Angry Young Man (1983)

Angry Young Man (1983)
Chinese Title: 今之俠者
Translation: Today's Hero

Starring: Alan Chui, Yeung Lun, Pai Ying, Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee, Cheng Kang-Yeh, Hon Gwok-Choi, Chan Wai-Lau, Chang Chi-Ping, Jue Yuen-Yee, Hung Lau, Chen Shan, Choi Wang, Ng Ming-Choi
Director: Wong Sing-Lui
Action Directors: Chow Kong, Chang Ka Ka

It was through the sadly-defunct site “A Martial Artist’s Guide to Hong Kong Films” that I found out about Angry Young Man. Man, I miss that site. It kept going until the beginning of 2006, when the author just stopped updating. It never mattered that the guy’s facts weren’t always straight or that I frequently disagreed with his ratings on account of my not being quite so much the martial arts purist as he was. I’m pretty sure the author had more than a few enemies; he thought that most Shaw Bros. films were overrated. I just loved reading his observations, however short, on kung fu movies and the styles depicted in them. Heck, I even tried to rip off his site back in 2000 and 2001, but with American movies. I let him know I was doing it, although he never sent me a response.

Anyway, the MAGTHKF review of Angry Young Man went like this:

ANGRY YOUNG MAN

Stars: Pai Ying, Hwang Jang Lee. MA rating: 1

Horrible, violent but extremely funny Taiwan/1970s movie. Moppy-haired thugs beat the crap out of each other sloppily. Hwang Jang Lee is a Japanese villain who brutalizes meek Taiwanese workers. The line “you damned Japanese” shows up every few scenes.

If you ignore the author’s supposition of when the film was made, you see that the guy was absolutely right on the button about this particular piece of work. It’s a mind-bendingly awful chopsockey film no matter what set of measuring sticks one might use.

You see, most kung fu movies tend to achieve badness in one of several ways: cliché script that only serves to move us from one fight scene to the next; dubbing (I personally like old school dubbing, although sometimes it’s obvious that the dubbers are quite uninterested in what their doing and it reflects in the fun factor of the film); tacky costumes; low budget; unimaginative and sloppy fight direction; overabundance of unfunny comedy; and general sleaziness. Now that’s all good as far as it goes, and usually the filmmakers can squeeze a few redeeming features out of your most horrid kung fu movies. Look at Kung Fu Rebels: I really detested that piece of tripe, but once it got past the mean-spirited violence and abundance of unfunny comedy and focused on ripping off the good parts of The Drunken Master, it wasn’t too bad.

Angry Young Man, on the other hand, becomes decent watching only for about five minutes at the end when Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee explodes onto the screen. But everything before and after that is just…well…gah!

There are two parallel stories in this movie, although they never really interact in any meaningful way. To be honest, when one plot leads into the other, it’s done in such a silly way that you really want to yell, “Are you friggin’ kidding me?”

The film begins with a karate seminar being held in Taiwan. The keynote speaker is a Chinese-born karate specialist named Kang Tin (who’ll eventually be played by Hwang Jang Lee) who’s supposed to fly in from Japan in order to supervise a series of tests for potential black belts. Kang’s flight has been delayed, so the MC, a fighter named Wang Wan-Si (Yeung Lun, Supergirl of Kung Fu and Against the Drunken Cat’s Paws), asks his teacher and the head of one of the local dojos, a certain Mr. Tang (Pai Ying of Royal Warriors and The Stomp) to speak instead. Mr. Tang immediately starts extolling the virtues of karate and criticizing Chinese kung fu as if he were in a Jimmy Wang Yu (or Bruce Lee) film made circa 1972 and set in pre-WW2 China. Unfortunately, this is 1983, which means that WW2 and the Japanese occupation of Formosa has already occurred. Taiwanese people understandably don’t want to hear their own culture being put down while that of the oppressor is glorified, sort of like how Jewish people generally aren’t very happy when a famous person says anything positive about Hitler. It only takes a few seconds before everybody gets up and walks out on Mr. Tang. Sorry dude.

This particular part of the film is unbearably anachronistic, especially when people start complaining about valuing Chinese culture and saving its people and whatnot. The characters in this movie talk as if the Japanese were still occupying Taiwan, which I assume ended back in 1945, 38 years before this film is set. This sort of blatant nationalism might’ve been fine (to some extent) when Bruce Lee and Jimmy Wang Yu did it, since they at least set most of their movies in period. However, for people in the 1980s to talk as if the Japanese were planning on re-occupying the island is so racist as to become goofy and ruin most of the internal logic that kung fu movies tend to depend on.

We then switch to the life and times of Brother Lau (Alan Chui of Incredible Kung Fu Mission and Shaolin Temple Against Lama), an old colleague of Wang’s. Apparently Lau had everything he needed in order to become a renown kung fu expert. He threw it all away years before, however, and now works as a mid-level Triad smuggler. His flunkies spend their time harrassing girls and getting high, while he pines for his love, the beautiful Shao Wei (Lunatic Frog Women‘s Jue Yuen-Yee). Apparently Lau is having some problems with a shipment, which leads to his superiors, Bald Boss (Hung Lau of The Woman Who Eat People and A Taste of Cold Steel) and Overbite Guy (whom I think is Chang Chi-Ping of Woman Avenger), kidnapping and torturing one of Lau’s subordinates, Ah Chan (Cheng Kang-Yeh, whom Shaw fans will recognize from Executioners from Shaolin and Heroes of the East).

