collaboration The Myth.

I say official because their 2017 atrocity Kung Fu Yoga was originally touted by Chan himself as a sequel, however at some point during production The Myth connection was dropped, despite the glaring similarities. Whereas Kung Fu Yoga opened with an extended CGI action sequence featuring a digitally de-aged Jackie Chan, for A Legend the duo has gone all in, with around 2 thirds of the hefty 130-minute runtime consisting of a digitally de-aged Chan as a 20-something year old general in the Western Han dynasty.

The official sequel status is through a thematic connection rather than a character based one, so while Chan is once again playing an archaeologist, it’s not the same one as we met almost 20 years ago. Or at least I hope it’s not, as at no point does he seem phased (or even consider it worth mentioning) that this isn’t the first time to be afflicted with dreams about a past life as a general in ancient China. Instead it’s the dual timeline plot structure that’s the shared connection, with present day events seeing Chan and his team excavating a site related to the Huns, and the timeline in the past involving Chan’s general saving a Hun woman who he falls in love with.

While Tong’s directorial talents are never going to see him labelled as an auteur, his background as a stuntman and action director ensure the movies he helms are at least guaranteed to move along at a brisk pace. Why, at this point in his career, he’s decided to write and direct a 2+ hour epic romance through the lens of a period action-adventure piece is a mystery. Tong’s been responsible for some of the most significant shifts in Chan’s on-screen persona – from transitioning the Ka-Kui we meet in the first 2 Police Story entries to the more family friendly, globe trotting version we meet in the 90’s, to the fish out of water nice guy in Rumble in the Bronx. Tong’s latest influence on Chan though feels like a more sombre one, with the dour faced seriousness of his role in their last collaboration, 2020’s Vanguard, carrying over into his role in A Legend.

In many ways it feels merciful that we don’t spend that much time with the present-day Chan, who when we’re not watching attempt to setup his 2 assistants (played by Lay Zhang – Kung Fu Yoga – and Peng Xiaoran, here making her big screen debut), we’re subjected to following him around on a guided tour of a Chinese history museum.  It’s as boring as it sounds.  In fact boredom is prevalent throughout A Legend, with Tong’s story of a love triangle that forms in the past between the younger Chan, his comrade (also played by Lay Zhang in a similar dual role, meaning yes, A Legend gives us 2 characters who are having dreams of the past, with the only difference being that Zhang is spared from the digital de-aging treatment), and the Hun woman played by Guli Nazha (Police Story 2013) doing little to spark any interest.  Admittedly this could be down to the elephant in the room – the digitally de-aged version of Chan.

At first glance the effect is actually a passable attempt at re-creating Chan’s youthfulness, best described as looking like he just stepped off the set of To Kill with Intrigue. However like any digital de-aging effect, with where the technology stands in 2024 it’s best used sparingly so as to maintain the illusion. Tong makes the regrettable decision to have the majority of the runtime play out in the past, and the more time we spend with Chan’s de-aged version, the more the illusion begins to fall apart. When he’s riding on a horse there’s a bizarre jittery appearance to his face, almost like the effect can’t quite keep up with the movement of the horses pacing, and it soon becomes clear that the colour and overly smooth texture of his skin doesn’t change regardless of the setting or shifts in lighting.

The biggest issue though is whenever the de-aged Chan needs to convey emotion, which simply doesn’t work. When his character gets stabbed the reaction is laughable, as it is when he breaks down over the death of a fellow comrade, which sees Tong make the lamentable decision to film in closeup that should never have made the final cut, as it almost makes the younger Chan look like a wooden puppet. While the behind-the-scenes coverage went to great lengths to show that it is actually Jackie Chan playing the role in the past as well, the final product betrays such claims, as it’s clearly a younger actor in many scenes who’s had Chan’s face digitally pasted over his own. Who it is doesn’t really matter and we’ll likely never know, but I call shenanigans on expecting the audience to believe it’s really Jackie Chan in every scene.

If anyone appears to be having fun in A Legend then it’s Aarif Rahman (Wolf Pack), who plays the Hun villain in the past desperate to claim Nazha as his own, to the point that he’s even willing to kill his own father (played by a cameoing Ray Lui, who’s always a welcome addition). Whenever he’s onscreen A Legend offers some minor promise, but it’s not nearly enough. Adding to the detriment is the fact there’s no discernible villain in the present-day scenes, exasperating the fact they lack any real narrative drive, with Tong awkwardly shoehorning one in during the final 20 minutes so we can finally see the 70-year-old Chan offer up his usual post-2020 brand of Chan-lite action. As expected, just like in the finales of The Myth and Kung Fu Yoga everyone ends up in a sanctuary that’s been hidden away for years, only this time a frozen mammoth is thrown in just for the sake of it.

The last time Chan had an active role (at least credited) in the action choreography department was 7 years ago on Kung Fu Yoga, and A Legend isn’t the production to break the trend, with the action credited to Tong, fellow JC Stunt Team connection He Jun (Ride On), and most interestingly, Yuen Tak (Angels 2). A legendary action choreographer who needs no introduction, in recent years Tak has spent most of his time directing Mainland TV shows, having stepped away from action choreography after 2017’s Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back. He was also part of the tri-factor of choreographers on The Myth along with Tong and Chan, so to see his name in the opening credits doing what he does best felt like a reason to be excited. It makes it all the more unfortunate that the action is so non-descript, dominated by underwhelming bouts of swordplay in the past, until the finale eventually gives us some present-day action.

One cameo that’ll almost certainly be throwaway for most who watch A Legend is a blink and you’ll miss it last scene appearance from Korean actress Kim Hee-sun, who played the princess Chan’s general is assigned to protect in The Myth. Although they were obviously never in the same room (or even country) together, with Hee-sun likely just told all she needs to do is stand in front of a green screen for a few seconds, from a plot perspective it again raises the question of if Chan is actually supposed to be playing the same character. From a broader perspective, as far as I’m aware this is the first time for a Korean performer to appear (even if it is just a few seconds) in a theatrically released Chinese movie since the governments unofficial ban on the Korean entertainment industry in 2017. We even get a closing credits song in Mandarin, Korean and English, even though there’s absolutely no reason for it to be.

Speaking of closing credits, along with Panda Plan it looks like 2024 is the year Chan is done with showing outtakes, which in fairness I’m ok with. While watching Chan get hurt in his prime only increased the appreciation of his movies, in recent years I found the feeling switched to one of concern when you see someone in their late 60’s taking some serious bumps, even to a point of wishing he’d stop. How many will actually make it to the end credits of A Legend though is debatable, and the question of if Stanley Tong and Jackie Chan are still giving the people what they want even more so. If it’s a mix of Hallmark channel drama, non-stop orchestral swelling, and protracted flashbacks within flashbacks, then the answer is a definite yes, but just like the digitally de-aged version of Chan we spend so much time with, it’s a yes that’ll fail to convince anyone.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 2/10

The post Legend, A (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Black Cat II” Theatrical Poster

Director: Stephen Shin
Cast: Jade Leung, Robin Shou, Zoltan Buday, Bob Wilde, Alexander Skorokhod, Tatiana Chekhova, Mike Miller, Jack Wong Wai-Leung, Wan Seung-Lam 
Running Time: 90 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Despite Black Cat’s middling box office results, it wasn’t enough to deter D&B Films from continuing to push Jade Leung as a bankable action lead for the 1990’s, and just a year later we’d get a sequel in the form of Black Cat II – The Assassination of President Yeltsin. The production brought back D&B’s executive director Stephen Shin as director, and if anything doubles down on the globetrotting location shoots, keeping America as the setting (before being turned into an assassin in the original, Leung was a waitress at a New York truck stop diner), and having the primary plot play out in Russia.

As a sidenote, at the time of writing in 2024 the good folk at 88 Films released Black Cat II on Blu-ray during the same year, perhaps showing a sense of humour in their timing to put a movie out that shows the American government doing all it can to protect the Russian president. Times have certainly changed. The release is worth noting though as it’s one of the few times for the sequel to be made available with its original English audio, of which the majority of the production was filmed in, with most of the readily available releases previously only consisting of the Cantonese audio track. The last time I’d watched Black Cat II was on the 2008 Joy Sales Legendary Collection DVD, which only had the Cantonese track, resulting in a scene with a translator assisting communication between the Americans and the Russians coming off as nonsensical, since everyone is speaking the same language!

