Ninja Over the Great Wall (1987)

Ninja Over the Great Wall (1987)
Aka: Shaolin Fist of Fury; Fire on the Great Wall; Last Duel of the Great Wall
Chinese Title: 龍火長城
Translation: Dragon Fire Great Wall

 

Starring: Bruce Le (Huang Kin-Lung), Yasuyoshi Shikamura, Li Ning, Yue Hai
Director: Bruce Le
Action Director: Bruce Le

 

Ninja Over the Great Wall represents something of an achievement for Brucesploitation actor Bruce Le. After more than 10 years of Brucesploitation that were by turns bland and forgettable or sleazy and forgettable, he finally got it. He finally understood what was necessary to make an honest-to-God good film. He finally learned something about the power of images that weren’t naked Eurosmut starlets, and finally honed his skills to be able choreograph fights that would not be completely forgotten 15 minutes after the movie ended. Things just clicked for him in the late 80s, when he was making an honest effort to be seen as a legitimate filmmaker. As it stands, Ninja Over the Great Wall is quite possible the best Brucesploitation movie I’ve so far seen, even if there are others out there that might be a lot more fun to watch.

The film opens in 1931 in the Northernmost regions of China, probably around Manchuria. A contingent of Japanese troops arrive in some random village and just start opening fire on the villagers for no reason whatsoever. After witnessing the murder of his mother, kung fu expert Chi Keung (Bruce Le) takes his girlfriend Yip and makes a break for it. The butt of a Japanese rifle makes short work of their flight, and Chi Keung is put on a truck with the rest of the surviving men of the village. They’re taken out of town, systematically slaughtered, and thrown into a mass grave. Yip finds Chi Keung, who’s barely alive, and escapes with him to Beijing. The entire scene is played out with the minimum of dialog, with Le wisely letting the imagery, especially that of the two protagonists walking through a literal boneyard, to make it to safety.

A year later, Chi Keung is working as a rickshaw puller in Beijing when he meets Master Yeung (Yue Hai, of the Shaolin Temple films). Keung has been challenged to a duel by Shojiro (Yasuyoshi Shikamura, also known as Luk Chuen), the son of the Japanese ambassador based in Beijing. Shojiro is a powerful, but idealistic martial artist, who believes in things like mercy and fairness, much to his father’s disapproval. His dad thinks that the duel is a bad idea, so he sends his ninja army to fix Master Yeung. Chi-Keung saves the Master’s life and comes into his good graces. Later on, Master Yeung loses the duel to Shojiro, and later dies after being poisoned by the ninja bodyguards.

Chi Keung is enraged by the treachery of the Japanese, and takes on Shojiro, giving him a sound thrashing. Shojiro retreats to Japan to hone his Bushido skills, while his father lets loose his ninja army to wipe out the rest of the Chung-Hwa School and kill Chi Keung as well. Chi Keung escapes and makes it to a settlement along the Yellow River, where he trains for the inevitable rematch with his Japanese adversary.

The truth is that the film revolves mainly around the rivalry between Shojiro and the Chinese masters, exemplified by both Chi Keung and Master Yeung. As a result, there are several subplots that pop up and simply disappear without being mentioned again. We discover that the archtypical Chinese interpreter is actually the uncle of Yip, Chi Keung’s love interest, but that fact never facts into the story. There’s also a love triangle sidestory involving Chi Keung, Yip, and some girl who lives in the Yellow River village, but that’s resolved in a simplistic manner. Also, there’s a bit about the top student of the Chung Hwa school travelling to the South to rally up the kung fu masters to oppose the Japanese, but once he leaves, that’s never mentioned again.

The film also suffers from some bad editing, mainly during a 10-minute interval in which Chi Keung faces off with the ninjas in four or five consecutive fights. No explanation is given for the change of scenery or time of day in between the fights, especially when Chi Keung is suddenly in the snow fighting off ninja dressed in white. Moreover, once the ninja off the students of the school, we never see Chi Keung’s reaction to it.

But I’m willing to forgive those flaws because the rest of the movie is handled so well. Unlike so many other Brucesploitation movies I’ve seen, this actually *feels* like a real movie. The emotions are real, the characters feel like people, and the production values are better than your average Brucesploitation romp. I’m pretty sure that much of the film was made with Mainland money, considering the cast and the location shooting. When you get right down to it, this film feels like a respectable marriage of the Brucesploitation, Ninjasploitation and Mainland wushu film genres.

Interestingly enough, even the villain experiences some degree of character development. Shojiro has the typical Japanese desire to prove that Bushido beats Kung Fu, but he wants to do it in an honorable way and believes in a fair fight, much like Norman Tsui’s character in Duel to the Death. This is one of the few films I’ve seen where the villain gets beaten, and then retreats to train for the climatic fight. By the end of his training, Shojiro has absorbed his master’s teachings that showing mercy is not part of Bushido, making him all the more dangerous as a foe.

I’m pretty sure that the opening massacre has a lot to do with the revelations in the 1980s of the activities of infamous Unit 731, the prisoner camp in Manchuria where Japanese doctors and scientists performed some of the most horrible experiments on record on living people (most of whom were Chinese). Huang Kin-Lung must have had strong feelings about these hideous acts that came to light, as he also directed the film Comfort Women, which is about prostitutes being sent to Unit 731 after contracting venereal diseases. I get the feeling that Bruce Le wanted to show to the world just how bad things got in China during the Japanese occupation.

The action is pretty solid for the most part. Huang Kin-Lung eschews much of the hopping, nunchaku-swinging, whoop-whooping, and nose-thumbing that defined so many other of his films. He uses a lot of reverse punches and his kicks are higher and more powerful than those sloppy low-altitude boots that cheapened the action in Clones of Bruce Lee, for example. Yue Hai gives us some tai chi and other internal styles during his big fight with Shojiro. On the weapons front, Bruce Le shows off his sword skills with the katana in several of the fights, wielding it like a Chinese jian, and then opting for a pair of escrima-esque poles for the final fight.

I’d say the big flaw in the action is the final fight. It starts really good (by Bruce Le standards, anyway), with two fighting with weapons. It reminds me a lot of the final fight in Fearless to be honest. In fact, there are several scenes (the poisoning, Shojiro’ reaction to his father’s treachery) that remind me of Fearless. When the two switch to hand-to-hand fighting, it goes well. But then, the two are quickly reduced to haymakers and reverse punches, without any interesting choreography to complement it. The two fighters just mindlessly wail on each other until both are tired and bloody. A little more choreography from Huang Kin-Lung would’ve been nice. But despite that and those flaws, I still think this is Bruce Le’s best contribution to cinema.