Fist of Fury, Part III (1979)

Fist of Fury, Part III (1979)
aka Fist of Fury 3; Chinese Connection 3; Jeet Kune the Claws and the Supreme Kung Fu; Avenging Fury; O Tigre em Fúria
Chinese Title: 截拳鷹爪功
Translation: Jeet Kune Eagle Claw Skill

 

Starring: Bruce Li (Ho Chung-Tao), Ku Feng, Wei Ping-Ao, Bruce Tong, Michelle Yim, Fong Yau, Hong Gwok-Choi, Wang Lai, Choi King-Fai
Director: To Lo-Po
Action Directors: Wong Mei, Addy Sung

 

I’d like to think that Fist of Fury III was the victim (at least in part) of its 1979 release date. The kung fu movie landscape had changed a lot since 1977, especially because of Jackie Chan. The success of The Drunken Master meant that studios—both mainstream and independent—would try to cash in on that film’s success, cranking out kung fu comedy one after the other for low costs and potentially-high profits. Racist portraits of the Japanese still existed, but had become moot the year before with Lau Kar-Leung’s balanced take on the Chinese/Japanese conflict in Heroes ofthe East. With Jackie Chan becoming the big thing, Brucesploitation on the whole was quickly turning into an anachronism.

The post-Drunken Master mentality shows up here in the form of a bungling brother to Chen Shan (and, by extension, Bruce Lee’s Chen Zhen), played by the usually-reliable Hon Gwok-Choi (Call Me Dragon and Running on Karma). It ends up cheapening what is already an underwhelming film and dealing a blow to the original film’s power that even the lackluster New Fist of Fury wasn’t guilty of. Alas, that is but one of the film’s many sins.

We open with a brief fight between Chen Shan, who’s returning to his home in Macao following the events of the last film, and some Japanese baddies led by the local interpreter for the Japanese (Wei Ping-Ao, essentially reprising his role as Wu from Fist of Fury). After whooping them, Chen comes home and promises his blind mother (Wang Lai, who made some 200+ films in her career, including gems like Hong Kong Emanuelle ), that he’ll never fight again. That’s a bit drastic, considering his speeches about sticking up for yourself in the previous entry. His worthless brother is on hand to get into trouble, which will eventually come back to bite the family in the arse.

Chen Shan goes to visit his uncle, the owner of the local hung gar school. I’m guessing that “uncle” is only a friendly term, since uncle’s daughter (Choi King-Fai) has decided to spurn her engagement to the school’s top student (Bruce Tong of Shaolin Temple) in order to flirt with Chen Shan. When the local Japanese school resolves to open a casino in town, their leader (Broken Oath’s Fong Yau) declares that Chen Shan needs to be wiped out in order to avenge the death of Miyamoto, villain from the first film. Unfortunately, their political clout in Macao is less than it is in Shanghai, so they’ll have to operate a little less openly. The Interpreter suggests that they use the love triangle to pit the Top Student against Chen Shan.

This leads into a bizarre tangent where Chen Shan catches Top Student fighting with a father-daughter pair of traveling martial artists (the daughter is played by Michelle Yim, of Passage of the Dragon). Chen Shan bests him in a duel, which pisses Top Student off even more.  Chen Shan takes the dad n’ daughter home, where his mother nurses the ailing father back to health. Meanwhile, an increasingly distraught Top Student finds himself turning to alcohol to deal with the fact that his fiancée doesn’t care for him anymore. One evening, Interpreter shows up and spikes the guy’s wine with some aphrodisiac, which causes him to almost rape his master’s daughter. Obviously, this gets the guy kicked out of the school.

A reel from the version I watched went missing at this point, so I’m not entirely sure what happens. I’m guessing that Top Student kills his master and frames Chen Shan for it, who is thrown in jail. I’m also guessing that the real identities of the father-daughter pair are revealed, since it was hinted at before that they were in Macao to resolve some special business. Anyway, the master’s daughter commits suicide while Top Student is having another random fight with father-daughter pair. The next day, Worthless Brother tries to pick a fight with the Interpreter, leading to his getting beaten to death by the Japanese. Chen Shan’s mother subsequently dies of grief. Chen Shan is let out of jail almost effortlessly by father-daughter pair and as soon as he finds his dead family, he’s going to want to get revenge.

The script here is just a mess, from the inconsistent characterizations to a main villain (Shaw Brothers veteran Ku Feng) who doesn’t even show up onscreen (at least in the version I saw) until the final fight itself. That in itself makes the bad guys even less compelling than Chen Sing and his daughter in New Fist of Fury. Moreover, the Fist of Fury franchise is a patriotic (if slightly racist) one. It’s about one man standing up for his people in the face of tyranny and foreign imperialism. In this movie, however, the villains here do very little oppressing and their plan to get revenge on Chen Shan via a love triangle is rather silly and petty, rather than the sort of thing to get audiences riled up. I also didn’t appreciate how the father-daughter duo disappear from the movie after freeing Chen Shan from prison, despite the fact that their kung fu is actually pretty good.

It doesn’t help that the fight scenes are choreographed by 3^rd string choreographers Wong Mei (Bruce’s Deadly Fingers and Bruce Li in New Guinea) and Addy Sung (Bruce Le’s Greatest Revenge). Fist of Fury 2 didn’t represent Tommy Lee’s best work, but it was obvious he was trying for more than your garden-variety Bruce Lee imitation, which worked a lot in the movie’s favor. Unfortunately, Wong and Addy had histories far too steeped in the Brucesploitation genre to break out of type, and Ho Chung Tao ends up back in the garden with some uninspired Bruce Lee-esque posturing and whooping. The action is made even worse by the liberal undercranking applied to a number of the one-vs-many fights.

Things get even worse once we reach the finale, since the filmmakers liberally rip off Fist of Fury II, from the villain killing his interpreter right down to the final shot of the villain committing seppuku. A lot of the characters’ moves feel borrowed from the Bruce Li/Lo Lieh fight from the last film and the only moment of fighting freshness comes when Bruce Tong shows up to briefly tango with Ku Feng. Nothing about the fight is all that original or interesting, ending an already uninspired movie on a bland note.