Of course being a slice of early 90’s Hong Kong action cinema there are plenty of other nonsensical elements left over. In the original Leung’s character is introduced as Catherine, however here her name is frequently referred to as Erica, despite it being made clear through the use of flashbacks that she’s playing the same character. The head scratching extends to Robin Shou (Tiger Cage II, Mortal Kombat) , who’d already appeared in over 15 Hong Kong movies since his debut in 1987’s The Big Brother, but finds himself amusingly billed as ‘Introducing…’ in the opening credits, as if Black Cat II is the first movie he’s appeared in.

In fairness Shou is essentially a co-lead along with Leung. After the incidents of the first this time the CIA wipe her memory, and fit her brain with an upgraded microchip. The microchip plot device was also included in the original, however seemed to have no bearing on the plot whatsoever, so it’s a relief to see that it actually has a purpose in the sequel. Essentially turning Leung into an emotionless terminator (we even get terminator style POV shots as Leung tracks her targets), the sequel dumps its La Femme Nikita source material from the original, and instead opts for Hong Kong action excess topped with that irreplicable feeling of “they were probably making this up as they went along” that was common for the era. After Shou’s agent fails to stop a Russian defector with knowledge of the Anti-Yeltsin Organization from being killed, he’s paired with Leung to prevent the Russian president from being assassinated.

Unlike similar productions that involve the attempted assassination of a head of state such as A Queen’s Ransom, Black Cat II refuses to go the stock footage route, and instead opts to go all in by hiring a Yeltsin lookalike in the form of Alexander Skorokhod. His time in the film industry was brief, with just 4 credits to his name between 1992 – 1995, and one of those was also playing Yeltsin in 1994’s Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (which means he spent half of his filmography playing the former Russian president!).

Why is the Anti-Yeltsin Organization so Anti-Yeltsin? How does a talented martial artist like Shou manage to look so ineffective? Why did they make Leung’s first line “meow”? All relevant questions, and all that will still be unanswered by the time the end credits roll.  Leung’s role in the plot is down to her new ability to sense radiation within the immediate vicinity, a talent that’s particularly useful when it’s revealed the Anti-Yeltsin bad guys have been breeding super assassins through the usage of radiation. That makes her ideal for being able to track down the killers, but also means she’s susceptible to putting a bullet between the eyes of an innocent grandmother picking up her afternoon shopping, all because it turns out she was receiving chemotherapy treatment. Thankfully, due to movie magic, Leung’s trigger-happy tendencies towards the elderly community involves zero repercussions.

My biggest complaint with Black Cat was the way it never really followed through on the action front, and perhaps in acknowledgement of that, for the sequel director Shin takes the approach of putting the action at the forefront, with everything else coming second.  That includes things like plot coherency (the change in Leung’s characters name being the perfect example) and characterisation, meaning Black Cat II is definitely not going to be for everyone. However for fans of HK action there’s plenty to enjoy, with a mountain chase involving skis, snowboards, and snowmobiles feels like a calling card for what’s to come. It’s a fight with Leung and Shou against a group of sledgehammer wielding workers in a foundry that really delivers though, allowing returning action director Poon Kin-Kwan (The Dragon Chronicles: The Maidens of Heavenly Mountain, From Beijing With Love) to let loose in a way we never got to see in the original.

Leaning into the enhanced abilities that the new microchip has gifted Leung with, the scene offers up the kind of exaggerated wirework that feels reminiscent of Phillip Ko Fei’s Philippines shot action cheapies from around the same time. Far from being a negative though, the use of wires effectively serve their purpose, and the scene offers up some welcome high impact hits. It’s also indicative of Black Cat II’s approach to action, with each sequence gradually building in scale from the previous one, mitigating the issue of the original in which each action scene largely felt interchangeable with the one’s before it. By the time we’re watching Leung run across the rooftops adorned in a black cocktail dress, pistol in hand, it’s clear to see why she was being banked on as a leading lady.

Events culminate in an airfield set finale where Leung is allowed to take centre stage for a face off against the Russian super assassin, played by Zoltan Buday (Decoy, Mask of Death), offering up a suitably ridiculous ending to a sequel that appears to be aware it had to put everything on the table to be successful. From an action cinema perspective, it arguably is, being superior to the original in the scope of its action scenes and the execution of them. Unfortunately Black Cat II would be the final production of D&B Films before it folded in the same year, leaving Leung without a studio to champion her talents, and subsequently few directors took advantage of her model looks combined with a willingness to throw herself into the thick of things. The likes of Satin Steel and Fox Hunter proved to be enjoyable exceptions, however by the time the millennium rolled around she was mostly relegated to dreck like Money Laundry.

As the biggest budget production Leung took part in as a leading lady, Black Cat II – The Assassination of President Yeltsin offers up gun totting ballerina kids, sewer dwelling getaway motorbikes with sidecars, and even some Full Contact inspired mid-air bullet collisions. While we’ll never know what direction the Black Cat franchise would have headed in had D&B Films continued on, it at least allowed them to go out with a bang, offering up a globetrotting tale of super assassins and presidential lookalikes. The Black Cat title would be unforgivably attributed to the English titles of a couple of latter Jade Leung productions, namely 2000’s Black Cat in Jail and 2003’s The Black Cat Agent Files, but for the real deal, stick to this one and the original. No Russian presidents were harmed in the making of Black Cat II.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10 

The post Black Cat II: The Assassination of Boris Yeltsin (1992) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“The Beheaded 1000” Theatrical Poster

AKA: The Executioner
Director: Ting Shan-Hsi
Cast: Jimmy Wang Yu, Chin Siu-Ho, Joey Wong Cho-Yin, Monica Chan Fat-Yung, Wu Ma, Pauline Wong Siu-Fung, Sun Ya-Tung, Shen Hai-Rong
Running Time: 105 min.

By Paul Bramhall

One of the more intriguing propositions to come out of the early 90’s, on the surface at least The Beheaded 1000 offers up a Taiwanese take on the Hong Kong blend of wuxia and fantasy that it did so well at the time. The blue lighting is prominent, there’s a wacky assortment of characters, and there’s even a raft of imported HK talent like Chin Siu-Ho, along with A Chinese Ghost Story luminaries Wu Ma and Joey Wong (ok, technically she doesn’t count because she is Taiwanese, but we’re going with it). However looks can be deceiving, and those clocking in expecting the typical new wave wuxia style madness involving ridiculously complex wirework, silk billowing in slow motion, and bodies exploding into colorful powder, may leave disappointed.

The Beheaded 1000 would mark the 10^th and final collaboration between director Ting Shan-Hsi and star Jimmy Wang Yu, a partnership that had endured for more than 20 years.  Not that their collaborations were necessarily well spaced out.  After working together for the first time as director and star on 1972’s Furious Slaughter, over the course of the same year and 1973 they’d crank out 7 titles, including the classic Knight Errant.  It wouldn’t be until 1976 that they’d cross paths again, with Shan-Hsi pairing Wang Yu alongside George Lazenby in the unforgivable snooze fest that was A Queen’s Ransom, and a year later he’d cast Wang Yu alongside Angela Mao and Don Wong Tao for Revenge of Kung Fu Mao.  It would take 16 years would for the pair to work together again, when Wang Yu came onboard once more for Shan-Hsi’s penultimate turn in the director’s chair, with 1993’s The Beheaded 1000.

While many of their previous collaborations were stripped down, action driven pieces of entertainment, The Beheaded 1000 seems to suffer from a split personality, not really being sure what it wants to be, and with a plot that doesn’t help its cause in any way. In a nutshell Wang Yu plays an executioner whose preferred method is beheading, and he’s planning to retire once he hits 1000 executions, handing over duties to his apprentice, played by Chin Siu-Ho (Fast Fingers, Fist of Legend). However the plans for an easy transition to retired life are interrupted by the arrival of a vengeance seeking member of the Blood Clan, played by Joey Wong, several of whom have fallen to Wang Yu’s blade. Of course, as its Joey Wong, matters are complicated further when a constable falls for her, but she may be in love with Siu-Ho, who actually has eyes for Wang Yu’s daughter. Can true love prevail when this many heads are rolling?