The film then jumps back to the life and times of Wang Wan-Si, whom we learn has a day job as a soda delivery man. This is one of the few kung fu movies I’ve seen that suggests that a kung fu/karate master actually has a normal job outside of class. He’s harrassed by Lau’s men while on the job, and it takes a significant amount of taunting before he finally kicks the s*** out of them. Suddenly, Overbite Guy shows up and beats the hell out Wang, although I’m not sure why they were screwing with him in the first place. Wang apparently is a busy guy, because it seems he has a job at construction site as well, and Lau’s men just don’t want to give him a break. So another fight breaks out, although this time Wang finds out that the men belong to the same gang as Lau.

Wang confronts Lau, and the two get into a big argument. Well, actually it’s just Wang berating Lau for becoming a crook instead of a decent man. The police show up and are about to arrest Lau when Wang lies and tells him that Lau had nothing to do with his being assaulted. Lau then tells Overbite Guy that he wants out of the business and is attacked by his own men for his troubles. Lau holds his own, but Overbite Guy is too much for him. Wang and Lau meet up and have another heart-to-heart, with Lau deciding to join Wang’s karate class. What a tool.

Now we go back to the Japanese karate subplot, which gets even more ludricrous than any Taiwanese ninja movie you can imagine. At Mr. Tang’s dojo, one of the mottos there is “Never Apologize.” What this means is that if you accidentally hurt your partner while sparring, then tough titties for him. We get to this in action when a student accidentally hits his partner, apologizes, and subsequently gets the snot beaten out of him by his sensei. Of course, in the real world, such a dojo would have very few, if any students. Moreover, most normal people would call the police and accuse such a karate teacher of assault and battery. But not in this movie. Apparently the filmmakers think very little of their own people and portray the Taiwanese as being too stupid to realize that there are dozens of kung fu schools in city that probably don’t make a habit of mercilessly abusing their students while making racial epithets and glorifying another culture. Man, what sort of cracked universe are these people living in?

In any case, the film will soon forget about that plot until the last act. Let’s go back to the whole Lau-Goes-Straight business. Obviously, Bald Boss and Overbite Guy aren’t really happy that they’re about to lose one of their own. So they decide to put a bit of pressure on him. How about they kidnap Shao Wei, who’s been something of a non-entity up until this point. Don’t worry, she’ll continue to be one for the duration of the film. The Triads plan on kidnapping her, but Ah Chan warns her and she avoids becoming a victim of the Gruesome Overbite Guy. That means more torture is in the works for Ah Chan. Of course, Lau wants to help his old colleague, so he goes to the gym where Ah Chan is being held captive.

A fight breaks out shortly after Lau arrives and Ah Chan is hurled off a balcony and dies (or almost does, I’m not sure). Wang Wan-Si and the rest of his karate posse show up to help their big brother, but unfortunately, one of their number, Chow San (Hon Gwok-Choi of Call Me Dragon and Little Superman) is taken, beaten, and hung. He’s rescued and taken to the hospital while Wang and Lau go off in search of Bald Boss’s HQ. Bald Boss sends some men to destroy Wang’s house and make it look like an accident, but usually driving a car into a person’s property and slicing its inhabitants up with machetes is a little hard to dress up as an accident. Let me point out that this violent incident is never mentioned again in the film, but I’ll get to that in a little more detail in a moment. Wang and Lau corner Bald Boss and Overbite Guy at a construction yard, where our heroes have to beat up the bad guys while avoiding heavy construction equipment. The entire set piece is undercranked, which makes it one of the goofiest and idiotic action sequences I’ve seen in a Chinese movie, which is really saying something.

Wang and Lau are about to give Bald Boss his just desserts when the cops arrive, led by a corrupt chief. The corrupt chief tries to bribe our heroes into forgetting this whole mess ever happened, as if watching your friends nearly get tortured to death and having your house destroyed is something easy to turn a blind eye to. When they refuse, the chief…and this is where the two plots connect…reminds them that they have a karate examination that day and that if they persist in looking for justice, they’ll miss the examination. I mean, WHAT THE HECK????? It is official: the writers of this movie obviously live in some strange fantasy world. Lau and Wang still refuse, so the corrupt boss resorts to good ol’ fashioned police brutality in order to force our heroes to participate in the examination and forget about the whole business involving murderous Triads.