In fairness, by the time Wu Ma arrives as the Guardian of Hell who just wants to marry off his sister (played by another HK presence in the form of Mr. Vampire’s Pauline Wong), the type of head rolling coming from the audience may well be one of exasperation. Did I mention there’s human pork buns in the mix too? What exactly the focus is supposed to be of the main plot is open to debate, however I’ll take a stab and say it’s about Wang Yu battling against the Blood Clan to bring them to justice. Ask someone else and they may have a completely different answer, as there’s so many seemingly meaningless tangents that The Beheaded 1000 constantly struggles to find an engaging narrative flow. This feels like the result of a director steeped in the past, but with an obligation to create a movie which reflected the popular themes of the era. As a result though, there are parts that thanfully do work effectively.

The legendary status of Wang Yu’s executioner is shown via the way he performs his beheadings so swiftly, none of his prisoner’s heads who have been on the receiving end have ever hit the ground. Instead, he catches the head mid-air (the wuxia stylings mean that these types of beheadings see the head fly up into the air having been sliced off, rather than simply drop to the ground as gravity would dictate), place it back onto the still kneeling torso, and wrap a yellow talisman paper around the part of the neck that was cut. That’s how to behead in style. There are quirky elements like this scattered throughout, including when Siu-Ho steps up to complete his first public beheading, which will be that of a hulking behemoth played by Lin Hsieh-Wen (A Heroic Fight, Kung Fu Kids IV). When the beheading goes wrong due to Hsieh-Wen’s considerable girth, he ends up stampeding around town with a sword amusingly embedded in his neck.

Such scenarios in any similar movie of the era would be where the action choreography comes to the fore, however here the action is a surprisingly muted affair, to the point where the usual sources such as the Hong Kong Movie Database don’t even list an action director. It’s beguiling since various scenes indicate there’s an experienced hand behind the camera, and if I was a gambling man I’d be willing to bet that the action was likely handled by assistant director Alexander Lo Rei of Ninja Final Duel and Ninja Condors fame. We get Joey Wong floating through the skies strapped to a massive white kite, and some entertaining training sequences between Wang Yu and Siu-Ho, one of which has Wang Yu casually kicking barbells in Siu-Ho’s direction as he strolls around like they weigh nothing!

However any actual choreography is basic, and feels like it wouldn’t be out of place in Shan-Hsi’s efforts from 20 years earlier like 1969’s The Avenger or 1971’s The Ghost Hill. A few clangs of the sword seem to be the order of the day, further enforcing the theory that The Beheaded 1000 doesn’t really know what it wants to be. In the end, to enjoy Shan-Hsi and Wang Yu’s final collaboration the best thing to do is to attune to its wavelength and simply go with the flow. For fans of Joey Wong it’s a rare opportunity to see her as a villain, and she’s surprisingly cruel. In one scene the constable who’s in love with her proposes that they find somewhere serene far away and start a new life together, to which her response is to castrate him and mockingly say “how’s this for far and serene?”, before leaving him to bleed out.

Most bewildering is when Wang Yu eventually does retire, and opens a small restaurant with his family. When the ghosts of the Blood Clan members that he beheaded turn up to confront him, he shows a Steven Seagal-level lack of surprise in his facial expressions, and instead invites them to sit down. The scene gets increasingly absurd, as one of the ghosts rips out the others intestines and offers them as a gift, and there’s even the arrival of a flying gremlin that attacks Wang Yu, before he calmly pulverizes it in a way that reminds us that, hey, this guy is Wang Yu, don’t screw with him even if you’re a demonic gremlin.

All of this culminates in a finale that never feels entirely clear in terms of what’s at stake, but chances are anyone who sticks with the lengthy 2-hour runtime will have already tempered their expectations by this point. There is fun to be had – Chin Siu-Ho finally brandishes Wang Yu’s legendary sword and gets some brief bursts of action, there’s a bunch of oversized animated green spiders to battle against (which weirdly on the version I watched, crawled over the black widescreen bars, giving them an oddly 3D effect), and at its most absurd we get Wu Ma and Wang Yu turn into kaiju sized versions of themselves. Sadly anyone expecting to see a kaiju sized Wang Yu going on a Godzilla style rampage will feel let down, as he mostly sticks to dispensing wisdom and busting out a few strokes of the sword.

Ultimately The Beheaded 1000 feels likes a production that wants to have its cake and eat it – we get doses of kung-fu, elements of Cat III, ghosts, comedy, some romance, a random gremlin, and sudden bursts of violence. However if the cake was made with only half-baked ingredients in the first place, no matter how many more you throw in it’s never going to make it taste any better. While there’s a welcome nostalgia to seeing director Ting Shan-Hsi and Jimmy Wang Yu back together, the meandering focus and disjointed narrative make it difficult to recommend.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10

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“Striking Rescue” Theatrical Poster

Director: Siyu Cheng
Cast: Tony Jaa, Xing Yu, Kaho Hung, Philip Keung, Peng Bo, Yu Bolin, Wang Chenxin, Chen Duo Yi
Running Time: 110 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Action cinema is always evolving, and whenever it’s discussed Hong Kong’s golden era deservedly casts a long shadow. For a long time fans have lamented the gradual decline of the territories output, an inevitability that’s down to a number of disparate reasons, but in recent years the Chinese DTV flick has gradually begun to scratch the itch many of us have. Sure, they’re never going to replace the Police Story’s and Fist of Legend’s, but when it comes to the many lower budgeted triad potboilers infused with that distinctive 1980’s kickboxing style, directors like Qin Pengfei are showing that the old HK style can still be recaptured for a modern audience.

While the Chinese DTV flick has been lucky enough to avoid requiring the jingoistic flag waving tone that comes as a prerequisite for mainstream productions, there are still some Mainland censorship laws that apply to everyone. One is that the Chinese authorities and businesses must never be portrayed as even showing a hint of corruption, with morally upstanding behaviour all round being the order of the day, which doesn’t exactly make for compelling cinema (check out any of the ‘insert random letter here’ Storm franchise as examples). To get around this, most Chinese DTV flicks set themselves in a made-up country in Southeast Asia where everyone speaks Chinese, frequently filming in Thailand to double as the fictional country in question. That way, corrupt cops and government officials are all fair game.

In the latest genre entry, Striking Distance, it’s Jiati city in the Palivina Republic (I’d love to know how they come up with these names). Helmed by DTV regular Siyu Cheng (Desperado, The Grandmaster of Kung Fu), the ace up the director’s sleeve for his latest is the return of Tony Jaa to a headlining role. Or more specifically, a return that acts as if the Thai stars last movie was 2005’s Tom Yum Goong. It’s a legitimate reason to be excited, with the impact Jaa made upon the release of Ong Bak in 2003 a landmark moment in martial arts cinema, successfully transferring the brutal elbows and knees of Muay Thai into a screen fighting aesthetic that felt new and fresh. Many pondered during the 2000’s how Jaa’s talents would be utilised in a Hong Kong movie, and after a bitter contract dispute in his native Thailand with distributor Sahamongkol in the early 2010’s, he’d spend the latter part of the decade answering that exact question.

However his appearances in the likes of SPL II: A Time for Consequences, Paradox, and Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy never quite captured the ferocious intensity of his early breakthroughs, and 8 years on from his minor role in Max Zhang’s Ip Man spin-off, director Cheng seems to be going for a reset. Instead of offering up Tony Jaa choreographed in the Hong Kong style, which is what we all mistakenly though we wanted, it essentially transposes the skull cracking, bone breaking, constantly raging Tony Jaa from the likes of Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong, and places him in a Chinese DTV flick. With so many similar productions also choosing to film in Thailand, it’s a wonder nobody thought of bringing him back into the fold earlier.

In Striking Distance he plays a former “professional security specialist” whose wife and child were gunned down in an apparently sanctioned hit, although for what reason he doesn’t know. Swearing revenge, all paths lead to the rich Chinese head of a logistics company, played by HK cinema regular Philip Keung (I Did It My Way, Bursting Point), who appears to be using the company as a front to smuggle drugs. Of course, it’s quickly revealed that it could be some of the companies “local staff” that are doing the smuggling behind his back (phew, that was a close call!). However when the real drug kingpin begins to pressure him to start knowingly smuggling, Keung’s reluctance results in the gang kidnapping his daughter, only for Jaa to reluctantly rescue her. Played by Chen Duo Yi (Unity of Heroes, Demon Hunter), the pair form an unlikely partnership, as Jaa realises she could help him to get to the bottom of why his family were murdered.

The plot is perfectly functional, serving up a classic tale of a bereaved father and husband out for revenge, however Cheng is smart enough to know the reason Striking Revenge has an audience is to see Tony Jaa busting heads like it’s 2005. Now in his late 40’s, Jaa may no longer be able to run across people’s heads or jump through barbed wire hoops, but while the acrobatics may have gone, the power is still there. I’ve always felt one of the most underrated elements of Jaa as a performer is his ability to really sell hits with power and a tangible sense of rage, and here he proves he’s still got it. The action is choreographed by DTV regulars the Guo Yulong action team (who himself has directed the likes of Ghost Fist and Chinatown War), with the action director credits attributed to Li Zun (part of the action team on Kung Fu Jungle) and Zhang Qiang (part of the action team on Tai Chi Hero).

Essentially serving up a ‘Best of Tony Jaa’ collection, all the greatest hits are present, as are the gimmicks that used to accompany them. Which means yes, we even get a couple of double take shots. It’s as gratuitous now as it was back then, but sometimes gratuitous fits the bill. The action in Striking Rescue leans heavily into impact shots, with people having their heads punched (or more likely elbowed) into metal storage units or smashed through wooden cabinetry, and bodies frequently flying through the air onto the ground in some painful looking falls. It may not offer up much complexity in terms of the choreography, but when you have people getting their face kicked through a car window or limbs being decapitated with choppers, it more than makes up for it.

Even some of the more derivative choices are enjoyable, with newcomer Wang Chenxin playing a variation of Hammer Girl from The Raid 2, only with a pair of axes (and also a lot louder). The best decision though is to bring onboard Xing Yu (The Wrath of Vajra, Flash Point) as the villain for Jaa to face off against. While Jaa and Yu featured in Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy together, they never got to share the screen let alone face off, so to see them go at it here feels like a rare treat that many likely never thought we’d witness. By nature of these productions quick turnaround we’re never going to see a 10 minute one on one fight epic, however their face off is suitably brutal and entertaining, with both getting to show off their stuff. I daresay I preferred Xing Yu’s character here than I did Philip Ng’s in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, as they both share similar traits.

Admittedly with a 110-minute runtime Striking Rescue is certainly ambitious, and it could have benefitted from a little trimming. The world of Chinese DTV flicks is a more digestible one in 80 to 90 minute offerings, however just short of 2 hours gives you enough time to start questioning things like, why does Tony Jaa needs to speak in English to everyone, but when they answer in Mandarin he understands perfectly? It’s worth mentioning that for the most parts he clocks in a suitably affecting English language performance, even if sometimes the subtitles don’t do him any favours (on a couple of occasions he says, “we’re done”, which the subtitle translates as “we’re down” both times). Others don’t fare quite so well when it comes to the English language line delivery, with an outburst from the headmaster of the school Duo Yi attends being an unintentionally hilarious highlight.

These feel like minor quibbles though in what’s overall an entertainingly straightforward throwback to the kind of hard-hitting Thai action that we all found ourselves so captivated by 20 years ago. At one-point Jaa instructs Duo Yi to jump from the first floor to the ground below, to which she replies, “I cannot. I’m not Tony Jaa!” It may be a face palm attempt at humor, but its also reflective of the impact he left on audiences, an impact that Striking Rescue offers a more than welcome reminder of.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post Striking Rescue (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Goose Boxer” Theatrical Poster

Director: Tai Si-Fu
Cast: Charles Heung Wah-Keung, Lee Hoi-Sang, Phillip Ko Fei, Tin Ching, Addy Sung Gam-Loi, Chan Lap-Ban, Lee Chun-Wa, Wong Mei, Cheung Sin-Ming
Running Time: 90 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

This year marks the 10^th anniversary of my relationship with Goose Boxer, which I confess has been a fairly one-sided affair. Purchased as part of a 9-movie DVD set called Brooklyn Zu Volume 1, I picked up the set in 2014 during a trip to the US on the strength of it containing Tiger Over Wall and Fistful of Talons, a pair of movies which at the time I didn’t own. Spurred on by the thinking that, if both productions were indicative of the other title’s quality in the set, then the rest must be worth watching as well. Skip forward to 2024, and I’ve attempted to watch Goose Boxer at least 3 times. Every time ends up the same – as soon as the credits kick in, which feature Charles Heung lifting up a goose from behind only for it to squirt projectile faeces all over his face, set to an obnoxiously grating soundtrack of “waaah wah wah waaah wah”, I find myself turning it off barely a minute in.

But with some old-school kung-fu movies persistence is the key, and the now decade old peer pressure of trusted kung-fu cinema fans insisting it gets better eventually caught up with me. I’ve now watched Goose Boxer. Made in that seminal year for old-school kung-fu, 1978, Goose Boxer had tough competition with the likes of Warriors Two and Drunken Master as its contemporaries, and came with the added pressure of being financed by Heung’s fledging production house, Super Win Films.

Goose Boxer and Mysterious Footworks of Kung Fu (also from ’78) heralded the arrival of Super Win Films, however both failed miserably to launch Heung as a Jackie Chan-esque kung-fu clown, and subsequently bombed at the box office. Heung closed up shop soon after, and after spending much of the 70’s as a fixture in bashers, apart from a few minor roles would only appear in front of camera in a memorable role again when he’d play Chow Yun Fat’s bodyguard in God of Gamblers over 10 years later. It would be remiss not to mention that Super Win Films was reborn as Win’s Entertainment during the early 90’s to much success, of which it’s still debated how much was due to Heung and his families deep rooted triad connections (after Jet Li’s agent was murdered by triads he worked exclusively for Heung from 1995 through to his departure to try his hand in Hollywood).

The question as to why Goose Boxer bombed is definitely not a mystery. I mean, any movie which opens with the aforementioned faeces scene is clearly setting itself up for a hard sell. The comedy doesn’t improve a whole lot once the credits sequence finish either. It’s noisy, puerile stuff that makes some of Elton Chong’s most grating efforts seem like comedic masterpieces in comparison. Expect pants to be pulled down, crotch blows aplenty, characters getting hit in the face with eggs, a dwarf, and plenty of moles and buck teeth to gawp at. I was constantly reminded of the struggle I had watching 1980’s Master Killers, another comedy heavy kung-fu flick that would test the patience of even the most ardent kung-fu cinema fan. Thankfully Master Killers had the benefit of featuring Phillip Ko Fei, the undoubted shapes master of kung-fu cinema’s golden era (or any era for that matter), and as it happens, so does Goose Boxer.

Like many an old-school kung-fu flick, the plot here is barely worth a mention, but basically it involves a dastardly villain in the form of the legendary Lee Hoi-Sang (Shaolin Mantis, Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog!), clocking in one of his 18 appearances during 1978. In one of the odder master-student relationships committed to film, Hoi-Sang essentially kidnaps Heung’s goose herder, and trains him in the art of the Fire Crane style. Of course it’s for nefarious purposes that Hoi-Sang keeps for himself, but it’s a non-spoiler to say the reason behind the forced training regime is so that he can get Heung up to a level where he can defeat Ko-Fei, a character whom Hoi-Sang shares a history with.