The rest of the movie will revolve around karate exam, completely jettisoning the whole Triad plotline, including whatever the fallout was from that home massacre segment. I guess those particular family members weren’t that important. What is important, though, at least in the eyes of writers Yu Cheng-Chun and Kwok Yan, is that the exam is being headed by Kang Tin, his son (Ng Ming-Choi, a short, stout fellow who viewers might recognize as a guard who gets killed by Bolo Yeung in Enter the Dragon), and another fighter named Cho Cho Mo (Taiwanese mainstay Choi Wang), all three of whom (plus Mr. Tang) are sadistic SOBs. Cho Cho Mo starts beating up (complete with limb breaking) the Taiwanese students, causing the referee, Lee (I think it’s Chen Shan of Ninja in the USA and Shaolin vs. Lama) to get involved and beat up Cho Cho Mo. Kang’s son gets involved and things really start to get violent.

Lots of kung fu movies don’t have plots worth writing home about, but few of them are as ineptly nonsensical as what we’re treated to in Angry Young Man. That transition from triad film to karate film near the end is asinine beyond all belief and when you get right down to it, nothing about the movie makes very much sense. The fact that the script ignores the whole Triad story in the last 25 minutes is a particularly powerful kick in the nuts, considering that it took up most of the film’s running time during the first two acts. The whole anti-Japanese sentiment that rears its head whenever a scene is set at a karate school is far more racist and mean-spirited than the characters the film portrays. There are numerous scenes that serve absolutely no narrative purpose in the story, like an early bit where a bunch of thugs try to rape a young female street peddler, only to get beat up by Wang’s colleagues (one of whom imitates an intellectually-challenged man while he’s at it). Then there’s the scene where Wang’s father (and Lau’s teacher) goes to visit Lau, but doesn’t actually talk to him because he’s busy ignoring the thugs’ insults. Wang’s father disappears from the film never to be seen again after that. There’s another scene in which some thugs try to rape a girl and are given an a** kicking by an old cook (Chan Wai-Lau, the old master in The Fearless Hyena). Then there’s the end, in which the owner of the Japanese dojo actually congratulates the men for humiliating the Japanese visitors. Wha–?? And then the corrupt police chief shows up to award our heroes with a plaque…that’s it, I just friggin’ give up.

Whenever I review movies, I rarely pay attention to the writers. But the plot here is just one colossal clusterf*** that I felt compelled to look up the filmographies of both writers. Yu Cheng-Chun worked on a number of films as director and assistant director, but wrote only three films. Kwok Yan worked before with director Wong Sing-Lui on the early Dorian Tan Tao-Liang film Hero of the Waterfront. Wong Sing-Lui had a decent career with kung fu movies, including the well-received Mainland Chinese kung fu film Arhats in Fury. That film has been praised for its themes of Shaolin monks being reluctant to help others who are suffering injustices. It’s a shame that Wong couldn’t do anything interesting with this film’s script, although I doubt Tsui Hark could do anything good with the hack job Wong had to work with.

Of course, the script isn’t the only the way in which this film fails miserably. The take-home theme is supposedly that kung fu is not inferior to karate. Said point is supposed to be driven home by Lau switching from karate to kung fu when he takes on Kang Tin at the very end. While he does get some good hits in, Kang Tin still f***s him up royally and gives him a thrashing he won’t soon forget. As usual, when Hwang Jang Lee finally loses at the end, it’s not very convincing. So how can you glorify a martial arts style when the character can’t even use it effectively to defeat the villain at the end?

Speaking of styles, let’s talk about the action, brought to you courtesy of Chow Kong and Chang Ka Ka. A search at the Hong Kong Movie Database revealed nothing on the latter. Chow Kong, however, was a movie veteran who made a living off playing thugs and extras and whatnot in dozens of kung fu films. He only choreographed a handful of movies, all of them obscure titles, like Green Killer and Little Mad Guy. The earlier fights in this movie are among the worst-choreographed pieces of crap I’ve personally seen. The punches and kicks are so sloppy and lacking in power that they make Jimmy Wang Yu at his most arm-flailingest look like a seasoned master by comparison. There are a few isolated moments in which its clear that the performers know what they’re doing, but the two…two action directors are frankly at a loss on how to bring said abilities to the screen. I mean, how do you waste the talents of Alan Chui, one of Taiwan’s best choreographers and a great screen fighter? Or Hon Gwok-Choi, who was so flexible he was pulling off acrobatic feats in Running on Karma as he was nearing 50! It’s rather sad that Chui wasn’t entrusted with the kung fu responsibilities, since he would’ve been able to salvage the non-Hwang fights in this movie and it would’ve been more tolerable.

People expecting much from Hang Jang Lee will most likely be disappointed. He doesn’t even show up in the film until the hour mark or so. Even then, he doesn’t figh until the last 10 minutes and his kicking exhibition lasts about three minutes tops. Hwang does get to let loose a number of impressive boots while he’s working Alan Chui over, such as a double jumping side kick, a forward jumping back kick, and a few other neat boots. Hwang’s moves are executed with snap and power, which is missing in all of the other fights and it’s a shame that there isn’t more of him here. Hwang comes across as being invincible here and viewers will appreciate just how powerful his character is portrayed as being, despite his losing to cheating moves. Any sort of good will this film earns is because of Hwang, although truth to be told, this is really one of his worst movies, period. You’re really better off looking for the final fight on YouTube and forgetting the rest. It’s not worth it. Trust me. I thought it was and I was wrong. Don’t repeat my mistakes. Please.