As is to be expected with any movie that introduces a pair of the era’s greatest screen fighters into the mix, Goose Boxer does indeed become more tolerable for those that make it past the halfway mark, I daresay it even becomes enjoyable. Directed by Tai Si-Fu, which translates roughly to ‘Big Master’, and is literally the only credit to his name, it’s probably safe to say that it’s an alias for whoever the real director was, perhaps concerned that they’d forever be associated with making Charles Heung voluntarily receive a face full of goose faeces. On fight choreography duty is Tommy Lee (who’d make his own directorial debut the following year, making a case that perhaps he’s the man behind the Tai Si-Fu moniker). As a choreographer Lee was on fire in the late 70’s, choreographing 20 productions spanning 1977 – 1979, many of which he also appeared in front of the camera, such as Along Comes a Tiger and Kung Fu of Seven Steps.

Once Goose Boxer turns itself over to the tried and tested formula of gruelling training sequences and fight scenes, things improve considerably. While Heung rarely gets mentioned in the context of being a kung-fu leading man, some of the contraptions he’s forced to endure here prove that, however minor his contribution was, he’s certainly worthy of a tip of the hat. The star of the show really though is the fight action. There’s a top shelf one on one between Heung and Ko Fei that is not only outstanding for the shapes work that’s on display, but also for the underlying philosophy of why they’re fighting, that has Ko Fei studying Heung’s movements in real time so that he can figure out a way to defeat them. While this type of fight scene has been done before in the likes of 1971’s The Ghost Hill and after in 2011’s Wu Xia, having a performer like Ko Fei involved makes it all the more thrilling to watch.

Ko Fei and Hoi-Sang also get to go at it in a fight which doesn’t disappoint, a reminder of a bygone era when it wasn’t an exaggeration to say some of the choreography is like poetry in motion playing out on the screen. Perhaps most alarmingly, is that one of the main comedic plot devices that gets introduced in the latter half of Goose Boxer is genuinely hilarious. Looking to acquire what’s believed to be his friends fathers kung-fu manual from the pawn shop it was sold too, it turns out to actually be a manual of different sex positions, and with Heung being too innocent to know any different, he proceeds to start training in them for the ultimate showdown against Hoi-Sang. The fight is hysterical, with Heung belting out the Fire Crane style, interspersed with him aggressively humping Hoi-Sang’s leg and pushing him around like a wheelbarrow.

I also enjoyed the fact that Heung’s self-made Goose Style, which basically sees him dordelling around with his butt sticking out, is considered to be completely useless, and literally only gets introduced into the final fight when an increasingly desperate Heung has tried everything he can to defeat Hoi-Sang. Unfortunately the fight makes a grievous error of descending back into the realm of grating comedy for its closing moments, with the introduction of go-to kung-fu movie dwarf actor Cheung Sin-Ming (Kung Fu Master Named Drunk Cat, The Phantom Killer), and all of the good will feels like it’s instantly lost the moment he bites Hoi-Sang between the legs. Painful, but not really in the way I’d been hoping the fight would end.

So is Goose Boxer worth your time? In short, it really depends on how much value you place in it. Despite watching these movies for more than 20 years, I still can’t bring myself to “just skip to the fights” – if I’m going to watch a movie, I’ll watch the whole thing no matter how much it may make my brain feel like its imploding. I got that feeling several times while watching Goose Boxer, however any movie which comes with a promise of seeing the likes of Philip Ko Fei and Lee Hoi-Sang bust out the moves in their prime will be enough to secure a viewing from most kung-fu fans, even if it takes them 10 years.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5.5/10

The post Goose Boxer | aka Shaolins Tough Kid (1978) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Secret Executioners” Theatrical Poster

Director: Lee Doo-Yong
Co-director: Godfrey Ho
Cast: Shin Woo-chul, Hwang Jang Lee, Jim Norris, Kwon Il-soo, Min Bok-gi, Park Dong-ryong
Running Time: 90 min.

By Paul Bramhall

It remains one of the greatest travesties in Korean cinema that director Lee Doo-yong’s The Trouble-Solving Broker is referenced in 99% of English language content as “another one of those Godfrey Ho cut and paste jobs.” The real tragedy is that it’s also true, with (as of the time of writing in 2024) no known surviving prints of Doo-yong’s original version in its native Korea, making the re-named Secret Executioners Filmark version that has Godfrey Ho’s name slapped on it as director a double-edged sword. On the one hand its a horrendously modified version of the original – clocking it at 90 minutes compared to the original runtime of 108, which when you factor in the newly inserted gweilo fight footage means there’s likely close to 30 minutes missing. On the other, it’s also the only available way to watch it. The perils of attempting to watch many of the entries in Korea’s taekwon-action genre!

In my feature Fists, Kicks, & Kimchi, I’d stated that “if it’s possible to choose one title which could be interpreted as the last of the ‘pure’ taekwon-action movies, then it would likely be The Trouble-Solving Broker.” Made during an era when the taekwon-action style was increasingly being incorporated into more traditional kung-fu themed settings thanks to the success of 1978’s Drunken Master, Secret Executioners acts as a kind of snapshot of the other direction the genre could have gone in. The 1980’s in general are considered a grim period for Korean cinema, and in 1982 the country as a whole was still reeling from military dictator Chun Doo-hwan strong arming himself into power following the assassination of Park Chung-hee. Fittingly, Doo-yong shifted the taekwon-action genre from the western inspired locales of early 20^th century Manchuria to the modern day, often filming guerilla style on the streets of Seoul.

The story focuses on the titular broker (or “the illegal problem solver” as the English dub calls him) played by Shin Woo-chul (Fury in Shaolin Temple, The Supreme Order), looking for all intents and purposes like a Korean version of Columbo, complete with the crumpled beige raincoat and an unassuming demeanour. His services are hired to assist a group of market vendors who’ve been extorted by a gangster running a real estate scam, and who’s backed himself up with a gang of heavies led by fellow broker Hwang Jang Lee (Eagle vs. Silver Fox, Buddhist Fist and Tiger Claws). An acquaintance of Woo-chul who’s less averse to taking on jobs that involve criminal activity, despite sharing a friendship the arrangement puts the pair at loggerheads with the expected results. After their investigations lead them to an acquaintance of the market whose sister has been kidnapped, they’re able to put aside their differences to come to the rescue.

The core of the story for the most part remains, with Godfrey Ho choosing to regrettably incorporate a handful of fight scenes filmed in Hong Kong that utilise the debatable talents of Jim Norris, responsible for the most embarrassing display of snake fist ever committed to film. These scenes involve such highlights as a guy who spits milk whenever he gets hit, insults like “white trash” and “n*gger boy” being thrown around, and most bizarrely – Kwon Il-soo (The Postman Strikes Back, Hard Bastard). Il-soo’s presence is a weird one since he’s also in the original version, so how he got roped (or if he knew he was in the first place!) by Ho into filming the new scenes is one of those great genre mysteries we’ll probably never know the answer to. Their roles give the story a gang rivalry slant, often resulting in narrative confusion, but thankfully there aren’t too many scene insertions (unlike the infamous Ninja Terminator which would come 3 years later).

Despite being responsible for starting the taekwon-action genre with 1974’s The Manchurian Tiger, the last time Doo-Yong had dabbled in the genre prior to Secret Executioners was 6 years earlier with 1976’s Visitor of America (also criminally most well known as its bastardized version Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave). In the time since he’d go on to become a critically acclaimed director by helming the likes of The Hut and The Last Witness (both from 1980), and it’s the gritty realism of the latter which also permeates throughout Secret Executioners. The low budget sees Doo-yong frequently filming on the street’s guerilla style, including a frantic foot chase, and much of the story plays out in billiard halls, coffee shops, nightclubs and marketplace restaurants, unintentionally capturing an authentic aura of what Seoul felt like at the time, even with the dubbing.

The same grittiness applies to the story itself, and while Hwang Jang Lee was relegated to being a bit player in almost all of Doo-yong’s early taekwon-action movies, here he’s upgraded to co-star status following his popularity in Hong Kong. Indeed his character here is probably the most fully realised of all his roles – far from turning up to deliver little else aside from sternly worded threats, evil laughter, and his lethal boot work, here we get to see him partake in more menial tasks like getting his hair shampooed in a barber shop, getting it on with a prostitute, and going to a public bath with an acquaintance (source of the much noted HJL posterior shot that seems necessary to point out in any discussion on Secret Executioners!).

It’s the latter setting that also delivers one of the most brutal beatdowns in the boot-masters filmography. Finding himself ambushed in the locker room, Jang Lee proceeds to unleash his kicks against anyone in range, offering up a sense of franticness and desperation which feels far removed from his invincible kung-fu villain roles. The opening Filmark credits list Jang Lee as the fight choreographer, although without the original Korean credits this is impossible to verify, however what’s clear is that Doo-yong seemed to want to make this his taekwon-action swansong and go out with a bang. Fights frequently break out against multiple opponents within confined spaces involving plenty of property damage, and even if some of it feels a little sloppy, the hits feel hard and the choreography leans into the brutality of being kicked or punched in the face.

Woo-chul is a highlight, and as an actor who’s slightly on the burlier side, he energetically throws himself into the kicks he delivers. A standout fight sequence (and the only real one on one) sees him go up against Jang Lee in a knockdown drag out brawl on a beach that segues into an abandoned building, in which they almost bring the entire structure down by kicking out the wooden supporting pillars holding up the rafters. In a latter café set fight scene there’s also an unintentionally amusing moment when Woo-chul delivers a flying kick to a foreigner playing one of the lackeys. After delivering the reaction shot to being kicked he proceeds to calmly stand in the corner, assuming he’s out of shot, until it becomes obvious someone must be frantically signalling him off-camera to move, and he attempts to (failing miserably) subtly exit stage left.

The best is saved for last though, as a literal who’s who in the taekwon-action genre convene in a brick factory for an almost uninterrupted 8-minute mass brawl encompassing fists, feet, steel pipes, knives, spades, bricks (expectedly) and a katana for good measure. Doo-yong even throws in a car driving through a brick wall, as Woo-chul and Jang Lee combine forces to rescue Min Bok-gi (Wild Panther, Strike of the Thunderkick Tiger) and her sister. It’s an entertainingly chaotic and relentless sequence that sees more flying kicks doled out than is possible to count, and everyone goes at it as if their life depended on it. As one of the last times the original era of taekwon-action would grace the screen, Doo-yong ensures that everyone has a moment in the spotlight, and in many ways the scene acts as a precursor to the kind of group brawls that would become a fixture in the gangster genre during the 1990’s and 2000’s.

Despite the Filmark interference Secret Executioner has been subjected to, Doo-yong’s gritty street level vision of Seoul in the early 1980’s and the characters who populate it still shines through. In one particularly gnarly scene a character has their head pushed face first into an unflushed toilet bowl, and as much as I’d consider it a similarly suitable punishment for how Filmark treated so many of the taekwon-action productions, in this case we also have them to thank for being able to see it at all. For that, they can almost be forgiven. Almost.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post Secret Executioners | aka Trouble-Solving Broker (1982) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“The Tai Chi Master” Poster

Director: Lin Zhenzhao
Cast: Wu Yue, Zhang Kai, Zhang Ming Can, Ada Liu, Zhang Chunzhong, Yu Hai, Lemon Li
Running Time: 90 min.

By Paul Bramhall

During the Chinese web-movie boom of the 2010’s many of them were regarded as cheap and disposable entertainment, often justifiably so, with most of them falling either into the category of cheap kung-fu flick, or even cheaper monster movie. However it’s not an industry which has stood still, and in the 2020’s the output has reached a certain level of respectability, so much so that the term ‘web-movie’ seems to have become obsolete, with the same movies now being referred to as China’s equivalent of direct-to-streaming. Not a significant upgrade, but an upgrade none the less! It’s the kung-fu flick which has led the charge, with new blood directors like Qin Pengfei, Huo Suiqiang and Bingjia Yang upping the ante of what can be done on a limited budget, populating their productions with recognisable names like Andy On, Xia Miao, Xing Yu, Tony Jaa, and Iko Uwais.

One director who’s successfully continued to crank out the heady mix of kung-fu flicks and monster movies that populated the 2010’s is Lin Zhenzhao, who’s lasting legacy will likely be the (so far) quadrilogy of Snake movies spanning 2018 – 2023 (and if you’re wondering, I recommend Snake 3: Dinosaur vs. Python). Zhenzhao was also responsible for reviving Vincent Zhao into the role of Wong Fei Hung in 2018’s Unity of Heroes, and in 2022 he gave Wu Yue the opportunity to headline a wuxia with The Tai Chi Master. Yue is one of the few actors who’s the real deal when it comes to martial arts, and first came on my radar when he fought Shawn Yu in 2015’s From Vegas to Macau 2. Since then he’s taken on a number of memorable supporting roles, with 2017 being a highlight year in which he’d show off his talents in the hattrick of God of War, Paradox, and The Brink, so to see him headlining a movie as the star feels well deserved.

Of course the elephant in the room for any fans of kung-fu cinema with a movie titled The Tai Chi Master will be if it’s connected to Yuen Woo-Ping’s 1993 classic of the same name, which starred Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. The short answer is – yes. Yue is playing the same character that Jet Li played, with Zhang Kai (Wolf Hunters, Trivisa) playing the character that Chin Siu-Ho portrayed in the original. However that’s essentially where the similarities end, with Zhenzhao’s version transferring the shaolin backdrop of the original to a more fantasy wuxia themed take on the material. Indeed it’s a relevant question to ask how the original could be topped, and Zhenzhao’s answer appears to be by throwing in a cute kung-fu kid (played by Zhang Ming Can – Restart the Earth) and a gigantic CGI Tremors inspired silkworm.

The closest we get to Michelle Yeoh’s character is Ada Liu (The Four 3, Jian Bing Man), who it’s revealed the silkworm has been tasked with protecting, both of them residing in the forbidden territory of Insect Valley. When Yue accidentally pursues a couple of enemy soldiers into the valley he not only gets to utter the classic line “I’ll fight this big earthworm”, but he also crosses paths with Liu, becoming smitten with her mysterious aura. Of course, relationships are difficult to develop when the person you’re trying to court has an overly protective gigantic CGI silkworm never far from their side.

Sure, it may be easy to mock the latter, but then again it’s hardly the first time for a fantasy wuxia to throw in a random animal companion. From Andy Lau and his killer whale in 1992’s The Moon Warriors, to Anita Mui and her oversized crane in 1993’s The Magic Crane, so watching a massive CGI worm spitting balls of silk to neutralize the bad guys isn’t really such a stretch. In Zhenzhao’s reimagining of the source material, Yue plays a happy-go-lucky drunk who also happens to be skilled at martial arts, and hence has been entrusted by his clan with the key to the tianji iron box. The box in question is in fact an armour encasing, which is being used to imprison the villainous head of the Netherworld Clan due to his powerful qi, played by Zhang Chunzhong (Once Upon a Time in China III, Kung fu Cult Master). However when Yue’s carelessness leads to him being freed, the very fate of the Song Dynasty hangs in the balance.

Credit has to go to Zhenzhao for not only bringing in a stalwart of kung-fu cinema like Chunzhong, but also enlisting one of the original Tai Chi Master’s cast members in the form of the legendary Yu Hai (Shaolin Temple, Yellow River Fighter). Playing a senior member of the clan Yue is a part of , Hai was 80 at the time of The Tai Chi Master’s release and would sadly pass away the following year, making it his final acting role, so it’s a bittersweet experience to see him onscreen for the last time.

More than anything Zhenzhao seems to be aiming for a homage to the early 90’s new-wave wuxia period, with a cast of imaginative villains, and references to techniques like “ancient corpse immortality”. The action is handled by Chen Chao, who worked on the likes of Hidden Blade and co-directed the Fan Siu-Wong starring The Bravest Escort Group, along with go-to web movie action director You Gaofeng, who’s talents can be seen in the likes of Land Shark and Open the Tomb. Anyone expecting grounded action from a fantasy wuxia is understandably in the wrong place, however for those who like their martial arts action with a heavy dose of wirework, there’s plenty to enjoy. In the opening scene assault on a heavily fortified village the attackers use massive catapults to send winged swordsmen over the defences, recalling the crazy kite ninjas from Ching Siu-Tung’s 1983 classic Duel to the Death.

A character called the Yin Yang Judge is another highlight. An oversized man mountain who wears a 2 faced mask that can rotate 360 degrees, he carries around a huge paint brush used to gather up leaves, which after doing so sees him fire them towards his opponents in the shape of a Chinese character. He’s usually accompanied by Lemon Li (Sharktopus, Snow Monster) in a role that’s clearly riffing on Brigitte Lin’s iconic turn in Swordman 2, with her ability to project deadly strands of string that entangle and slice into anyone who gets caught up in them. While the blatant CGI rock destruction and flimsy props are never going to match the unparalleled energy of the movies that inspired The Tai Chi Master, the action has enough creativity behind it to make it enjoyable, and Yue’s eventual discovery of tai chi allows for some brief moments of grounded action.

If there’s one aspect of the production that could actually be considered superior to the original when compared in context (and I know it’s almost sacrilegious to say this), it’s that Zhenzhao’s version successfully escalates the action to an entertaining finale. My one gripe with Yuen Woo-Ping’s 1993 classic has always been that it peaks when Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, and their comrades get ambushed 2 thirds of the way through, with the final third culminating in an underwhelming fight between Li and Chin Siu-Ho. I’m in no way saying that The Tai Chi Master blows it out of the water, but with its comparative production values and narrative, Zhenzhao gets the pacing right by going with a big finale that goes all out (and by go all out, I mean, we never got Jet Li and Chin Siu-Ho battling it out within a cocoon of freshly spat silk in 1993).

Like most Chinese direct-to-streaming movies, The Tai Chi Master was never going to revolutionize the kind of wirework fuelled wuxia’s that dominated Hong Kong cinemas in the early 1990’s, but like the best of these productions, it’s content with recreating the feel of them for a modern audience. Wu Yue makes for a likeable lead and an action scene is rarely more than a few minutes away, whether it be the power of tai chi propelling someone across the screen, or a giant silkworm mercilessly devouring a helpless lackey. Cheap and disposable? Maybe, but also entertaining, and can never be accused of outstaying its welcome.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

The post Tai Chi Master, The (2022) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“100 Yards” Theatrical Poster

Director: Xu Haofeng
Co-director: Xu Junfeng
Cast: Jacky Heung, Andy On, Bea Hayden Kuo, Li Yuan, Shiyi Tang, Kevin Lee, Brono Bajtala
Running Time: 109 min.

By Paul Bramhall

There’s a strong argument to be had for Xu Haofeng being the greatest kung-fu cinema director of the 21^st century. When Haofeng made his directorial debut with The Sword Identity in 2012 he was billed as the writer of Wong Kar-Wai’s The Grandmaster (which ironically at the time was yet to be released), however such was the strength of his debut that he was soon recognized as an established director in his own right. Typically blending themes based on the rules that govern the martial arts world, and imbuing them with a sense of everyday reality, Haofeng’s ability to create works that feel grounded yet poetic has become one of his defining traits.

In modern day China though dealing with the world the wuxia genre operates in comes with its own risks, with it by nature having an element of the political in its tales of rival clans and individualistic aspirations. With the shakeups that took place in the latter 2010’s around how productions have to pass the censorship board, and President Xi Jinping’s own speech that declared the film industry should make “patriotism the main theme of literary and artistic creation”, in 2017 Haofeng’s latest found itself in the crosshairs. While The Hidden Sword debuted at the Montréal World Film Festival during the same year, in 2019 its domestic release in China was cancelled 4 days before it was due to hit cinemas and hasn’t been heard of since, largely assumed to be because its subject matter fell foul of the latest censorship laws. Since then Haofeng has been quiet, so it’s understandably a cause for celebration to see him return in 2024 with 100 Yards.

Despite 7 years passing since the completion of The Hidden Sword, Haofeng shows no signs of rust with his latest, sharing co-director credit with his brother Xu Junfeng. Smartly sidestepping any potentially controversial subject matter (reflecting the same approach Zhang Yimou took with 2021’s Cliff Walkers after the similar drama he experienced with One Second), instead the plot focuses on a dying martial arts school master who’s looking to pass on the school’s ownership. While his son would seem to naturally be next in line, played by Jacky Heung (League of Gods, True Legend), the master has called upon one of his oldest students to return as another potential inheritor, played by Andy On (Ride On, Blind War).

Pitted against each other, Heung proves to be no match for On’s skills, the result of Heung’s father wanting him to leave the martial arts world, meaning that unlike On, he never taught him every form of their family’s kung-fu style. With On as the school’s inheritor, tension soon begins to bristle from his unorthodox approach to running the school, while Heung digs deeper into rumours that his father’s three fist form technique may have had a secretive fourth fist style that only a select few are aware of. While on the surface of the plot the driver is who should rightfully take over the school, just beneath there’s the age-old question that lays at the heart of many of the best wuxia’s – who is number one when it comes to martial arts?

Set in the French concession of Tianjin during the 1920’s, the 100 Yards of the title refers to how martial arts schools came to be responsible for any disorder that took place within said distance from the school’s gates, an unspoken rule of assisting to keep the peace of the communities in which they were established. In the narrative the measurement becomes a metaphor for the escalating rivalry between Heung and On, as the insular nature of the kung-fu community increasingly spills both beyond both the school itself and the 100 yards outside of it, as traditions are disregarded and tensions begin to fray. In one scene the daughter of the bank manager Heung has been dating, played with a sultry charm by Bea Hayden Kuo (the Tiny Time franchise, and Heung’s actual wife), tells him “Don’t believe anything you see or anything that happens.”, and it’s a fitting analogy for the duplicitous nature of wanting to be the best.

As a scholar of all thing’s martial arts Haofeng usually also takes on the role of fight choreographer in his productions, and here it’s no different, with the exception being that he’s brought onboard Duncan Leung as co-martial art director. One of the few students of Ip Man who was trained one on one at home, Haofeng had wanted to bring Leung onboard to choreograph the wing chun butterfly sword action in 2015’s The Master, but as one of the last remaining masters back then was still reluctant to reveal its techniques. Haofeng ended up choreographing the action himself, using his own interpretations of how he thought they’d be used in combat, and Leung was impressed enough that almost 10 years later he agreed to come onboard and train Heung and On in their application, as well as assisting in the choreography itself.

Like all of Haofeng’s productions, the fight scenes here play an integral part of the plot, acting as more than exclamation marks in that each one also serves to propel the narrative forward. The antithesis of the style of action found in the likes of The Shadow Strays from the same year, here the fights are filmed and performed clean and crisp, with the focus not so much on inflicting as much pain on the opponent as possible, rather doing just enough to demonstrate martial arts superiority. Both Heung and On are revelations in their roles, with the former being missing from the big screen since 2019’s Chasing Dream, and in a role where he displays his martial arts prowess even longer.

On was always touted as having the potential to be the next big Hong Kong action star, and while changes in the market have seen those hopes become redundant, in recent years he’s made a niche for himself turning up in action orientated web-movies like Hunt the Wicked and The Comeback. To see them both being given the opportunity to show off their martial arts talents in a production like 100 Yards feels one of those rare occasions when the stars align, and every action scene delivers, resulting in a finale that amounts to almost 30 minutes of non-stop fighting. The highlight is a 10-minute uninterrupted sequence that sees Heung taking on a small army of attackers one by one to prove his worthiness, with the focus on technique harking back to the kind of pure kung-fu movie that the late Lau Kar-Leung specialised in.

Unlike Lau Kar-Leung though, Haofeng shows a deft hand at being able to weave in a subtle sense of humor, with the way Heung confidently strides forward after defeating each fighter in the main sequence offset by those sprawled on the ground being hurriedly carried away on stretchers in the background. Special mention should also go to classical dancer Tang Shi Yi, here making her sophomore big screen acting appearance after 2021’s The Day We Lit Up the Sky, who clocks in a supporting role as the master of an elusive short sword technique, and gets her own action sequence when she’s ambushed in a bath house. Despite her relative inexperience she has a strong screen presence whenever she’s on it, and comes to play an important role in the rivalry between Heung and On.

Despite its more contemporary setting, the themes that underpin 100 Yards recall some of the genres best wuxia’s, with the certain melancholy that goes hand in hand with navigating the martial arts world recalling the likes of Hua Shan’s Soul of the Sword and Patrick Tam’s The Sword. Beneath the fedora hats there’s a longing for something more, and in the closing scenes there’s at least a partial realisation that being the superior martial artist doesn’t necessarily mean that much. While in 2024 fight filled action movies are in plentiful supply, movies which put the themes of martial artistry at the heart of why they exist are few and far between. With 100 Yards Haofeng proves that it’s still possible to create a compelling story, fully rounded characters, and stellar fight action, and for that, we can all be thankful.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 9/10

The post 100 Yards (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“High Forces” Theatrical Poster

Director: Oxide Pang
Cast: Andy Lau, Liu Tau, Zhang Zifeng, Qu Chuxiao, Jiang Mengjie, Jiang Chao, Eric Chou
Running Time: 115 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The disaster movie on a plane has been going through a bit of a renaissance in Asia during recent years. China threw their hat into the ring with 2019’s The Captain, and Korea’s returned to the genre twice in as many years with 2022’s Emergency Declaration and 2024’s Hijack 1971. 2024 is also the year China decided to get back at it, with (the as yet to be released) Wings of Dread representing the iQIYI web-movie end of the scale, and the Andy Lau produced and starring High Forces representing the big budget other end.

Directed by Oxide Pang, High Forces is only the 2^nd movie he’s helmed in the 2020’s, no doubt in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which put a pause on any filmmaking activity in China for a couple of years at the start of the decade. A director who began his career as one half of the Pang Brothers, since debuting with 2000’s Bangkok Dangerous the pair cranked out several movies spanning Thailand, Hong Kong, and even Hollywood (which included a Nicolas Cage starring remake of their debut). The last production they worked on together was 2013’s firefighting disaster movie Out of Inferno, a genre which ironically Oxide Pang returned to for his last directorial outing prior to High Forces, with 2023’s Flash Over. Having parted ways with his sibling Pang spent the late 2010’s working on local Mainland productions, so his latest offers the first time since Out of Inferno to be working with a star (and budget) as big as Andy Lau.

While I never thought I’d write this, it seems Herman Yau’s Customs Frontline from earlier in the year is an influence on High Forces. In that movie Jacky Cheung starred as a bi-polar customs officer, and for his latest Oxide Pang takes the idea and runs with it. So we get Andy Lau (Shock Wave 2, Mission Milano) as a bi-polar security officer who’s been hired to work for China’s newest airline, a chance to start afresh after his marriage fell apart thanks to his “capricious tantrums”. Now on medication for his anger management issues, Lau is a level-headed guy, and since he’s off-shift is given an economy seat when the inaugural flight sets off from Southeast Asia. His ex-wife (Liu Tau – The Foreigner) and teenage daughter (Zhang Zifeng – Adoring) also happen to be on the same flight in first class, returning from another trip to visit a specialist who could help bring back their daughters vision, which she lost during a tragic incident 8 years earlier.

For anyone who’s watched any Chinese action movie in recent years, you’ll know that the made-up Southeast Asia setting (in this case “Batty Airport”) offers an excuse for some criminal activity to go down that would never be feasible if it was set on the Mainland. In this case, it allows for those lax Southeast Asian airport staff to have somehow let a bunch of hijackers armed with guns (with hollow point bullets so they can be used on a plane) and parachutes onto the flight. The hijackers are led by a bi-polar psychopath played by Qu Chuxiao (Wandering Earth, The Yin Yang Master) who’s after a US$500 million payout, and when the authorities don’t comply, he’s not afraid to start slimming down the passenger list. So the stage is set for a tense battle between a bi-polar security officer and a bi-polar hijacker, with the question of who’ll be able to leverage their mental health condition most effectively to take down the other.

I confess that the logical part of my brain feels like it should mercilessly tear apart High Forces for its insensitive approach to such a serious topic (even more than Customs Frontline!), however perhaps the bigger confession is that I found myself enjoying it. Pang’s latest is frankly so oblivious to its own stupidity that it somehow becomes entertaining, with a simplistic portrayal of anyone suffering from bi-polar disorder distilled down to – on meds and stable, or prone to fits of uncontrollable rage. Whereas Lau’s anger at a traffic jam leads him to mounting the curb and driving along the pavement, Chuxiao has no objection to having a wine bottle smashed over his head, and enjoys sticking his thumb into a passenger’s bullet wound. They even get their own color coded ‘rage filters’ to let us know when their disorder has kicked in, with Lau’s outbursts suddenly switching the screen to a red filter, and Chuxiao’s to green.

Outside of the mental health related action, High Forces fits the expected description of “Die Hard on a plane” to a tee. We get the hijackers identifying Lau’s family through the discovery of a photograph, and Lau even strikes up a conversation with one of the passengers through a kid’s walkie talkie set, allowing the passenger to keep him informed on the hijacker’s movements. Of course, here the plot uses the scenario to plough some emotional beats, with the passenger who ends up with the walkie talkie being his estranged daughter, the robotic voice distorter the device uses preventing them from realising they’re talking to each other. Naturally bonding will happen, bridges will be mended, and tears will eventually be shed.

I’m aware I’m making High Forces sounds like a train wreck, and while parts of it certainly are, there are also aspects of it done really well. Lau is far more effective here than he was in last year’s lamentable I Did It My Way, being perhaps the only other star from Hong Kong’s golden era outside of Jackie Chan who’s been able to successfully transfer his popularity to Mainland productions (and if anything he’s got one up on Chan, in that he’s also been able to maintain his popularity in HK). Likewise Chuxiao makes for an effective villain, with a welcome ruthless streak that sees him killing passengers with reckless abandon whenever his back’s up against the wall.

The action itself displays a surprisingly brutal streak for a Mainland production, maybe in part down to my own expectation that Lau was going to skulk around and apprehend all the bad guys, so as soon as it became apparent that his plan was to kill them all, it immediately made things more enjoyable. I guess there are benefits to not having your hero be a cop. Arms get snapped in the wrong direction causing self-impalements, faces get bashed into the floor, and knives get stabbed into necks, with Lau’s red rage filter unintentionally harking back to Chang Cheh’s use of the same for any particularly bloody deaths in Heroes Two 50 years earlier.

The environment of the A380 the narrative plays out in is also put to good use, featuring its own beauty clinic and duty-free shop, ensuring there are plenty of different environments for the action beats to play out it. The apparent lack of any turbulence sometimes betrays the fact that the whole thing is obviously being filmed on a stationery set, but it’s a minor niggle, with the finale going for an all-out approach. At one point Lau, his daughter, and Chuxiao are all entangled in parachute ropes dangling outside the plane, the greenscreen work not quite convincing to make it the adrenaline pumping spectacle its aiming for, but in its place the result is if anything charmingly goofy. The fact that the scene takes full advantage of the not-so-subtle foreshadowing in an earlier interaction, where one of the flight attendants excitedly tells her colleague she’s finally got her skydiving license, only adds to the gratuitous spectacle of it all.

Ultimately Pang’s latest is a tough call to review. Do you rate something on how entertained you where, even if a lot of the entertainment derived from watching it wasn’t intentional, and that your brain is telling you it can’t really be considered a good movie. Or do you take the detached critic approach and view it from a distance, acknowledging that it’s basically a contrived disaster flick, with the most disastrous aspect of all being its incorporation of pitting a bi-polar protagonist against a bi-polar antagonist. Since I always choose to go with how I felt as the end credits roll, for High Forces I’ll go with the former. Sure, it might not be high art, but approach it with the right expectations, and there’s no reason why you won’t be highly entertained (just not for all the reasons you expected).

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post High Forces (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.